Let 'er Rip

I don't know why this is becoming a trend, but some young "ladies" have been roaming around the downtown area of the city wearing ripped tights. Now I'm a child of the 80s, I understand the concept of ripping perfectly good clothing. I think the look is tired and unbecoming, but if you insist on doing it, make sure you have the gams to back it up. The girls I've noticed are no match for Betty Grable and her legs.

With Style Therapy I stress to my clients to embrace their bodies and dress the body they have now. Play up what you're proud of and camouflage areas you're not terribly pleased with. In other words, work with what you've got.

The lasses I've been seeing are on the shorter, stumpier side. Their goal should be a streamlined look to create length in the legs. In this case less truly is more. The rips and holes create such an ugly and unpleasant leg, aside from the sloppy slob factor, the eye races all over the place, creating more width than length.

Some of you may be saying, "Style Therapist, maybe these girls like their less-than-long-and-lean legs." If they truly loved their less-than-long-and-lean legs, they'd pretty them up, not dirty them up with tattered hosiery.

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.

Holiday Sweaters: Public Nuisance

'Tis the season to show truly bad taste in apparel. Whether received or given, Holiday Sweaters rear their ugly turtlenecked heads during the first week of December. Long a sartorial blister, this nuisance of a knit endures.

The Holiday Sweater is an 80s relic that refuses to die. While this is one of my favorite decades fashion-wise, there are certainly some things that are better left in the garment grave: acid wash, ripped denim, hairsprayed bangs, and last but not least, the Holiday Sweater.

There are some that are marginally acceptable. And then there are those that should be shot...if one is bonkers enough to shoot a sweater. Please make sure it's not being worn if you do decide to go that route. If there's a sweater that ever deserved to be shot, it's the Holiday Sweater with a holiday sweater motif.

Should you receive one as a gift this year, it's time to reconsider your relationship with the giver. If the person is a grandmother, she's two generations ahead of you and should be given some slack. Moms, aunts, sisters; etc. should all know better. If you manage to get one from a member of this list, consider it a ploy to sabotage your wardrobe. And in retaliation never, ever wear it around them or anyone else. In fact, it should be a reminder to bring your A-game when you're around them. No person would give this to you if they really loved you. It's akin to getting one of those complimentary bookmarks from Barnes & Noble as a gift. It's that low.

The Stockings Stalker

I entered kindergarten during the 1983-1984 school year. My favorite videos were Eddie Grant's "Electric Avenue" and "What A Feeling" from Flashdance. I had no idea the film was about some stripper in Pittsburgh, nor would I have cared. The styles of the time included trickle-down mass punk; ripped, spiked and safety pinned. I, for one, was obsessed with having Big Girl shoes. Today they'd be equivalent to the classic Ferragamo Varina flats. My shoes always had some contraption to keep my little feet in place. Whether it be show laces or a buckle strap, the secured shoe stayed on during rigorous PE sessions of kick ball.

Since I was relegated to white knock off Adidas (they had 4 pink stripes instead of 3), I needed to step up my game. It was the 80s and the sneakers were too casual for me. Enter church stockings stage left.

My wardrobe of worship consisted of a multitude of dresses, and never mingled with my school clothes: t-shirts, jeans, and denim skirts. Within my church wardrobe I had stockings of every 80s persuasion: yellow lace, plain Rubble Bubble pink, and my favorite, white with little red hearts all over.

Back then, my mother dictated what I wore while I ate Cap'n Crunch and watched Inspector Gadget. But, soon I began a campaign for the clothes I wanted to wear. As this was a quarter of a century ago, I can't remember exactly how long the campaign lasted, but it must have been long. Mommy is an Aries/Taurus cusp. She doesn't budge.

Everyday I'd ask her if I could wear my stockings with my sneakers. My church shoes were black patent with a buckle. While they served their purpose at a house of worship, they would have been too too at school. Every time I asked her, I got an emphatic NO as an answer. I can't recall her reasoning, something along the lines of sneakers and stockings not going together or me running the stockings while playing. But I persisted, and finally, she surrendered.

I was psyched out of my mind to be wearing this special hosiery. In addition to the fake Adidas sneakers, I wore what I now consider to be my uniform at the time: Miss Peggy t-shirt in which she's wearing a tank top, shorts that are far too tight, and some roller skates. USA was emblazoned on the shirt, probably in lieu of the '84 Olympics in Los Angeles. The bottom half of my outfit was a simple, denim pencil skirt.

When I got dressed in said uniform, I thought my look was fire. I made sure Mommy gave me the special hair style, too. Instead of two pig tails, I got 4 (concurrent with my fake Adidas), which were reserved for Church or picture day at school.

After my mother walked me to school, my intention was to show all the other five and six-year-olds my fashion savvy...maybe some upper classmen, too. As soon as I got outside of Mrs. Week's kindergarten class, my colleagues started in on me. They laughed and laughed. And when they were done laughing, they laughed some more. These were kids I considered friends of mine. Good friends. One after the other, boys and girls alike, asked me what I was thinking. No one wore sneakers with stockings. Only crazy people did that apparently. I wanted to be a vanguard, but it backfired.

I had yet to get those Big Girl shoes from Zayre that my parents had promised me. Stockings would have looked great with those. But I insisted on wearing my stockings then; I wasn't terribly concerned with footwear. I was making due with what I had.

After a day of what seemed like non-stop ribbing, I finally made my way home on a walk with Mommy. As embarrassed as I was, I told her what happened. She didn't spare me from any "I told you so" or "Next time, listen to me." I got plenty of those. But I'm grateful that she allowed me to wear the stockings so I'd be able to see why the combination wasn't a good idea.

I would eventually get my Big Girl shoes...the next year. I didn't have any more patience then than I do today, but they were worth the wait.

With Stanton + Williams Style Therapy, I try to give clients on the younger side more leeway. They haven't had a chance to develop their own style and have a feel for what works for them and what doesn't. It's crucial to make mistakes, and even spend all day being embarrassed out of your mind. On the other hand, for my more mature clients, my mother's voice of reason filters down through me. If I can spare them from a day of heckling, it's worth my hourly rate.