Fashion Forecast
meet with new clients for the first time, I ask them to share with me names of people whose style they admire. Think about someone whose style you are drawn to. This can be someone famous or someone in your own community. Some well known style setters of yesterday include Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Faye Dunaway, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Diana Ross, Ali MacGraw, Bianca Jagger, Diane Keaton, Debbie Harry and Madonna. From movie stars to billionaire descendants, there are a number of style setters of today whose style I admire for different reasons. Kate Moss, Kate Middleton, Ines de La Fressange, Jennifer Aniston, Nichole Richie, Jennifer Lopez, Olivia Palermo, Michelle Obama, Sara Jessica Parker, Alexa Chung and Daphne Guinness to name a few. If you don’t know who some of these leading ladies are, look them up. They will give you great inspiration. The reason these women are considered trendsetters for the fashionably advanced is because they all have a signature style. Jackie Kennedy consistently donned a well-coiffed brunette bob, often topped with a pill box hat or draped with a scarf affixed at the nape of her neck. She almost always could be found wearing a matching dress and coat of the same length, or Capri pants and flats, pearls and oversized round sunglasses. She became a trendsetter for her
exposed shoulders. What was once a fashion faux-pas in the ’60s quickly became a fashion must. She knew what she liked, and she wore it with confidence and grace. Young mom Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, turns heads across the world with her preferred attire consisting of bright solids, beautiful tailoring and neat and structured silhouettes. Kate’s look is always complete with pumps, wedges or flats, simple jewelry, clutch in hand and her signature glossy cascading brunette locks. She masterfully stays on point with the conservative appearance expected of a senior royal, though anything but dowdy. I tend to dress the part of wherever I’m going, and because I have small children and am more often rushing to get somewhere than not, I want to be comfortable and able to move with agility. My quick and easy prescription for doing that, with a sense of style, is my cowgirl boots! They easily dress an outfit up or down, they’re cute and not everyone wears them. I throw on understated but interesting pieces of jewelry, and voila! A signature look is born. When I’m with a client or in the field, on the town for date night with my husband or out with my girlfriends, I always put my best foot forward. People notice. There is nothing like a woman with good style. Not everyone has the means to buy the designer threads of a First Lady or Duchess, but we are all capable of achieving a personal sense of style, putting ourselves together or simply looking like we made the effort.
Whitley Adkins Hamlin Whitley Adkins Hamlin is a wardrobe stylist specializing in personal, editorial and commercial work, and the author of the fashion blog, the Queen City Style (www.thequeencitystyle.com). The granddaughter and great granddaughter of wardrobe stylists, Whitley has been exposed to, and collected, one of a kind wardrobe pieces since she was a young girl. As a result, Whitley both learned and taught herself the art of cultivating one of a kind looks she passes onto her clients. In her free time, Whitley is an avid runner who loves spending time with her husband and two young boys, cooking and entertaining and redecorating her house until there is nothing left to redecorate (which is never, ha!).
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