I have a few key rules that I like to stick to when creating an outfit. Fashion and style is very important to me and has been all my life. I have on numerous occasions made my Mum walk back upstairs and change her wide-legged pants or ditch the dangly earings if she is also wearing a statement necklace. But this week I broke 2 of my top 2 rules in one outfit, and I was actually excited to be seen in public wearing it! (I wasn’t running a fever. I checked)

So, what are these rules I broke and why were they no-nos in the first place?

1. HORIZONTAL STRIPES!!!! My biggest hate! Horizontal stripes do nothing but highlight  how wide you are… and then make you look even wider. My rule was simple. Never. Go. There. I bid myself if I must venture into the stripy abyss I would only do so where the garment was panelled and the striped were any which way but straight from left to right. But I did it. I recently bought a t-shirt in the hope to pull off a Taylor Swift-esque style for the day from Ally Fashion. One of my favourite stores. Here is the actual top! Dirt cheap and really comfy 🙂 And what was I going to do with this top that I stood in the dressing room, looking in the mirror for a good 12 minutes contemplating ‘going there’? I was going to team it with my second biggest hate…

2. Vinyl or ‘Pleather’ pants! These things are distracting for all the wrong reasons. They hug your thighs so tightly that there is no hiding or disguising your actual size. But something must be in the water. Or air. Or my daily hot chocolates. I bought 2 pairs. One pain of shiny vinyl imitation high-waited leggings and a par of normal cotton leggings with leather panels down the sides. I teamed the prior with my horizontal t-shirt and high-heel high-top gold sparkly sneakers and headed out. The vinyl high-waisted beauties went with a high-necked, red peplum top. And I felt kinda good. Maybe these pants are magical like gym pants and they suck you in and give you the illusion of trim, terrific and toned, maybe the stripes are ok if you have magic pants that make you appear skinny on the bottom half so the people who look at you just assume that its all the stripes’ fault that you look so landscape.

Ok so magic isn’t the answer. The answer is that the designers of these garments are coming to realise that it’s not so realistic that young women today are going to have the same tall, sculpted frame as Taylor Swift. They are finally recognising these issues and designing their clothes to accommodate the average girl’s needs and wants. Opposite to my fashion No-No’s, I have my ‘security blanket’ tricks for all girls’ shapes and sizes which the makers of my new clothes have incorporated into my new favourite pieces:

1. Panelling- instantly gives the illusion of being thinner- the side panels on my pleather pants are like imaginary scissors chopping off that much of my legs.

2. High-waisted- Pretty self-explanatory. Keeps everything in, makes you feel tall and look like your legs are about a foot and a half longer than they actually are.

3. Scoop-necklines- The horizontal stripes would still be out if the t-shirt was high-necked. It would just make me look broad. The scoop-cut shows a feminine figure and eliminates the broad, wide structure that horizontal stripes tend to create on the upper half of the female body.

4. Peplum- Hello hourglass figure (read: Marilyn Monroe). The curtaining out of the fabric at the waist shows off your thinnest area (the centre of your waist) and flows out to an hourglass shape, which is beautiful.

Remember: You don’t have to be 6 foot tall, weigh 50 kg and look like Barbie… You have to be happy with the way you look, and for me, just like every other body-image self-conscious girl, sometimes that only comes when I am fully dressed to highlight the things I like most about my body, and take attention (particularly mine) away from the things less-lovable. So try something new, see if those designers are on your side. After all they should be, who’s going to buy clothes that make me feel like a blonde haired whale? Thankyou to the fashion industry, you have finally caught up with reality!

Here are a few initiatives that I am very proud to be supporters of that are worth checking out:

– Vogue International Magazines have pledged not to knowingly use underweight models, models with eating disorders or unhealthy life-styles.

– Cosmopolitan Magazine Australia takes pride in featuring women of  all sizes in every issue and regularly takes charge and leads the way on better body image amongst women.

– Girlfriend magazine ‘no-retouching’ policy

– Dolly Magazine ‘Positive body image campaign’