Fashion Resolutions for the New Year

New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken. So, let’s make some easy ones. Let’s take the advice of style guru Nina Garcia as our sparkly aphorism for the season. The Project Runway host says in her book The Little Black Book of Style, it is not a beautiful woman that sustains her interest, but a confident one. It is not the woman in a plain black dress that catches her eye, but the woman ‘in the interesting shirt and the vintage skirt’ that makes her ‘immediately want to know where she got them.’ Here are my top five fashion resolutions for the New Year…

1. I don’t have to wear what the Duchess of Cambridge is wearing
Repeat this mantra every night before you go to bed. Say it when you go shopping. Remind yourself of it when you are dodging women in Oxford Street who aren’t looking where they’re going, but are doing that desperate, craning-the-neck-to-look-in-shop-windows thing.

I know the high street is flooded with lace. You can’t sneeze for being confronted with long-sleeved lace dresses, sequinned Jenny Packham-lookalikes, and midnight-toned Issa remakes. But the appealing thing about the Duchess of Cambridge’s style is that it is uniquely her own. There is a fairy-tale princess aura to her clothing. The dresses are just a tad conventional. There are never odd bulges, or waist lines hanging in the wrong place. No Princess Beatrice-type fashion moments that would more likely put her in the Rocky Horror Hall of Fame than Harper’s best dressed list. That’s what we love.

So, find that personal style that is your best accessory for the New Year.

2. I don’t have to spend, spend, spend
They’re telling us that what got us into this recession is that we spent way, way more than we had. But, uh, then they’re saying that the best way to get out of this slump is to – hold your breath – spend, spend, spend. Well, let’s not.

Let’s instead check out vintage wear and charity shops. Call me an elitist, but I hate that charity shop smell you get sometimes. You know it. It’s a mixture of stale sweat and old carpets. Possibly diluted with cat urine. But show me a good charity shop, a non-smelly one where there are psychedelic, poufy-sleeved tops from the Eighties, Fifties’ full-skirted tea dresses, fitted Ted Baker coats for £12, and you’ll have me eating out of your hands.

3. I won’t be trigger-happy with make-up
The best favour you can do your skin is to moisturise, drink lots of water, and get those essential cardio workouts. Loading on the foundation, drawing an extra pair of lips around your own, laying on the kohl with a hand as heavy as King Kong’s are fashion no-no’s. The same goes for buying clothes that are a size or three too small, giving your hair cheap rinses, and turning orange in the hopes of looking like Freida Pinto.

4. I’ll check out eco-friendly brands
When you’re e-window-shopping, check out the latest in trendy eco-fashion – hot young designers that are blitzing the scene with fairly traded, eco-friendly material.

Amana’s hemp and cotton fabrics are tailored into comfortable wear by Moroccan women who work for fair-trade cop-ops. For more floral prints and youthful trends, check out Annie Greenabelle who specialises in recycled materials. Then there is Beyond Skin, a homegrown, family-run brand that specialises in trendy pumps, while Ciel gives you the things people miss about all-hemp brands – silken sheens and fitted cuts. Or, if you just want to be able to say, I’m wearing a Bono today, well then, check out Edun, a label founded by Bono and his wife Ali Hewson to provide ethical employment to fashion-workers.

5. I’ll clear out and throw away
Make this an affirmation for your clothes, those uncomfortable heels that make you cry that you keep telling yourself you’ll wear again one day, and all those habits that you hate in yourself but that are more stubborn and resistant than a stain of Merlot on a white silk dress. Give things you no longer wear to charity shops. (Wash them first – please!) Clear out your closet. Detox your head.

Image by Annie Greenabelle