Dannii Minogue’s fashion sense and style show every week how versatile she is . Her looks and outfits are always different but always true to her body shape, colouring, style personality.

Dannii Minogue outfits on both shows are a celebration of the return of the full hourglass body shape, but as well on trend with the 1950 fashion dress code. A lot of waist and keeping the hemline below the knee.  But still she makes it her own by keeping it current with her hairstyle, make up and accessories. By combining metallic pumps with her electric blue Victoria Beckham dress – that is one of the hottest colours this season- she turns the elegant lady like dress to an evening outfit. While on Sunday she turns the tea party dress to an evening gown by adding black elegant pumps and keeping it current with casual wavy hairstyle. Styling in perfection.

Alternative electric blue dress:

• Click here to view more dresses for full hourglasses

• Click here to view more dresses by Dolce & Gabbana

Cheryl Cole styling to the launch of her new single ” Promise” was picture perfect. Cheryl ‘s black and white outfit contrasted her red hair colour without over powering it.  The bandage print tights and the sequined knickers gave her outfit the edge, the twist and the wow factor. The statement blazer and the laceup added elegance and personality.

• Cheryl bandage tights:

• Alternative black/white blazers:

• Click here to view more Blazers

Her nude long HMH (Hanna Marie Hutchinson) Couture gown, with cut-away side panels and a twist-knot front worked beautifully for her inverted triangle body shape and with her new found hair colour. It was also a nice break from her black and white dress choices.  Her make up and her de Grisogono earrings completed the whole look. The only thing which didn’t do it for me was the length of the dress. A shorter hemline would have balanced more the waist details and definiton.

• Click here to view more Maxi Dresses

Sunday it was back to a white shine silver one shoulder panel mini dress by Kristian Aadnevik. The one shoulder dress is not ideal for her shape, but she made work by having a slight a- line hemline and wearing her long hair down. All in all it doesn’t look bad or wrong, it is just more of the same outfit and colour choice. It would be nice to see her more versatile in her colour choices and looks. White dresses are best worn in summer and white outfits closer to Christmas. But her current hairstyle is one of her best.

• Click here to view more Mini Dresses

Rebecca Ferguson was channelling Jessica Rabbit for her Guilty Pleasure performance on Saturday. Her redfloor-length  one shoulder maxi dress by Hardy Amies Couture came with a with dramatic side-bustle. Again very wrong shape for a pear body shape. The side- bustle is sitting on her fullest part. The red colour in her dress and lipstick look great on her. But it should have stopped her. The red hair is too much and as Dannii Minouge said- it is ageing her.

• Alternative red one shoulder maxi dresses:

• Click here to view more one shoulder dresses

What were they thinking when they were dressing Treyc Cohen in rock-chick figure-hugging Izmaylov dress with exxagerated  feathered statement shoulders? They got the colour right and the idea of the right shape for her body shape but got it very wrong with the statement shoulders. You need a long lean neck in order to make it look balanced. Treyc neck is too short for this style and it makes her face look cramped inbetween the shoulders. Also her dress in the sing off on Sunday didn’t flatter her shape and her colouring.  The draping Grecian mini dress is creating unflattering volume and attention on her thighs and the they grey colour is washing her out.

• Alternative dress with statement shoulders:

Whether you are fan of Katie Waissel or not- her styling and outfit were perfect!Retro styling works best for her! Especially the style of the 1920 with their head pieces and shift, flapper dresses will work on her like a dream!

• Alternative retro dress:

• Click here to view more shrugs

Cher Lloyd stayed true to her style by keeping to a street ghetto look, which goes with her music and image.

Michaela

In order to make this love affair an ever lasting one, here are some key notes to remember the next time you going shopping:

• A jacket has to suit your dominant colour.
• It has to follow your body shape.
• It has to reflect your body size whether being tall, short, plus size or petite.
• The jacket has to be comfortable to wear- otherwise you won’t feel confident in it.

Here are some guide lines for each body shape on what to look for in a jacket:

Neat Hourglass: You are the most flexible one and therefore take advantage of any details and colours.

Full Hourglass: Focus on your curves and stay away away from any fuzz. Less is more here!

Apple: Avoid any volume and attention at your fullest point. Balance your fullest point with the top as well as with the bottom. Stay away from any double breasted styles.

Pear: Focus on attention, buzz and details on top. Choose Empire styles for best fit. Avoid hemline and pockets that finish on your hips.

Inverted Triangle: As always the rules are the complete opposite to a Pear. Keep the drama to your lower part. Avoid any shoulder details or cropt styles.Opt instead for boy fried jackets.

Rectangle: Main focus is to create the illusion of a waist. Cropt jackets or Empire styles are good as well as single breasted ones. But never ever choose a double breasted version. It will make you look boxy.

Lean Column: Add curves is your mantra. So look for shoulder pads, deep necklines, Empire or cropped styles . Single breasted styles are great as well double breasted as long as they are not too chunky and carry styles that will add curves to your shape. Avoid styles that are dead straight and make you longer and leaner.

Here are some guidelines for each body size what to look for in a jacket:

Petite: You are petite in your build. So, avoid any chunky styles and patterns. It will overpower your you.

Plus Size: Avoid fitted styles and too many details at your fullest part. Best are loose fitted styles.

Short: You have to elongate your height. Great are Empire styles as well as styles that keep details to the top.

Tall: You can afford to break your height with many patterns, details and colour blocks. Avoid styles that are solid in colour and have no features.

Click here to view all jackets on Joy of Clothes

Michaela

Here is 1 dress and 15 different outfits!

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Click here for more outfit options!

Michaela

Some tips how to wear it:

• Military jackets have to sit straight. So, great news for the flat chested women- especially the higher the neckline. Therefore women with a bust should pass on this one. The shoulder details like straps and buttons are great for women with a long neck but bad news for the ones with a short and/or wide  neck.  It is great for pears, neat hourglasses and lean columns. While apples and inverted triangle should stay away from this trend.
• Camouflage trousers or trousers with lots of zippers are fantastic for women who are tall have longs and small calves. These women can deal with all the details and additional volume to that part of the body. While short women, big thighs and big calves should never wear them.  Inverted triangle, neat hourglass, lean column, rectangle are best suited to pull these features off. While a pear shouldn’t wear it since it adds more volume to their already bigger lower half and it is too much clutter for an apple though most of them have good legs. Since they have more volume on top they have to opt for “quieter” loose fit on their lower half.
• Vests, jackets and coats can be single or double breasted. Double breasted are great for the small busted women while not at all for the ones who have a bigger bust.  In general a double breasted jacket is ideal for pears, neat hourglass, lean columns while single breasted for full hourglass, rectangles ( double breasted types will make them look even boxier!) and apple should always avoid any buttoning in their tummy area.
• The military trend comes mostly in nude, camouflage, white or blue colours. Clears and cools should opt for the navy and white options instead, while it will work great on the softs and warms.  Lights will be quite flexible on any of these colours while the deeps need to ensure that they wear a deeper colour near their face.

Click here for more products.

Have a nice day,

Michaela

New Designers to NET-A-PORTER

Our guide will help you find the perfect regime for your shape choose the right diet for your body shape!

• Inverted Triangle

Your build is characterised by:

• Straight and squared shoulder line
• Little definition between waist and hips
• Flat hips and bottom
• A bottom half that seems smaller than your top half

Advice

Doing a mixture of cardiovascular and resistance exercises will help. More resistance exercises on your lower body will be necessary, to obtain a balance between lower and upper.

Essential diet tips

• Stick to foods that are moderate in unsaturated fat – to avoid piling on the pounds – and high in calcium.
• Incorporate a balance of low G.I carbohydrates with lean proteins.

Essential exercise tips

• Lower body exercises like squats and lunges.
• Upper body toning exercise.
• Incorporate moderate to high amounts of cardiovascular exercise

• Lean Column

Your build is characterised by:

• Narrow shoulders
• Flat chest or small bust
• Small and non-defined waist
• Narrow hips and flat bottom

Advice

An exercise routine should include exercises to enhance gluteus and shoulder muscles. This will help curve out the shape of the body. Also do whole body

Essential diet tips

• Make sure you include plenty of lean protein, like fish and turkey; complex carbs, such as wholegrain rice and pasta; and calcium-rich foods, like yoghurt and tofu in your diet.
• Avoid carbonated soft drinks and cut down on starchy foods like white rice and potatoes.

Essential exercise tips

• No activity is off limits for your shape, but abdominal and back exercises should be high priority.
• Three days a week of formal exercise with lots of rest in between is ideal level.
• It’s important to exercise intensely and really tax the muscles during each workout in order to achieve good muscle tone.

• Rectangle

Your build is characterised by:

• Straight shoulder line
• Straight hips and bottom
• Very little waist definition
• Straight ribcage

Advice

Short fast bouts of cardiovascular exercises are recommended. High repetition resistance exercises may help tone and define shoulders, waist and hips.

Essential diet tips

• Eat a high protein diet to help muscle development. i.e fish, chicken, eggs and dairy products.
• Include RDA (recommended daily allowance) of omega 3 and 6, to help with joint suppleness during extra resistance training.

Essential exercise tips

• Upper body cardiovascular exercises will help define shoulders. Boxing training may help this as well as helping definition of the waist.
• Compound resistance training will help shape and strengthen of the middle part of the body.
• Exercises such as squats, deadlifts and pressing movements will help.

• Apple

Your build is characterised by:

• Rounded shoulder line
• Curved back
• Fullness around the middle
• Flattish bottom

Advice

Apples shapes should concentrate their exercise regimes on cardio activities to bring the body back to proportion by reducing upper body mass, while core- strengthening exercises will help to trim the waist further.

Essential diet tips

• Eat a moderate amount of healthy fats found in grains and oils, as well as lots of fruit and vegetables.
• Replace brown-coloured whole grain foods with smaller quantities of white.

Essential exercise tips

• Do high reps with low resistance for the upper body and high reps with moderate resistance for the lower body.
• Best exercises include step and spinning classes, racquet sports, abdominal crunches, kick-boxing and skipping.
• Worst exercises include all upper body exercises that involve using heavy weights.

• Pear

Your build is characterised by:

• Full hips or thighs
• A defined waist
• Shoulders that may slope and are narrower than your hips
• A top half that appears small

Advice

Doing cardiovascular exercises for quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteus for long durations will help. An example of this could be cycling or running. It would also help to do heavy resistance training on the upper body.

Essential diet tips

• Stick to foods that are low in fat – to avoid piling on the pounds – and high in calcium.
• Lower your salt intake to reduce water retention and cellulite in problem areas.

Essential exercise tips

• Use aerobic activities to slim your lower half and then strengthen the upper body with weights and resistance training.
• Best exercises include push-ups, chin-ups, leg lifts, jogging and dancing.
• Worst exercises include rollerblading, stepping and high resistance weights.

Neat hourglass

Your build is characterised by:

• A defined bust
• A defined waist
• A neat bottom
• Neat hips

Advice

Doing moderate to high intensity cardiovascular exercise will help tone the whole body. Carrying out resistance training at high reps and low weight will also help.

Essential diet tips

• Eat lean protein, such as skinless chicken breasts, and lots of leafy green vegetables, like spinach, broccoli and cabbage.
• Avoid foods high in sugar and limit your intake of eggs, dairy products and nuts.

Essential exercise tips

• Focus on losing weight and inches first with high reps and low resistance exercises, then slowly incorporate weights if you want.
• Best exercises for your shape include fast walking and slow jogging with no incline, jumping jacks, swimming for distance and stationary cycling with light resistance.
• Worst exercises include step and spin classes, leg presses and thigh machines on high resistance, weighted squats and lunges, and running or rollerblading on incline.

• Full Hourglass

Your build is characterised by:

• A full bust
• A small waist
• A rounded bottom
• Rounded hips

Advice

To help fat burning do interval training or circuit training. This will help burn excess fat around the body.

Essential diet tips

• Eat lean protein, such as skinless chicken breasts, and lots of leafy green vegetables, like spinach, broccoli and cabbage.
• Include lots of antioxidants and minerals to help break down fats within the body.

Essential exercise tips

• Use interval training and circuit training to help burn fats and tone up the whole body.
• Include exercises that help strengthen both lower and upper back.
• Include toning exercises like light resistance training for the whole body.

Click here for more advice

Have a nice day,

Michaela

P.S: Net- a- porter is now available on Joy of Clothes

Coco Chanel

Wearing a bright colour in your dress will enable you to wear it for daytime occasions, but also for evening engagements- you just have to combine the right accessories. Dress these coloured dresses up or down by wearing them with boots, flats or high heels or nude tights, coloured or patterned tights or with chunky necklaces and bracelets, or with hats or scarves or with a faux fur jacket or fancy dress coat. The choice is yours.

These dresses are great to add your signature style, by dressing them up or down or with your individual style and making them your own. Therefore they make great investment buys since you can create so many looks with them for different occasions and make them work as well in different seasons.

Have fun and experiment with colour, but since these dresses come as block colours you need to make sure you wear the right colours for your colouring, body shape and proportion. Colours bring the spotlight on you and the darker the colour the longer you will appear visually- and vis versa. But also bright colours are adding volume while darker shades are more slimming.

Dressing in the right colours is about creating balance and harmony between your own colouring and the colours you wear, in both clothes and make-up. Balance and harmony is achieved by wearing colours that have similar characteristics as our colouring so that the undertone, depth and clarity are in a similar range. It’s an easy way to look good, feel good and co-ordinate your wardrobe. Not only that but wearing the right colours can help you achieve a younger, healthier and groomed look.

Click here for more info wearing the right colours

• Know your dominant colour before choosing your dress in a rainbow colour

Click here for more info

• Know as well your body shape before you are choosing your favourite rainbow colour- otherwise you might be in for a bad surprise.

Click here for more info

Wearing your favourite colour and wearing the right colour for your colouring and body shape might not always be the same thing. Keep also in mind that little changes in your hair such as highlights or lowlights in your hair will affect your dominant colour. This means a colour that may have looked great in the past, now doesn’t work so well because your hair colour has changed or skin matured. So, don’t try to force it and try something new instead – embrace change rather than seeing it negatively. If there are colours that look great on you, but for one reason or another you don’t like the colour on you or at all, then just don’t wear it. As important as it is to wear the right colours, it’s also important to feel comfortable with the colour choice you are wearing.

Shop for more dresses in rainbow colours:

Also, this the last blog before Christmas.  We will be back with more blogs around the New Year! I am wishing you all a merry Christmas and a relaxing and happy time. All the best for the New Year- hopefully you will have a fantastic beginning.

Have a nice day,

Michaela

P.S:

Vivienne Westwood

You have your outfits for the occasions, but nothing that complements it with a perfect cover up! Masculine meets feminine in this glamorous season, so the focus is on the waist and shoulders. When choosing your cover up you have the choice from capelets to shrugs, cropped jackets, tuxedo, boyfriend jackets to faux – fur jacket.

But before choosing your cover up you have to decide whether it has a certain function to fulfil like covering big arms, tummy or deeper neckline, where it becomes automatically part of your outfit that you won’t take it off. If not, then you are more flexible in your choice, because its function is merely to cover you up when going from A to B.

Plus these cover ups are fantastic tools to bring out your personality, where you can create your own individual look and style. But before choosing know your body shape, so it follows your shape rather adding bulk to the wrong areas and giving an unflattering look.

Shop here for more cover ups

Have a nice day,

Michaela

P.S:

Hubert de Givenchy

The festive season is imminent and the big questions we all face are what do I wear? Do I have anything to wear? So many engagements to attend, but not enough outfits and dresses to wear. Can I spend all money just on clothes? So, let’s do some black magic and cast a spell on it ” how to create more outfits out of one”.

Top 3 Black Magic Rules:

• Think first of your body shape and then of your dress! It is all about virtual balance and something out of balance never looks good or flattering.
• Only because you manage to fit into a dress size don’t mistake it for the right fit. Keep the overall look in mind e.g. if you have big thighs and calves don’t even try to go for a mini dress. Choose instead a dress at or above the knee . Only wear it with thick and dark tights only if you don’t opt for a maxi or full length dress.
• A sexy look requires that you are comfortable in what you are wearing and you are accentuating what is the most flattering on you. Create a focus point e.g. bust, legs, back, waist, shoulders, arms or bottom.

Click here to find more black dresses

Once you have got your dress then start to accessorise! Again, choose your accessories carefully!

• Women with great legs:

• Women with a waist:

• Women with a  big bust:

• Women with a small bust:

• Women with big arms

Click here for more style advice

There are so many fantastic styles out there for everyone’s budget. And it is a great way to express your own style by making the dress your own with your own signature look.

Have a nice day,

Michaela

P.S:  Here are some gift ideas

Epictetus

Dating back to the late 1800s, the capelets developed from the traditional full cape cut off just past the shoulder to accommodate and accentuate women’s waists and hips.

More feminine tastes came to the fore in the early 1900s as sumptuous fabrics such as lace and fur were used so that the design became a more decorative piece.

In the 1920s delicately beaded, sheer capelets become more the trend for a slim, unfussy silhouette. The 1940s and 1950′ were more influenced by fur stoles.

This season all style types of capelets joint forces, so that the fashion landscape for capelets varies from beads to fur to collar to stole to cropped jackets to sequins to cashmere in classic or bright collars.

Capelets are transforming instantly any outfit and can be worn over a turtleneck jumper or blouse or dress. They are a fantastic cover ups for dressy events and festive seasons especially for strapless tops and dresses.

Some words of wisdom here:

• Triangles should avoid this fashion trend. It just accentuates their broader shoulders.
• Super for Pears to add volume to the top- no matter what you wear.
• They work beautifully for apples and full hourglasses, just make sure you don’t add clutter and volume to the bust and keep them cropped rather longer to the waist.
• Lean Columns and Rectangle should opt for rounder shapes around the bust line, so that add curves to their body shape.
• A fantastic way to cover up bigger arms, but avoid dropped or batman sleeves and make sure they cover you up to your elbow.

Shop here for more choices

Have a nice day,

Michaela

Here are some tips on how to wear it:

• Power shoulders need focus! Therefore wear it only with a defined waist. Otherwise your look will lose focus and you will end up looking wide.
• Power shoulders need an edge in your look otherwise you will look dated and it loses its cutting edge. Team it up e.g. with tailored pieces, or/ and statement skirt, leggings, tights, biker boots, ankle boots, biker boots, over the knee boots or add sophisticated accessories that underline and compliment the bolder shoulders rather bulking  them up.
• Power shoulders add width to you look and height, so visually it shortens you.  So, the rule is the shorter you are, she smaller your shoulder pads should be and also wear your look tone in tone. Only the tall ones  among us can afford bulky shoulders and breaking the colour at the same time by adding colour blocks to their look. So, to be safe wear always a heel with power shoulders.

Power shoulders are a blessing for almost all body shapes, because they create structure, shape and focus to your silhouette.

• Rectangle and  Columns

Bold shoulders will help them to create the illusion of a waist

• Apple and  full hourglass

Bold shoulders will give them a more clutter free silhouette and visually ” less  round”.

• Pear

A must trend for this body shape, because it is balancing effortlessly the lower half.

• Neat Houglass

This perfect proportioned silhouette can wear this trend as they like- the only think they have to keep in mind is their height.

• Inverted Triangle

This trend is a big no no for this body shape. Inverted Triangle have already broader shoulders and don’t need to enhance it any further. Stay clear of this style trend.

Shop more “power shoulders” items on Joy of Clothes.

Watch the fashion trend ” power shoulders” runway show summarised by net-a – porter:

Have a nice day,

Michaela