Grooming (Part 3) - Clothing

Comfort comes first, because without you being totally comfortable, nothing is going to work for you and at the same times look chic, small and in step with the vitality of life. Never sacrifice comfort for fashion. Not only the familiar aspect of comfort as it regards fit, but the psychological, social and financial considerations that encompass the full spectrum of what comfort truly means.

Contour: If you want to look good in clothes, know your body and its proportion. Use contour and camouflage to compensate for figure faults. The best way to know your figure well is to get down to bare facts, using a full length mirror to check your naked body. Basically body types are categorized into three shapes:

1) The classic athletic figure with wide shoulders, broad chest, narrow hip, muscular arms and legs.
2) The stocky, round body with short thick neck, short plump arms and legs.
3) The tall, thin, narrow angular body; slender arms, legs, long, stringy muscles. There are many variables to these three basic body shapes, namely big & bountiful, petite, umbrella, tall and thin.

To successfully camouflage an unproportion figure requires a subtle touch and a sense of balance in choosing colour, texture, line and design. For example, a horizontal stripe shirt will make you look broader but a vertical stripe shirt will make you look taller and thinner.

However, your own coloring and shape sketch the best colours for you. Colours should compliment the face and body as well as each other. Skin tones fall into, again three basic categories: Light, medium and dark.

Light skinned people look better in warm colours. Olive skinned people look better in cooler colours and dark skinned people look better in bright colours. The colours most basic for year round are black, white, brown, beige, burgundy, grey and navy blue.