Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men (24 page)

3. Re-examine the dictum, “Wear only what’s best for your figure forever and ever. Never mind what fashion is decreeing.”

If you have potato-puff hips and a large stomach, it’s true you’d better stick with your best style, which is undoubtedly a tent But if you have a young body, there is practically no new fashion you can’t embrace some version of, and that’s the truth! Why miss out on this very female kind of fun?

The current easy fit with blouson top does
nothing
for my 23-inch waist. I’ll gladly show off my waist four days a week, thank you, but on the fifth I’ll look new and fashiony in the blouson.

Don’t men
loathe
high fashion? Do you hear many complaints about Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Ferrer or the Monacan princess? Fashion addicts all. If your most pooh-pooh-to-it boy friend were to chat with any of the ten best-dressed women in the world, he would probably be so charmed by their
effect
he wouldn’t realize he was face to face with
haute couture.

The girls who offend are those who go high-fashion without taste, and those girls could set your teeth on edge in a Mother Hubbard.

Teen-age girls are nutty about boys, aren’t they? Do you find
them
clinging defensively to last year’s checked ballerina? They can’t
wait
to get into what’s new and sizzling
this
year … and please
men
!

4. Copycat a mentor with better taste than yours. I copycatted the West Coast editors of
Glamour
and
Vogue
for years. I didn’t buy so much as a hatpin without asking myself if it was a hatpin they would buy. Was this spineless? I think it was the smartest move I ever made. When I was just pulling out of the artificial flower stage, these girls had stabilized beautiful taste. I don’t know where they got it, but they had it. Someone like this can inspire you and keep you on the track.

5. Don’t just admire …
study
beautifully gowned women. You’re at an advantage as a single woman because you probably get to more restaurants and theatres. Figure out
why
a particular stunner knocks you out. Is it her hair? Her cyclamen matte jersey dress (everybody else is in black!)? Her pin—a huge white cameo? It’s
everything!
Make notes.

For years I’ve studied the fabulous creatures who stroll Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue. They still make me feel like a country girl every time I visit New York no matter
how
I plan, but
one of these days I’m going to discover the secret
!

6.
Listen
when people tell you something is wrong. You may even listen to men! Most friends are extremely tactful, and your plastic spring-o-lator pumps must
really
be getting on their nerves if they bring the subject up. (Families are something else and sometimes seem to be trying to asphyxiate your image instead of improve it. When they criticize, check a second source.)

Friends told me for years I might just do something about my
hair
(even after the flowers went). My hair to me was casual, sexy, even glamorous. To them it was Australian Bushman! I finally saw it their way and have kept it tamed and combed for quite some time now.

Yesterday, at the beauty shop, I watched a young blonde getting ready to leave. Her dress had a purple skirt, lavender-checked top with big puff sleeves, white cummerbund, artificial flowers pinned on, etcetera, etcetera, but she might possibly have gotten away with it because she was young and her hair was beautiful and neat. Then before my eyes she took a heavy gold necklace with double-fringed medallions out of her purse and put
that
on. Then she reached in and pulled out two matching gold bracelets and put
them
on. I was swooning in my oilcloth wrapper! I
twitched
to go over and take the jewelry off her, but there are laws which govern ladies in beauty shops. Someday somebody
is
going to tell her about the jewelry. And I hope she listens.

7. Get acquainted with good clothes even if you can’t afford them. It will teach you what to look for in cheaper ones. At least twice a year get all dressed up and beard the lionesses in their French Rooms and Designer Rooms. Ask to see what you are actually interested in at the time—black dress, pink coat, beige suit. You’re on your own as to how you get out of there without buying. Visit these salons at sale time too. The confusion will be greater, and you can browse.

8. Study the best store windows. Gape, gaze and drink in.

9. Attend good fashion shows and gape and gaze some more. The major stores in your city usually have several a year. Check with a buyer to see when.

Buying

1. Don’t buy
anything
… not so much as a garter belt … you don’t
adore.
Everything in your wardrobe must be important in its way,
especially
if you’re on a budget. Yes, this could very easily mean
fewer
clothes!

If a dress doesn’t thrill you initially, the chances of its lifting your spirits in six months are practically nil.

How often do you
buy
a bulky white sweater … a pure silk shirt? Why not save up and make it
the
bulky sweater …
the
shirt?

2. Never buy anything because you
ought.
If you find a good black coat that will go with everything, is reasonably priced, conservative, can double as a raincoat, will be good five years from now but bores the daylights out of you, skip it. Somewhere there is a black coat with most of these virtues that will make you feel like a princess,
FIND THAT COAT!

Give each purchase the acid test. Ask yourself if it cost one dollar, five dollars or ten dollars more (depending on its classification), would you still want it? If the answer is no, price is influencing you too much; and you aren’t mad enough for it.

Some of my girl friends bring back their two-dollar blouses and shoes from the sales with the comment, “For two dollars how could you go
wrong
?”

My notion is, “For two dollars how could you go
right
?”

3. Shop where you can return without embarrassment. Many women are in love with their decisiveness and claim never to have taken a purchase back in their lives. Bully for them! I’ll bet their closets contain more boo boos than mine do.

If there’s any doubt in the cold light of your bathroom mirror about a garment’s glow power, back with it! Store mirrors can be liars!

4. “Embrace” the manufacturer whose clothes consistently do nice things for you. If you don’t see labels, ask the sales girl whose is what.

I discovered Anne Klein’s Junior Sophisticates years ago when they were out of my price range, but I still managed to squeeze in a few every year. These chic, sleek junior dresses were always ego-lifting.

Trusting a manufacturer’s taste doesn’t mean
you
haven’t got any. It’s just another safety factor when you can’t afford $$$$$ mistakes.

My favorite dresses now are by Walter Bass or come from Jax. Jax also has stores in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Palm Beach. One Jax dress can speed up a flirtation by several weeks or more. How anyone can put so much good taste and sex appeal into one garment is astonishing!

5. Make a store
your
store. Pick one out—it may also be a trifle over your head price-wise—whose merchandise you trust and have fabulous luck with. Buy everything you can afford to there. Yes, you may attend sales!

6. Shop in large-volume, low-overhead stores, too-Ohrbach’s, for example—but use caution. Lots of chaff among that wheat.

7. Don’t pay too much or too little. If your salary is $350 a month, no $200 coat in the world could be worth the sacrifice in shoes and underwear. If you pay too
little
, you can’t wow even a rubber plant.

One of my good friends recently bought a navy wool suit for $33. It is a knock-down of a knock-down, cute but classless. It will never do anything to help her image, which I’m sure is that of a beautifully dressed career woman. This girl makes a pile of dough. For something as basic as a navy blue suit, which could go on and on like a fur coat, I can’t think what she’s doing with this little number.

8. Pay most for clothes you wear most … your suits, your coats and classic cocktail dresses. I have worn a black Jax sheath ($89) every two weeks for about two and a half years. (Of course, I live with a slinky-black fiend; maybe you wouldn’t use this kind of dress that much.) Anyway, it has figured out at about 68 cents a wearing plus upkeep, and that’s pretty good.

9. Buy one complete outfit each fall-winter, spring-summer season—a good suit or dress, plus shoes, bag, coat and a hat if you wear one. You can never wind up with a closetful of fluff and nothing to look fabulous in. This year’s two major outfits then become next year’s second outfits, and you gradually build an excellent wardrobe.

10. Stick to one or two colors in shoes and bags while you’re budgeting. This is a stuffy rule, I know, but girls can get so hopelessly loused up trying to have shoes and purses in all colors of the rainbow. Everything reeks cheap.

At this moment I own three pairs of plain black leather pumps that alternate all winter, some black beaded evening slippers, one pair of flats. In summer I switch around three pairs of black patent and one pair of bone pumps. Finish.

The cheaper the shoe, the simpler the cut should be. (I can’t stand pippy-poo things on
any
shoes.)

My one good black leather purse goes to work
every single day
all winter. So could yours! (Or your brown or navy one.) For summer I alternate a bone and a patent bag. All right, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have a handsome straw basket and one lovely pair of striped-silk shoes; but, if that basket has seashells and flowers on it, you and I have had it.

And no white shoes with dark dresses. Okay?

11. Spend brain units instead of dollars for the once-in-a-lifetime, big-occasion dress. Even if it’s the Embassy Ball and you are going with the President of Tanganyika, a wear-it-once dress sopping up a hundred clothes dollars is
madness
! Try to borrow a gown, or remake one, or create a creation out of thirty yards of cheesecloth! Who cares if it falls apart the minute you get home.

You could haunt sales for
this
item too. Try for the third mark-down on a mark-down.

12. Keep only a small basic glove inventory. Gloves can’t make your taste reputation.

As for cheap jewelry, a few blue and green plastic bracelets (15 cents each) can be stunning. So can clumpy orange beads and shocking pink ones (a couple of bucks). But junk-jewelry fanciers are so weak-willed! Just one more bracelet and a few more beads, and first thing you know every Ubangi in town is in a jealous snit.

None of that little-bitty, teeny-tiny stuff like grandmothers give baby granddaughters either. You’re a grown female. What jewelry you wear should be important.

13. Wear lots of your best shade. Cosmetics can make you look
better
whatever your
worst
color is, but there’s nothing like
your
color to make a man get the I-want-you’s. A wealthy redhead I know doesn’t
own
anything but blue, and her
house
is
too,
from cellar to dome.

Make absolutely certain you aren’t missing a glorious color out of prejudice. You might get an outside opinion on whether it’s for you.

14. Don’t buy the dotted swiss that takes an hour to iron unless you solemnly swear to
iron
it, and
often—
after you’ve washed it, of course. Slightly “had-it” summer cottons are the
worst.
And the most delish when fresh.

Love yourself enough to wear clean lingerie every day even if it isn’t ironed. Some young ladies have absolutely gray-looking bras. Take a bath or shower every day while you’re at it. Could it hurt?

After you’ve absorbed all these taste rules, add some vervy and reckless ones of your own. That’s what makes it
your
taste—and what makes
you
exciting.

I Made It Myself

Learn to sew! (I already
know
how, of course, because I’m so smart and because my mother started teaching me when I was very young.)

Buy a bone-simple pattern like for a muu muu, some 49-cent cotton and let one of your sewing friends help you at first.

Don’t tackle major items that need tailoring until you’re an ace, which may be
never!
Do swing with your Singer for a splashy print silk Hopi coat, floor-length at-home skirt, five-yards-long evening stole.

I Made It
FIT
Myself

Far more important than
making
your clothes is making them
fit.

The waist seam below the belt, the “narrow” skirt that’s miles wide at the bottom are telltale signs of a chic-bleak dresser.

Doing your own alterations can save you a hundred thousand dollars if you’re like me and can’t buy a garment that doesn’t need
something.
(Some manufacturer some day is going to make dresses for swayback girls.)

Maybe you’d like to have a sewing circle! About every six weeks several girls from my office and I round up all our clothes that need altering, and we gossip and sew for an evening. Isn’t that jolly?

If you don’t sew, or even if you do, you’ll want a good alteration woman to tackle major adjustments. I wouldn’t tell
anybody
mine because I don’t want her finding out how much Saks charges to put up a hem. I hope you can find a Mrs. Linnes too.

Don’t be afraid to alter spanking new garments if they can be made more
you.
Rip off the buttons. Cancel the bows! Make a new ribbon sash. My jewel has just taken the big pleats out of two inexpensive wool dresses and shirred them all about the waist, so they look more expensive, custom-made.

Take inventory of your clothes often to see what needs bringing up to date. Try everything on. Fantastic how you can turn your back only a minute, and the zip is gone! Maybe you’ll crop the sleeves. Or erase the collar. Good stuff will alter again and again. Some of my Walter Bass and Jax dresses have had the hems up and down five times.