Neutral Colour Palette feat. Leopard Prints

First up, leopard prints, the prints that have taken 2019 by storm. And yet we’re already in 2020 and I’m here still talking about so-last-year. Want to know why? Because it’s hard for animal prints, particularly leopard prints, to go out of style. It has made itself a mainstay in the fashion industry and will be around pretty much through this new decade. Remember Lanvin? Yes, he made animal print the It print for seasons on end. Mad, awesome job there.

Since this bold print is going to be around for a long time, maybe even forever or as long as fashion remains…in fashion (pun so intended, please don’t mind me), there’s one style tip which you can apply to pretty much every outfit you wear, and that is wear accompanying clothes within the colour palette of said animal print. This makes your overall outfit look more pulled together and strong on its own.

Most typically, leopard prints come in neutral colours, a plus for a timeless look. Pair your leopard print item with a sturdy, grounded coat or blazer and you’ll be breezing through non-leopard print seasons without being pegged as a misguided fashionista. Besides, if you truly inspire to be one, you’d have a lot of work to do in the authenticity and individuality departments. Game on, girl, ‘cause that’s what fashion is about at its core.

Solid Colours & Structured Fabric feat. Vibrant, Straight Lines/Stripes

Once a while, you’d come across a really bold and vibrant, even moody, stripe pattern. But you’ll always walk past it, sighing at how lost you’d be if you were to own such a print. This print, structured and strong on its own, demanding attention even from the least fashion-concerned citizens, actually scares you. Perhaps because it holds its own right to power, to acquire power, and then empower the person who wears it. Maybe that’s why it scares you, because you don’t feel powerful enough to don it, to have that piece of garment give you the strength you need.

But listen here; I’ve found a simple solution for you to bag that self-pity and fear away. All you need are monochrome-coloured clothes that look solid to the eyes. There are many ways a piece of clothing can look solid, but the simplest would be to look for clothes with heavier, sturdier materials. Or materials that don’t wrinkle easily and doesn’t look drab to the eyes. This could make your overall outfit look dull (the drab-y clothes) and out of place (the drab-y clothes aka sloppy don’t complement the powerful stripes at all).

If you need just a little more push to complete the outfit, a pair of leather boots, heeled or not, in neutral colours, will do just that for you. One last ingredient: remember to bag that fear away and you’ll do great.

Hues feat. Patterned Knitwear

Due to the comfy and wintery image that knitwear conjures up, its colours are also pretty toned down, most of them coming in monochrome, neutral colours. Unless you’re shopping for brightly dyed knitwear in the hot and sweltering season of summer (which I’m not sure is a good idea considering you’d be trapping more heat underneath than necessary), you’d be likely directed to the aisle where you can find clothes in equally toned down colours. Just a note here: colours may be toned down, but they don’t have to be all neutral and earthy. You’d be glad to know that wintertime knitwear come in various colours because, let’s face it, fashion could never really be gotten rid of even when the temperatures drop below freezing point.

Now here’s the tricky part: how do you tell if a clothing colour fits your chosen knitwear? For me, I like to think as colours being “lit from within”. Imagine a lightbulb underneath a piece of clothing. Does the clothing look like it’s being lit from underneath by the imaginary lightbulb? If you think no, then you’re holding on to something that could potentially be paired with your knitted top. Or if the lightbulb doesn’t work for you, think if the fabric of the clothing you want to pair the knitwear with has an overcast or not. If it looks like there’s a shadow over the fabric, then you’re holding something you could wear with the toned down knitwear.

Apart from the above two methods, frequenting stores and familiarising yourself with the colours of clothing and learning how to decide intuitively if a piece of clothing fits your chosen knitted piece is the only other way to go.

Counter-balancing Neon Prints

Because neon prints are, needless to say, bold and screams “Look at me!”, you may find it daunting to wear such a piece, maybe because you don’t know if you have what it takes to pull off such a piece of clothing. My job here is not to only tell you that it’s easy and can be done, I’m also here to tell you that you might need just a bit of tweaking to your clothing choices and your mindset so that you can build self-confidence along the way (even if it’s the humble, silently self-assuring type of self-confidence and not the loud, go-getter sort of self-confidence).

But to achieve anything self-confident, one needs a strong base to ground oneself in. And where neon prints come in, a counter-balance follows—and that’s how I’m going to help you.

To create that counter-balance that you might need when donning a loud, neon print (unless you really want the neon to be the theme of your outfit), start by looking for a piece of clothing with a good solid structure that should also preferably come in a monochrome colour, and this colour should also preferably be a colour that is already present in the neon print, just so you have a colour to ground the piece of clothing acting as the counter-balance. Pair it with the neon print and you’ll easily find yourself with a starting point to a new outfit you might not have thought of before. Not only that, you also easily elevated the potential of both pieces through this dynamic pairing.