← Her Style Podcast | Shopping, Color Palettes, Fashion, Wardrobe, Outfits, Clothing
Her Style Podcast | Shopping, Color Palettes, Fashion, Wardrobe, Outfits, Clothing
252 | July Q&A - Adding Sophisticated Fun to Your Outfits, the Best Online Shopping Search Terms to Find What You Want, and More!
00:20:36
Today’s Q&A round-up is going to be a fun and jam-packed one! We are covering a whopping 6 questions on a range of topics from adding personality to your outfits without looking juvenile to the best type of self-tanner, shopping terms to find...
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- [00:00]
Heather Riggs
Today's Q and A roundup is going to be a fun and jam packed one. We are covering a whopping six questions on a range of topics from adding personality to your outfits without looking juvenile, to the best type of self tanner shopping terms to find what you're looking for online, and finding low rise shorts in a high rise world, and so much more. Maybe it's because we're only doing these Q and A episodes monthly now, but they feel so special to me and I get really excited when we turn the page on the calendar and I get to support you with your top shopping and styling challenges right here on the show. I do not take it lightly that you put your trust in me to answer these questions. And we have a lot to talk about today, so let's dive right into our July listener Q and A. Welcome to her style podcast where we're all about empowering you to show up and get dressed every day with confidence. I'm your host, Heather Riggs, a 15 year and counting certified image consultant and color specialist. Ready to build a wardrobe and a personal style you love. Let's get started.
- [01:16]
Jeannie
Hi, Heather, this is Jeannie in Minnesota. My three style words are fun, polished and current. And sometimes I just really struggle with the fun fun because I want to implement something that just adds a little spark to my outfit, but I don't want it to feel juvenile. Can you help me think of some different ways to add fun to my everyday outfits? Thank you.
- [01:41]
Heather Riggs
Okay, Jeanne, you get to go first, friend, because you were our only audio submission this month, which you might know is my absolute favorite way to hear from you. So I want to thank you for taking the time to record your question and your sweet voice for us to air on the podcast. And, and I will say this is definitely a fun question, for lack of a better word. And I think the first thing that I wanna encourage you to do is better define what fun means to you. That is such an awesome style word to incorporate, but I want you to take a deep dive and really unpack what elements excite you most. Is it color, pattern, texture, eye catching, accessories? It could be all of those things or it could just be a couple. Maybe it's something else. But I want you to think about what feels exciting for you to incorporate into your outfits and then we'll solve for the execution. But it's clear to me that you want to bring in an element of elevated playfulness, whatever that looks like. So first, get clear on some ideas of what kinds of things you would love to bring into your outfits. And then my guess is that balancing the fun with the sophistication is going to be the most important thing for you. So you might think about doing a bold color but in a really classic silhouette, or adding some creative accessories with an otherwise very polished outfit. I would also say it might be helpful to experiment with just one unique piece or element at a time. So maybe you want to try an unexpected color pairing or some unique textures or adding a statement piece to your outfit, like a fun shoe or a unique piece of jewelry. The key again is to just try by dabbling with one playful element at a time, partly to keep you from going overboard, but also to help prevent you moving into the juvenile territory. Now, I am not big on following influencers, but I also would recommend that you explore a couple of fashion icons just to give you some ideas and get those creative juices flowing. I had a few people that immediately came to mind for you, so I jotted down a quick list of resources that I think would be a helpful place to start. So the first one is Olympia Gayo. She is the Creative Director for J. Crew. She has a really fun style. She uses a lot of bright colors, colors, interesting textures, creative silhouettes. So I would definitely check her out, but she always looks really elegant. All of the people that I'm about to give you to research I think really encompass a lot of the words that you had used and kind of that elevated playfulness feel that you're going for. So I would also check ami Song, Tamu McPherson and Grease Ghanim. They're just a few names to help again get your creative juices flowing. I think they do all have sophisticated yet quite playful styles and I hope that they inspire you to just go for it. Okay, our next question for today's episode comes from Tanya. She said, I'm a 48 year old woman, I live in Finland and I have enjoyed listening to your podcast this spring. It is very inspiring and now I'm wondering if you could help me. I'm trying to find a versatile dress, like a little black dress, but I don't know what kind of dress would be flattering on me. I am quite slim and small chested and my shoulders are narrower than my hips. From the front it looks like I have a waist but my side profile is very straight. I'm quite insecure about my body and would like my waist to be more defined. My style is mostly casual and natural. I like clothes to feel comfortable. I would like to find a dress that I could style up or down. Many thanks in advance and have a lovely summer. Well, Tanya, thank you for listening. All the way from Finland. That is so cool. And I think it's amazing that this podcast enables me to connect with women like you all over the world. I'm very grateful for that. And your features sound a lot like mine, so I can relate to what you're saying. And I love that you want to find your best version of a little black dress or a versatile option that you can dress up or down and wear absolutely anywhere. So I would recommend looking for dresses with a defined waistline or adjustable belt. I think a slight a line skirt to help balance your hips would be very flattering, maybe with some draping or some gathered fabric to create the illusion of more curvature from the side view. Now, I'm not entirely sure of your personal style. I know that you did say that you like casual, natural looks, so I would probably recommend that you think of trying a fit and flare dress with some structured seams. I think that would look absolutely gorgeous on your figure. It may be a little bit more classic in nature, but I do think it's kind of a timeless style. So it's going to give you that versatile element that you're looking for. Kind of your quintessential little black dress because it will always be in style and you could easily dress it down with sandals for the summer or you could dress it up with a beautiful heel for a special occasion. And if you don't love the idea of a fit and flare dress, you could also look at a wrap dress or maybe a shirt dress that either comes with a belted waist or you could add a belt to the dress as well just to again kind of help to better define your midsection as a fellow triangle shape. I also love dresses that have a puffed sleeve sleeve or that come off the shoulder, especially if you're looking for summertime. I think that could be a really great neckline. Or you could try a boat neckline again if you want kind of a more Grace Kelly classic sort of style dress that will really help to broaden the appearance of your shoulders. And finally, I will just say you didn't ask for any color advice, but I would not feel pigeonholed into black. You could choose any of your best colors or another neutral like navy or charcoal gray. I want you to consider what brings out your best. So I hope that this gives you a good starting point point and some parameters to keep in mind for your search, but let me know what you end up with. Tanya, I would absolutely love to see. All right, moving on to our third question. Allison dropped this one into our free Her Style community on Facebook. If you're not in there already, I would love for you to join us. You can find it@herstylellc.com community and Allison wrote and said I love your podcast and was hoping you might be able to answer my skin related question on your next episode. During the year I use a light coverage foundation on my face, but in the summer rather than go the foundation route, I prefer to be a little more natural. I always use self tanner on my body, but when it comes to my face, is it better to use a face self tanner or a tinted moisturizer? I'm wondering about the pros and cons of each and the best ways to use them. Thanks for any advice Alison. I'm super flattered that you would ask me this question because I am admittedly not a makeup or beauty expert. But you know that I love makeup and I am a Jersey girl and we know all about the faux glow and I'm sort of kidding, but I have dabbled with self tanners and tinted moisturizers in my day. Not to mention the horrible tanning beds that we did back in, oh gosh, probably the early 2000s before any special dance at school and that kind of thing. But I am just going to speak to my own experience and what I would do if I were you. So take this with a grain of salt because it's not exactly my zone of genius, but I definitely don't want to leave you hanging on this. Great question. So just please do what feels best for you always. But what I would do is actually a combination of those two things. I think that you could use a self tanner maybe once a week or so and then apply a sheer tinted SPF just to make sure that you have a nice even tone and glow. But rather than a traditional self tanner for your face, I would suggest looking into self tanning face drops. These are pretty awesome because you're just going to add a couple of drops to your normal tinted moisturizer and it's going to deepen your complexion within a few hours and last for several days to a full week. They are completely customizable. You can add as little or as many drops as you want so you can experiment with the right amount to get the level of bronzing that you want and then on a day to day basis you can just use a touch of your tinted moisturizer or you can forego it altogether without having to worry about your face looking significantly lighter than your body. So for that reason alone I'd probably recommend trying a few of the self Tanning face drops or whatever Self face tanner feels good for you just so that you don't have to worry about a big drastic difference between your face and your body. But I do want to give you a couple product recommendations. These are really well rated so I would check out Luxe Unfiltered's number two number 12 sorry, number 12 bronzing face drops. Let me say it again. Luxe Unfiltered's number 12 Bronzing Face Drops or Isle of Paradise's Self Tan Face Drops. These are again very well rated products and either way, I would love to hear how it works out for you if you decide to give this a try. Okay, next up in the queue is a question from our sweet friend Annette, who is currently in her style collective with us. And she posted a question in our free Her Style community again that I know is going to benefit everyone, so I'm very happy to answer it right here on the podcast. And Annette asked Do you have suggestions on how to word your search criteria in Pinterest when you're looking for something specific? For example, I would like to find a scarf to wear in my hair with my best color coral and a touch of cream and green. I prefer abstract or floral type prints, but it's in my hair so it's not going to be that prominent. I I'm not coming up with anything. And again, this is a really good question, Annette. I know a lot of people struggle to find exactly what they want, especially when they're shopping online and there are so many options and at the same time sometimes no options that fit exactly what we're looking for. So my first tip for you is don't do your shopping searches in Pinterest. It is a fantastic platform. You know I'm obsessed with Pinterest, but there are definitely some limitations with the search feature and and you will probably find a lot of images that were shared throughout the history of Pinterest's existence. So there's no guarantee that what you find is currently for sale. They do have a shopping feature and you can absolutely look there, but I prefer using Google for shopping specific searches. Pinterest is awesome for gathering inspiration, but I personally like shopping through Google better when you're ready to start your hunt. So I love that you are crystal clear on what you want and I agree that it's a good idea to start with all of the terms that you're looking for. I would begin by typing in coral, cream and green hairscarf and just see what comes up. It sounds like you maybe have already done that, so if you don't see enough results or anything that you love in that initial search, then you can try broadening it a little bit. Maybe just search coral and cream hair scarf because you might still find something with a touch of green as well. And if you see still don't see any amazing results, then just try searching coral hair scarf. Alternatively, you could eliminate the specific color criteria and try searching best hair scarves or maybe best hair scarves under whatever your max budget is and then see what general brands and products come up. Then you could just do a deeper dive by store. For example, I know Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Revolve, Urban Outfitters and even Etsy have some really nice options so you could just browse their current collection and within those stores probably even filter by color from there. Now I will say of course I did this search for you and I found a bunch of beautiful options from Anthropologie through a quick search on coral and cream hair scarf. So you definitely might want to check there. Annette and of course we're happy to team up with you on finding the perfect hair scarf or scarves inside the collective so we can definitely continue the hunt together in our private community as well. But I hope that this gets you unstuck for now and gives everybody a little guidance on where start to searching for whatever's upcoming on your shopping list for the season. All right, the next listener question was from our friend Alana who wrote any tips on where to find basic jean shorts that are mostly cotton or at least not half polyester at a mid to low rise. I'm very tall and have a long torso and even so, all the pants these days are so high rise I feel like they're trying to sit under my boobs. Also small and rectangular shape. I also don't have much of a rear end and higher waist. Flatten my rear more and I find them uncomfortable on my stomach. Walked into madewell the other day and didn't even bother trying since I could tell by the super long zippers that they were all way too high. I know it's the style but do they still make regular shorts? Alana, I know this is definitely a challenge right now for so many of my clients, but there are some brands that still offer mid to low rise cotton denim. They are out there. I'm going to help you find some options today And I know the thought of low rise might scare you, but what I have found is that low rise is sometimes the new mid rise, so it's definitely worth exploring. I wouldn't shy away from searching for low rise altogether. If you are on the hunt for a true mid rise, there's a very good chance you're going to find something within that ballpark under the low rise and or mid rise umbrellas. So I will say I know that Levi's, Abercrombie, Agolde, J. Crew, Gap and Wrangler all offer mid rise shorts. This list is probably not exhaustive, but it's just a few that came to top of mind that I wanted to point out for you. And you can filter your search by rise when you're looking on their websites. So I would probably look for a 7 to 9 inch rise and you might also check Google as we just said, using the keywords mid rise 100% cotton shorts women. That's exactly what I would type in to see if there are some other viable options that come up for you. There's probably going to be some high rises sneak in there, so don't get discouraged. Just make sure that you are looking at the product descriptions to see what the actual rise length is. If you have a pair of shorts that you love, no matter how old, I would check the rise on there just so you can make sure that you get something pretty close to what you know works well for your body. So again I would try searching the keywords mid rise 100% cotton shorts women or check any of the brands that I mentioned and look at their mid or even low rise selection. And just as one more quick suggestion, I just shared this on one of our recent group coaching calls inside Her Style Collective. If there is a piece of information like the rise measurement missing in a product description online, I always think that it's worth it to pick up the phone or hop over to the support chat if they have one and ask the company to check for you. You could also look at the reviews of course, because people are usually very quick to comment if something is labeled as mid or low rise but are actually quite a bit longer. But you can also contact the company and ask for more information. I think it's definitely worth taking that extra step to save yourself the headache of having to make a return later on and and if they don't have that information available, I think it's really good feedback to the store that that is something that people are interested in learning. So hopefully that's something they would consider adding to product descriptions moving forward. So good luck on your search. Alana, let us know what you land on. We would love to hear if you want to follow up in our free hairstyle community over on Facebook and today's final question. Wow. I cannot believe we are only 17 minutes in and we're already getting to our last question. Sorry if I was talking a mile a minute. I had to get through all of these good ones today. But our final question was so submitted by Sweetmelissa and she very honestly said I'm 52 and tired of wearing bras. Although I have large breasts, I am physically comfortable going braless but I worry that I won't be looked at professionally in my career. I work in a client facing finance career. I hate the uniboob look that sports bras give me. So how can I marry being a braless hippie with being taken seriously as a professional? And Melissa friend, you want to look into nudie spelled N U u D I I because their whole thing is offering options that are in between a bra and braless and I think that their products could be a perfect compromise for you to feel professional yet liberated at the office. However, if even that feels like too much for you, you could also try doing some strategic layering. Maybe you want to pair a camisole that has some built in support and with a structured blazer over top. Or you could look for blouses that have some draping or texture like knits or some looser fitted pieces. Or you can also try a couple of undergarment hacks like reusable nipple covers or disposable no show concealers just to keep things feeling nice and PG in the workplace. Either way, remember that your confidence speaks volumes, so I hope that you can find the perfect balance that makes you feel both comfortable and confident in front of your clients. All right, that wraps up our July Q and A. I want to thank Jeannie, Tanya, Allison, Annette, Alana and Melissa for providing this excellent batch of questions. And friend, if you have a big challenge or any topic that I haven't covered or that you want me to dive deeper into in a future episode, please head to herstylellc.com podcast and do what Jeannie did. Leave me a quick voice memo using the Speak Pipe plugin. Just look for the cute little orange button and click record. Or of course you are also welcome to send your question in via email to supportherstylellc.com or post it inside of our free Facebook community, which you can join again@herstylellc.com community I've had the best time hanging out with you today. I hope that you learned something useful in this Q and A episode and I will look forward to answering your question in the next one. If you're listening in from the United States, I hope that you have an absolutely fabulous holiday weekend. Happy Independence Day to you, my friend, and wherever you are in the world. Thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to seeing you back here soon for another episode. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you want to stop copying everyone else's style and start dialing in your own swoon worthy signature look, head over to take my free 5 minute personal style quiz which you can find at the link in the show notes. If you've enjoyed our time together, please be sure to rate, review and subscribe to her style podcast so you never miss an episode. Finally, I invite you to make this a two way conversation and send me a DM over on Instagram eatherriggstyle to let me know how I can best support you on your style journey. I'm always here for you in style and service. Until next time.