Camel

The other day I made a trip over to Cognac to have brunch with a dear friend. Wanting to enjoy the unseasonably balmy weather, I waited outside and indulged in a bit of people-watching. Since the restaurant is as midtown as one could possibly get, there was an interesting mix of people. There were folks leaving the matinee showing of Shrek the Musical, looking up at the lights of Times Square with mouths agape, or heading up to Central Park in a hansom cab.

All of these people seemed like your everyday, run-of-the-mill, standard warm bodies roaming the streets at midday in midtown. But there was one who stuck out, I mean really stuck out. This young lady...and I use that term with a great deal of circumscription...in any case, this young lady was walking down the street in black leggings. No major calamity there. Who among us does not own a pair of black leggings? Let he who is without sin and black leggings cast the first stone. It wasn't that she showed up in black leggings, it's what the black leggings were showing. Her reproductive organs were there for the world to see. Everything! It's not as if these leggings were super tight, they were just thin and reflective.

Some of you are asking, "Style Therapist, why were you even looking?" Why was I looking? It's like asking someone not to look at Octomom's belly during her third trimester. The young woman's anatomy was THERE. She was just bopping down the street in her sunglasses and Urban Outfitters scarf, impervious to what was going on below her southern hemisphere. The fact that the fabric was shiny was not helping matters either.

My beautiful people, the moral of the story is to check and re-check your bits and pieces before you leave the house. Sure, some people enjoy exposing the imprint of their biology and others enjoy looking. These people are called perverts and you certainly don't want to be associated with them. Or do you?

Blame Sex and the City

As was the case with a lot of women who experienced their early twenties during the early Noughties, Sex and the City (SATC) was one of my favorite programs. Out of the four characters, we could all relate to at least one of them on some level. And those clothes, those wonderful clothes. Costume designer Pat Field realized how important dress was to the development of these characters. Remember how Miranda dressed during the first season as opposed to the later seasons? She and Charlotte, for a time, dressed in a near-stereotypical manner. The former clad in sterile all-black, and the latter in wasp waist enhancing dresses with a bow or ruffle planted somewhere.

Many of us were heavily influenced by the SATC philosophy of having fun with personal style. I was no stranger to the oversized flower corsage on my coat lapel during early 2001. And Carrie Bradshaw helped to usher in the vintage craze. Very few people indulged in used clothing before she made it acceptable. If they did, they were either high-end collectors of Courrèges and Rabanne or grungy types who had a steady rotation of flannel.

However, some have taken their personal style too far. Whatever your aesthetic is, it's imperative to edit. Thankfully, we're in the middle of winter and people are desperately trying to make it to the inside of their destination. There's basically a sea puffy black coats, black gloves, and black tams. It's during the summer where things really get egregious. There's a profusion of over-styled young women roaming the streets in shorts and stilettos. Their idea of juxtaposing different prints, styles, textures and labeling ends up looking like a hot-messed mish mash of madness. These girls fail to realize that the styles they're emulating are from television—a hyper-reality. The styles were meant to entertain and inspire, not be taken literally.

This February marks five years since our quartet of friends bid us adieu. The film that premiered this past summer brought with it a few more validated trends: belted waist, graphic print dresses, and statement jewelry. These have been lasting sartorial movements amongst those in the know, but SATC validates the styles to a global audience. While there have been some major guffaws on the street level, the show did teach a lot of us to take risks and push our fashion limits. The Style Therapy message is to figure out your own style organically. What works for YOUR figure, coloring, lifestyle; etc. Just because it looks cute on Carrie doesn't mean it works for the rest of us.

Smell Ya Later

Hey Mister, looking good. You know it, too...but I can smell you. You're waaaaaaaaaay over there and I'm waaaaaaaay over here.

Listen gents, as a Style Therapist I can really appreciate you taking the time to bring your A-game. But does this attention to detail HAVE to involve so much cologne? My nostrils are on fire and my eyes are watering. It's not even that your Eau de Homme smells bad, there's simply too much of it on your body. Take it easy for the public's sake...please!

We can still smell you 10 minutes after you've left the building. I know what you do, too. You lay your outfit on the bed and spritz the cologne all over—front AND back. In your mind, this is the subtle way to get your scent out into the atmosphere. But you don't stop there. You put it in your hair, on your neck, the palms of your hand—you refuse to leave any molecule unbathed in your special spice.

Please give the public's olfactory nerves a break. Your cologne seeps into our skin, attaches itself to our hair, our couches, car seats and any other surface that absorbs odors. My advice is to spritz in the air and run through the mist. That way only someone close enough to whisper can smell you. You're more appealing and mysterious that way. While you may be suffering from colognism, it's manageable disease. And in some cases, I've known it to be cured.