Mary Lou Andre

Fashion Q & A: Wearing Winter Hosiery Well Q: I love your book and website! Here’s my latest question: I own an upscale business in a conservative area. I try to look professional but don’t have to be too stuffy! I always wear skirts, never pants. Since traditional hose are “out”, in winter I usually wear black tights. Now I find that some outfits just don’t seem to look good with the tights. I have one skirt that is a dark teal color. For some reason it looks frumpier than my other clothes with the tights. (I do make sure to keep pencil skirts at a perfect knee length—that helps against frumpiness!) What else can I wear? I always wear black shoes because I have a fitting problem and my shoe choices are limited. Help! A: Great question for our January post as many women struggle with this same issue. Here are some tips: My first question for you is what are you topping the teal skirt off with? If it is a blouse or other lighter weight top, I can see how the tights would feel frumpy. The name of the game when choosing hosiery for any outfit is to connect them to the weight, style and color of your overall outfit. Tights can feel frumpy if the top half of your outfit is lighter in weight and/or color. Adding a sweater can often balance the weight of the tights. Alternatively, sheer, off-black hosiery with the teal skirt will give you a slightly lighter (and less frumpy!) look if you are wearing a lighter weight sweater or something like a shirt with a cardigan or pull-over sweater with the skirt. If you layer the look with a sweater, a black one will help balance black hosiery. Boots and tights with a teal skirt and heavier black sweater is a stylish look too. Heels can also combat feeling too frumpy in skirts. A suede pump with tights often does the trick for me. I have a great pair of suede, wedge heel booties that are my current go-to shoe for “de-frumping” skirts and dresses this time of year. Teal is such a great color and does play nicely off black in the winter months. As you move into spring, nude hosiery (and a nude or navy pump if you can find them to fit and flatter your feet and legs) will transition this color nicely if the fabric is not too heavy. Finally, on the topic of “traditional hose”: like you, many women believe they are “out” of style but they really are not. Calvin Klein, Donna Karan and Hanes are a few good companies that have perfected the color of their nudes and they look great when you want a natural look and the polish that hosiery provides. Our stylists Carolyn Lieberman and Sarah Zengo (pictured at right) are both wearing nude hosiery at an early spring benefit we hosted. I think you will agree that they both look great! While I personally wear tights most often in cool weather, I wear traditional hosiery year-round. In the summer, I sometimes need the formality that hosiery provides (speaking at conferences, etc.). Smoky gray and navy hosiery are both current winter favorites of mine. I have a brown and navy dress that is slightly shorter than I normally wear. Navy sheer hosiery and navy pumps look much nicer than nude hosiery with this outfit this time of year. The navy offers more coverage and connects both the hem of the dress and the shoes with my legs better. Last word: Experiment with all sorts of hosiery colors and textures by using the formula outlined above. Hosiery really can up your style quotient when incorporated effectively. Don’t dismiss it too quickly!

Fashion Q & A: Sport Jackets and Jeans Q: Is the sport-jacket-and-jeans look on its way out or in? A: It came and went and is now back again! The key to the look this time around is to be sure each component is casual and connected to the other. Opt for a blazer that is rugged as opposed to one that looks like it was borrowed from a suit. A crisp, dark wash jean looks sharp with a blazer and button down for casual Friday. Go with boots or shoes with a bit of an edge and shirts and sweaters that are less conservative than what you might pair with suiting. Last word: Don’t even think about a navy blue blazer with gold buttons paired with jeans!  

With its interactive component, our Dressing Well Blog has replaced our monthly Fashion Q&A postings. We are leaving this section of our site live so that you can have access to our Q&A archives. Each month we will feature a popular Q&A from the archives that is relevant to the season at hand. If you have something you want to know to help pull together your wardrobe with style and confidence, ask away! We are actively seeking to make our blog as interactive as possible and will be incorporating site visitor questions and comments.   Fashion Q & A: Shopping for Dress Shirts   Q: I’ll be shopping for dress shirts this weekend. I do not want to have custom shirts made so please do not suggest that! Any guidance as I head to the mall? A: We call dress shirts the centerpiece of male attire. When they fit, flatter your natural coloring and frame your face well, your style soars. Here are a few tips for shopping for dress shirts: Get MeasuredOver half the men we work with are wearing the wrong shirt size. Even if you think you’re in the correct size, get professionally measured–neck and sleeve–as a standard practice before investing in a new shirt wardrobe. You should be able to get two fingers between your neck and the collar. Tighter than that, and you’ll look uncomfortable and strained. And while you’ll certainly be more comfortable if the collar is loose, your professional presence will start to erode if the neck of your shirt is too big; you’ll look sloppy as opposed to crisp and polished. The shirt sleeve should cover the end of your wrist and extend about a half inch beyond a jacket sleeve. Like the collar of your shirt, you don’t want your sleeves to be too loose either. Play around with the buttons above the cuff, and choose to go a little tighter with the fit as opposed to too loose. Body Fit Matters TooPay attention to the fit of dress shirts through the body, too. Even if you’re not super slim, fitted dress shirts are the current style and can likely be sourced in your size. We have been very successful getting our male customers who are carrying weight through their mid-section into less boxy, more flattering shirts than they thought possible given their size. Many brands offer slim cut shirts for bigger men that truly fit. Best part: a slimmer cut shirt will visually take pounds off your frame without necessarily having to go to the gym! A slimmer cut shirt also sits better under today’s more trim-fit suiting. Wrinkle Free OptionsWhen you wear suits, we suggest wearing shirts that are 100% cotton. Partner with a reputable dry cleaner for laundering and professionally pressing them if you’re not good with an iron. In the Boston area, we recommend Anton’s Cleaners. Non-wrinkle fabrics are a good option if you work in a business casual setting and want to launder your shirts at home. The Details MatterWhile there is certainly a wide range of shirt collars to consider, a modest “spread” collar is an easy choice for most men as it works well with both tie and non-tie looks. The “button-down” collar is the most casual of all shirt collars. In our humble (smile!) opinion, it is slightly dated to wear it with a tie and formal suiting. Pair shirts with a button-down collar with jackets, sweaters, dress slacks, jeans and khakis and wear them on days when you don’t need a tie. The shirt sleeve cuff should be loose and extend to the end of your wrist. The cuff of your shirt should extend about half-an-inch beyond your jacket sleeve. Move Beyond WhiteWhen we shop with a client for dress shirts, we typically start with white. Blues in a variety of shades and patterns are a great first choice when adding color. Lavender (i.e. a light shade of purple) is our second favorite color to add as it looks as good with dark neutral suiting as blue does. We like certain shades of peach, yellow and tan, too, but find them a little more difficult to add as you want to be sure the tones work with individual coloring as well as core wardrobe basics – suits, jackets, pants and sweaters. Extra TipBefore you add any more dress shirts to your wardrobe, vow to ditch the ones that no longer fit, are stained, or are no longer needed – amen!

Would you please advise about current hosiery trends? For a while, traditional pantyhose have been unfashionable. Is that still true?