I'm loving Hannah Betts' new column in The Telegraph on Saturday.
Recently she reminded me of an idea I read about back in my school days and spent many hours considering whilst I should have been studying. She has adopted it and I recommend it to anyone who wants to have a more defined "Style Personality".
Anyone who knows me has heard me bleat on about this for hours. Knowing who you are, how you dress and what you want to express through the way you look makes shopping, dressing and just living, so much easier.
I'll let Hannah explain - she does it so much better than me:
"Recently I’ve been developing a Bettsian style theory. Actually I came across it in a magazine. Nevertheless, so fanatically have I embraced this dictum that I feel I have made it my own. It is simply this: the essence of a person’s style should be explicable in just three words. Think haiku, rather than novella.
As youngsters we tend to be promiscuous, lemming-like experimenters. As adults, these random acts of fashion coalesce into some sort of style. Knowledge, as ever, is power, and once one has cracked this three-word formula, dressing becomes both a cinch and a joy. The scheme can be applied to celebrity and civilian, chapess and chap.
My friends, have presented me with the following triads to sum up their own style: clean, chic, effortless; sleek, monochromatic, androgynous; faded, English, unshowy; linear, gamine, ballsy; ageless, flattering, North London; borrowed, given, stolen; martial, Italianate, caped; preppy, urbane, librarianesque; mad, vintage, crafted; unbigoted, blackshirt, chic. And, finally, the mantra of my brother Bim, whose resplendent “ruthless, senseless, northern-flash” translates as “utilitarian, military, the (very) odd sequin”.
My own style trinity would run something along the lines of: retro, witty, feminine. Regarding retro, I can never look anything other than Forties with a touch of costume drama, à la The Wicked Lady heroine Margaret Lockwood (my nickname in my twenties). These days I tend to get “Dita-ed” by optimistic paparazzi, although, happily, Ms Von Teese has also been mistaken for me.
Under “witty”, I take in camp and/or theatrical. I want my clothes to amuse me, whether it’s correspondent shoes, or over-the-top rocks. By “feminine”, I embrace cleavage (unavoidable), and what my gay friends would refer to as “tranny” or “lady-boyish” tendencies; my academic pals as “female homovestism”, that is, women getting a kick out of dressing as women. I may be a feminist, but I am good with pantomime femininity."
Here is a link to the original article on The Telegraph website.
What is your holy trinity? Mine is Striking, Sexy & Fun. More about that soon, gotta go now and clear out all those preppy shirts I'm never going to wear.
