Style Tips: How To Look Stylish Everyday

During the day, I’m a personal shopper & stylist and I’ve noticed that all of my styling clients have one thing in common: they want to be stylish! They want to be able to pull out easy outfits from their wardrobe and know they’ll be stylish no matter what they wear with minimal effort. While the thought may seem daunting, it’s actually simpler than you think. For this month’s style tips, we are focusing on stylish tips instead of styling a particular item. These aren’t going to be your average, run of the mill, ‘have your nails done, do your hair, wear lighter makeup’ tips. These stylish tips will focus on the actual clothing and styling aspects of them. Get ready to step up your stylish chic game!

Before we get started on how to look stylish everyday

These stylish tips are ones that I swear by everyday AND give to my clients. However, do keep in mind that not all stylish tips will work for you. Depending on your body type (horizontal and vertical) and colormetry, these tips may need to be tweaked to work better for you. Also, some tips may be more successful for you than others. Do keep in mind that while fashion is universal, styling is all about individualism. 🙂 If you’re interested in a personalized virtual styling session with me, contact me on my website, Dressed By Tess!

Closet Purge

The first thing that I always recommend is to go through your closet! We need to know what we are working with before we start working on new outfits and potentially, new purchases. Any dated items have got to go (unless they are very sentimental). That high school top from 10 years ago shouldn’t still live in the deep, dark depths of your closet. Also, any items that don’t really make you feel some type of way may need to be sold/donated. These items are often impulse purchases from fast fashion or during sales. If it still has the tags on and it’s never seen the light of day except for when you took it from the store to the car, I’d strongly consider parting with it. Now if it’s a piece that you love and just don’t know how to style properly, that may be the exception!

I’d also get rid of any trendy pieces that you don’t actually love and only purchased because they were in style for a season. Dated trendy pieces are a sure shot way to not look stylish! Not only that, but I personally find lots of trends to be incredibely overrated. If you’re interested in having a pro go through your closet (virtually or in person if you’re near me), check out my Wardrobe Makeover service! Once you have gone through your closet purse, we can start working on looking stylish on the daily!

French (or regular) tuck!

• 

• 

Never again shall I go out in public with an untucked shirt. This one honestly goes for both women AND men! ALWAYS TUCK YOUR TOP IN. Leaving a top untucked doesn’t look stylish and actually makes your frame appear much larger because you aren’t defining your waist and giving yourself a shape. Now, I understand that some tops (sweaters!) will look chunky when tucked in and while there are style tips to get around that, there is another solution. The amazing French tuck. Tan France from Queer Eye swears by this! A French tuck simply means you loosely tuck in the front of your shirt. That’s it. Just the front. It breaks your body up and gives you that shape you need. Make sure you’re wearing a classic belt as well for extra stylish points. A French tuck which peeps at a classic belt buckle?! YES PLEASE. The only exception to this rule? A crop top. 😉

Quality Basics

When I say quality, I don’t necessarily mean luxury. Yes, luxury is often high quality, but not everyone can afford to go out and buy a coat that costs a few grand and that’s okay!! If you can go out and make that purchase, great! If it’s not your thing, that’s great, too. You can easily find better quality items for good prices if you know where to look. Thrifting is a wonderful option, for example. Think about your closet and your style; what are your basics? Perhaps it’s a plain white tee, or a good pair of black skinny jeans. Maybe you’re in the UK and that means you NEED a quality trench coat or you’re down south and lightweight fabrics are a life saver with the heat. Once you figure that out, you can work on curating better quality pieces. These should be items you’ll wear all the time and therefore, will be more than worth it when it comes to the cost per wear.

I’ve included a list of a few of my quality basics and where to find them if you’re interested. I live in Cannes, France, so it gets pretty darn hot in the summer and our winters are mostly rain. There are also a LOT of events that happen down here and as a stylist/blogger/micro influencer, I need to be prepared!

• Loose fitting white pants (Pinko)
• Denim (Express)
• Plain white tee (& Other Stories, similar)
• Silk blouse (Lilysilk)
• Turtleneck (Lilysilk)
• Evening dress (Paco Rabanne)

These are all pieces of clothing that I get a TON of wear out of and they’re all higher quality. When an item is higher quality, you can tell and it automatically makes an outfit more stylish and chic. If I’m going out, there is a 90% chance I will be wearing one of the pieces above which makes the whole ‘look stylish everyday’ situation much, much easier.

Stylish in monochrome

Monochrome is probably my FAVORITE way to look effortlessly chic and stylish. There is just something powerful about wearing the same color and rocking it. The most obvious choice, and the safest, would be black. Contrary to popular belief that it’s funeral-y, it’s actually super duper chic. Don’t believe me? Hop on Pinterest and look up black monochrome outfits and tell me that these girls don’t look amazing. Or, better yet, try it for yourself! Most of us already have a wardrobe full of black as it’s such a flattering color (it slims us!).

Another stylish monochrome color? White!! I’d say a white monochrome look leans more towards sophisticated than chic and it always gives off such a luxurious vibe. It is my go-to in the hot summer months on the French Riviera. Personally, I tend to stick with black and white, but I’ve been known to do all red as well. A great tip is to find what colors look best for your skin tone AND under tones and try to build a monochrome look with one of them.

Finally, once you’re getting comfortable with the one color, try to add pops of color here and there. One of my favorite ways to do this is to add pops of gold in an all black look, or even color block with a brightly colored purse, a bold shoe, or top under a blazer. Color blocking is another way to look stylish, but it can be hard to pull off if you’re playing around with lots of bold colors. Therefore, give it a shot with a simple monochromatic look!

Invest in Upgrades

This one is HUGE! Once you have your quality basics sorted out, focus on one or two closet upgrades. I recommend either a coat, handbag, or an everyday shoe. Again, this doesn’t have to be luxury. When I was in my late teens, I had a shopping addiction. There was a time when I would get new clothes delivered to my home almost every single DAY. They were never expensive items or luxury brands, but mostly fast fashion. I typically went to Express (which I still enjoy in moderation), FashionNova, Charlotte Russe, Forever21… With the exception of Express at times, these aren’t the best quality of clothes. I would literally spend hundreds and HUNDREDS of dollars a month and have a closet full of clothing with tags…

When I moved to France, I purged my closet. I was honestly disgusted by the sheer amount of clothes that I owned and either NEVER wore, wore once, or had tags. I was able to sell most of it, but the remainder was donated. There must have been over thousands of wasted dollars and don’t even get me started on the sustainibility portion… It’s very easy to buy cheap clothes, especially when they have insane sales, but that doesn’t mean that we should. Those thousands of dollars? I could’ve invested in a nice Burberry trench coat (currently on my list!) that I would own probably forever or a classic purse such as YSL (which I own now and wrote a review on here).

My point being is if you’re in a similar position, which I know most of my clients are, re-consider your priorities. If you sell those items you never use and cut down on the fast fashion spending, you can save up for a quality item that will last you SO much longer with the right care and I promise you it’ll end up being your favorite piece in your closet. 🙂

Here are a couple recommendations for upgrades. Make sure to go for something that fits with your style and your climate. Then, I recommend doing your own research on brands and reviews of items before moving forward.

• Camel coat
• Trench coat
• Day to night crossbody or hand bag (YSL, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, Pinko, Coach, Michael Kors…)
• Combat boots
• Flat sandals
• Ballerine flats
• Fashion sneakers

The key with these is to go for CLASSICS. Avoid anything that is obviously monogrammed, loud, non-neutral, etc. A lot of bold options make you look a lot more trendy (and eventually, dated) instead of stylish. You can never go wrong with a classic item in a neutral color.

Stylish Tips Final Thoughts

Honestly, I could’ve kept this blog post going for SO much longer, but I thought I’d leave it with five tips. They should keep you busy for a while. 😉 The biggest takeaway to look stylish is to avoid trendy/fast fashion pieces and to invest in quality basics! Those two things should already elevate your style quite a bit. Again, if you’re interested in a personalized one-on-one virtual styling or wardrobe makeover with me, I invite you to check out my website, Dressed By Tess, and contact me! 🙂 In the mean time, check out my last Style Tips post about pleated skirts here!

Subscribe

Make sure to subscribe in order to get a weekly email reminding you of my new blog post. 🙂 I appreciate you!

First Name:

Email Address:

Leave this field empty if you're human:

XO, Tess

**Some of the above links are affiliate links, which means I get a small commission if you buy something using my link. You don’t have to use them if you’d prefer not to. You do NOT get charged extra for using the above links.