Best Dressed: The Born to Shop Lady's Secrets for Building a Wardrobe - Hardcover
Cultivating a distinctive style that expresses your personality and tells the world how you want to be perceived doesn't have to break the bank. In Best Dressed, Suzy Gershman--internationally recognized for her retail acumen--offers a comprehensive guide, from bargain bins to haute couture, to building a wardrobe that not only works for you, but rewards you with a personal style that ensures you always feel comfortable in your clothing. Her insider knowledge of the fashion world helps you identify your fashion goals, maximize your fashion dollars, and look your best, whatever the budget or occasion.
Suzy outlines a foolproof three-step plan for cultivating a successful shopping style. She offers guidance for those still in "The Empty Stage," otherwise known as "Help! I have nothing to wear," showing how to select core pieces that will form the basis of a versatile, age-appropriate wardrobe. Next, you'll master "The One Good Stage"--in which you invest in one good example in each category of clothes and accessories, broadening your options and looks. By the time you're ready to conquer "The Rounding-Out Stage," finishing your wardrobe with seasonal accents and current trends, you'll have gained the confidence and flair to carry off your own unique style.
Suzy shares her personal philosophies on which items are worth a splurge (and when it's okay to buy "disposable" items); how to predict fashion trends (and when it's too late to buy in); and why the best foundation for any working wardrobe is a comfortable pair of shoes. For fashion novices and clotheshorses alike, Suzy's pointers and tips dissect the complex hierarchy of fashion retail and make creating a flexible and up-to-date wardrobe the painless process it was destined to be.
Suzy Gershman, the world's smartest shopper, lets you in on dozens of insider's tips and secrets to creating a fabulous wardrobe marked by your own personal style. Best Dressed delivers answers to your most frequently asked fashion questions, big or small, including:
Where are the real fashion bargains?
When is it too late to get in on a trend?
What is the single best fashion investment?
Why are the best working wardrobes built from the bottom up?
With Suzy's expert guidance, you'll learn to crack the stores' and manufacturers' pricing secrets, separate hype from style, and make your fashion budget go further than ever before.
Suzy outlines a foolproof three-step plan for cultivating a successful shopping style. She offers guidance for those still in "The Empty Stage," otherwise known as "Help! I have nothing to wear," showing how to select core pieces that will form the basis of a versatile, age-appropriate wardrobe. Next, you'll master "The One Good Stage"--in which you invest in one good example in each category of clothes and accessories, broadening your options and looks. By the time you're ready to conquer "The Rounding-Out Stage," finishing your wardrobe with seasonal accents and current trends, you'll have gained the confidence and flair to carry off your own unique style.
Suzy shares her personal philosophies on which items are worth a splurge (and when it's okay to buy "disposable" items); how to predict fashion trends (and when it's too late to buy in); and why the best foundation for any working wardrobe is a comfortable pair of shoes. For fashion novices and clotheshorses alike, Suzy's pointers and tips dissect the complex hierarchy of fashion retail and make creating a flexible and up-to-date wardrobe the painless process it was destined to be.
Suzy Gershman, the world's smartest shopper, lets you in on dozens of insider's tips and secrets to creating a fabulous wardrobe marked by your own personal style. Best Dressed delivers answers to your most frequently asked fashion questions, big or small, including:
Where are the real fashion bargains?
When is it too late to get in on a trend?
What is the single best fashion investment?
Why are the best working wardrobes built from the bottom up?
With Suzy's expert guidance, you'll learn to crack the stores' and manufacturers' pricing secrets, separate hype from style, and make your fashion budget go further than ever before.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
An author, a journalist, and a television personality, Suzy Gershman worked as a correspondent for Time before turning to the fashion world. In addition to writing Frommer's "Born to Shop" series, Gershman is an editor at Travel Holiday, Porthole, and Luxe magazines and has contributed to publications ranging from McCall's to Neiman Marcus's The Book. Both Harvard Business School and New York's Fashion Institute of Technology have studied her retail guidelines; numerous stores have relied on her as fashion consultant. She currently lives in Connecticut.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Your Personal Shopping Style
We've all looked at a closet filled with clothes and moaned, "I haven't got a thing to wear." Why do we laugh, knowing it's all too possible? Because we don't shop as well as we dress.
Unless you wear a uniform, or have such a highly evolved and distinctive style that 90 percent of the choices out there in stores and catalogs are automatically eliminated, you shop for your own clothes and you put them together to present yourself to the world. The more you like to shop, the greater the chances that you will be tempted to mix and match, to experiment and to create.
The world's most fashion-forward women create their own styles before they become a style, taking a little of this and a little of that and putting it together in a unique manner. Somehow, it works and even evolves into a trend or style that others will imitate. These women are usually in the fashion business or an artistic field that allows, and encourages, these statements. But no one creates a look without the ammunition to do so--and the ammunition is provided by shopping trips, whether to flea markets, designer showrooms, or local shopping malls.
I can spend hours trying on clothes at the beginning of a season or before a trip, mixing and matching pieces and seeing what works together. As my wardrobe expands each year, I have new pieces to mix with the old; my goal is always to give myself a current look with as few new pieces as possible.
Your style as a shopper and collector of wardrobe bits has a lot to do with the basics of your personality, with learned behavior, and with budgetary constraints. All of these factors change and shift, so it's natural that your shopping style will evolve over a period of years, just as your wardrobe does. Shopping style does relate to personal style because you are what you buy, but trust me, the Helter-Skelter Shopper does not look like a mess.
When you're up against it and set free in a store, what kind of shopper do you become? Take this little quiz and see if it helps to identify your shopping style.
What Kind of Shopper Are You?
1. To me, shopping is:
A) better than sex
B) an occupation
C) a necessary evil
D) a creative endeavor
2. I go shopping:
A) whenever I can
B) when the new clothes get to the stores
C) only if I need something
D) if I can find the time
3. I prefer to shop:
A) whenever possible
B) at lunch or on Saturdays
C) on weekends or days off
D) at night when stores are less crowded
4. When I find something I like:
A) I grab it and pay; I can always return it
B) I walk away to seriously think it over or discuss it with a loved one
C) I try it on, then decide if I really need it
D) I try it on and decide if it makes sense
5. My preferred shopping partner is:
A) my husband, my boyfriend, my sisters, my mother, my friends--it's always a party
B) my mom or my best friends
C) my mom
D) no one
6. I buy clothes to:
A) have plenty of choices when I need them
B) make a statement
C) cover my figure flaws
D) flatter and favor
7. My personal style:
A) changes constantly
B) reflects tasteful trends
C) is constant and dependable
D) is always evolving at a slow pace
8. If I have extra cash, I:
A) hit the sale racks to load up
B) go to Chanel
C) save it for an emergency
D) save it for a big style purchase
9. When I'm wearing the latest styles, I feel:
A) sexy and sensational
B) confident
C) uncomfortable
D) powerful
10. I feel "best dressed":
A) in a new, cutting-edge outfit
B) when I have a new piece of serious jewelry
C) when I'm dressed in a tried-and-true winner
D) when I have put together my own statement of style
To score, if you have mostly A answers, you are a Type A shopper, mostly B answers, Type B, and so on. Most people will fall into one of the four categories below, and while each type has its strengths and weaknesses, certain shoppers seem to enjoy a consistently higher rate of shopping satisfaction and live more happily with the choices they make--and the wardrobes that they assemble.
Type A Shopper: Helter-Skelter Give Me Shelter
Shopping Grade: C
Mistake Ratio: High
Style Grade: B+ or A
Look: Trendy and Fashionable
Suggestion: Slow down, don't waste as much.
Of all shopping styles, Ms. Helter-Skelter is the most emotional and the most likely to make mistakes. She is also the least likely to learn from past mistakes because passion is a large part of how she defines her sense of self and she refuses to deny her personal passion when she goes shopping.
"I know I make mistakes," she is thinking, "but I can't not be me."
The Type A shopper buys without trying on, buys by guessing, buys with her heart, buys navy blues to go with other navy blues and is then dismayed when they don't match. She shops with others and may even be a social shopper; she's influenced by others as well as by fads and trends and colors and store promotions. She's exciting and creative, but she'd rather own a lot of inexpensive things than any really good clothes, and her budget is often spread thin with payments on things that are already on their way out. She owns too many pairs of shoes.
Should you give the Helter-Skelter $500 of mad money for a shopping spree, she's likely to come up with a whole new look, a whole new wardrobe, and lots of cheap thrills.
Type B Shopper: The EuroSpender
Shopping Grade: B
Mistake Ratio: Low
Style Grade: B- or C
Look: Statusy, can get boring
Suggestion: Don't be afraid of cheap clothes when bought carefully.
The EuroSpender is guided by a very strong cultural bias toward buying few clothes and wearing them a lot. Her look can be either EuroTrash (lots of jewelry and very body conscious) or EuroChic (simple but safe and status...
We've all looked at a closet filled with clothes and moaned, "I haven't got a thing to wear." Why do we laugh, knowing it's all too possible? Because we don't shop as well as we dress.
Unless you wear a uniform, or have such a highly evolved and distinctive style that 90 percent of the choices out there in stores and catalogs are automatically eliminated, you shop for your own clothes and you put them together to present yourself to the world. The more you like to shop, the greater the chances that you will be tempted to mix and match, to experiment and to create.
The world's most fashion-forward women create their own styles before they become a style, taking a little of this and a little of that and putting it together in a unique manner. Somehow, it works and even evolves into a trend or style that others will imitate. These women are usually in the fashion business or an artistic field that allows, and encourages, these statements. But no one creates a look without the ammunition to do so--and the ammunition is provided by shopping trips, whether to flea markets, designer showrooms, or local shopping malls.
I can spend hours trying on clothes at the beginning of a season or before a trip, mixing and matching pieces and seeing what works together. As my wardrobe expands each year, I have new pieces to mix with the old; my goal is always to give myself a current look with as few new pieces as possible.
Your style as a shopper and collector of wardrobe bits has a lot to do with the basics of your personality, with learned behavior, and with budgetary constraints. All of these factors change and shift, so it's natural that your shopping style will evolve over a period of years, just as your wardrobe does. Shopping style does relate to personal style because you are what you buy, but trust me, the Helter-Skelter Shopper does not look like a mess.
When you're up against it and set free in a store, what kind of shopper do you become? Take this little quiz and see if it helps to identify your shopping style.
What Kind of Shopper Are You?
1. To me, shopping is:
A) better than sex
B) an occupation
C) a necessary evil
D) a creative endeavor
2. I go shopping:
A) whenever I can
B) when the new clothes get to the stores
C) only if I need something
D) if I can find the time
3. I prefer to shop:
A) whenever possible
B) at lunch or on Saturdays
C) on weekends or days off
D) at night when stores are less crowded
4. When I find something I like:
A) I grab it and pay; I can always return it
B) I walk away to seriously think it over or discuss it with a loved one
C) I try it on, then decide if I really need it
D) I try it on and decide if it makes sense
5. My preferred shopping partner is:
A) my husband, my boyfriend, my sisters, my mother, my friends--it's always a party
B) my mom or my best friends
C) my mom
D) no one
6. I buy clothes to:
A) have plenty of choices when I need them
B) make a statement
C) cover my figure flaws
D) flatter and favor
7. My personal style:
A) changes constantly
B) reflects tasteful trends
C) is constant and dependable
D) is always evolving at a slow pace
8. If I have extra cash, I:
A) hit the sale racks to load up
B) go to Chanel
C) save it for an emergency
D) save it for a big style purchase
9. When I'm wearing the latest styles, I feel:
A) sexy and sensational
B) confident
C) uncomfortable
D) powerful
10. I feel "best dressed":
A) in a new, cutting-edge outfit
B) when I have a new piece of serious jewelry
C) when I'm dressed in a tried-and-true winner
D) when I have put together my own statement of style
To score, if you have mostly A answers, you are a Type A shopper, mostly B answers, Type B, and so on. Most people will fall into one of the four categories below, and while each type has its strengths and weaknesses, certain shoppers seem to enjoy a consistently higher rate of shopping satisfaction and live more happily with the choices they make--and the wardrobes that they assemble.
Type A Shopper: Helter-Skelter Give Me Shelter
Shopping Grade: C
Mistake Ratio: High
Style Grade: B+ or A
Look: Trendy and Fashionable
Suggestion: Slow down, don't waste as much.
Of all shopping styles, Ms. Helter-Skelter is the most emotional and the most likely to make mistakes. She is also the least likely to learn from past mistakes because passion is a large part of how she defines her sense of self and she refuses to deny her personal passion when she goes shopping.
"I know I make mistakes," she is thinking, "but I can't not be me."
The Type A shopper buys without trying on, buys by guessing, buys with her heart, buys navy blues to go with other navy blues and is then dismayed when they don't match. She shops with others and may even be a social shopper; she's influenced by others as well as by fads and trends and colors and store promotions. She's exciting and creative, but she'd rather own a lot of inexpensive things than any really good clothes, and her budget is often spread thin with payments on things that are already on their way out. She owns too many pairs of shoes.
Should you give the Helter-Skelter $500 of mad money for a shopping spree, she's likely to come up with a whole new look, a whole new wardrobe, and lots of cheap thrills.
Type B Shopper: The EuroSpender
Shopping Grade: B
Mistake Ratio: Low
Style Grade: B- or C
Look: Statusy, can get boring
Suggestion: Don't be afraid of cheap clothes when bought carefully.
The EuroSpender is guided by a very strong cultural bias toward buying few clothes and wearing them a lot. Her look can be either EuroTrash (lots of jewelry and very body conscious) or EuroChic (simple but safe and status...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherClarkson Potter
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0609602187
- ISBN 13 9780609602188
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages240
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BEST DRESSED: THE BORN TO SHOP L
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ISBN 10: 0609602187
ISBN 13: 9780609602188
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