How to Avoid Looking Like a Cougar

26th June, 2009

cougar-np

NP Girls of all ages can be overwhelmed by the prospect of putting together age and location appropriate outfits that reflect the current fashions.

The lines are blurred and we are as terrified of looking like our mothers as they are of being mistaken for us from behind.

Herewith a few tips for all ages:

1. Create a personal profile in your mind of who you are and what you stand for and always stay true to that image. Ask a good friend to describe your style and see if you’re projecting what you intend.

2. Envision the occasion at which an outfit will be worn. Run through the demographic of other attendees and decide whether your clothing would blend in or stand out- in a bad way.

3. Stay away from the most attention getting get-ups. Avoid loud patterns and colors that can easily strike the wrong chord and will be remembered vividly impairing your ability to wear again with the same group.

4. No matter how toned and fit your body, don’t overexpose it other than when you are seriously clubbing, or lounging poolside in Martinique.

5. Consider even perhaps appropriately bare areas and ask yourself honestly if anyone else wants to look at them. Even if skin is twenty and taut large expanses of it may not be the most appealing at the dinner table.

6. At some level ask yourself if you look your age. Today that should mean look REALLY good for your age, but not as though you’re trying to look a decade younger, or older and more sophisticated. It’s just as much of a turn off to see a fifty year old woman wearing Uggs as it is to see a twenty year old wearing St. John.

7. Research the prevailing color palette and style of a given area when traveling. While this is no time to buy a completely new wardrobe for a weekend if you’re lucky enough to be going away, you do want to look like you belong. Is it Pucci or Pulitzer- wouldn’t want to get that one wrong.

8. Seasonless is safest. A quick turn of weather could make white linen disastrous whereas taupe will go with the flow.

9. Look at your rear view and decide whether someone looking at you from behind would be surprised by what they see when you turn around. A great term for this is the 16/60. You may have a great body and look like a young woman from behind but you don’t want to dress in such a way that seeing a sixty year old face attached to the great butt is a shock.

10. Never look like you’re trying- at anything. If you don’t look like you’re trying to dress your hippest, sexiest, richest, chicest- and you will be 10 times hotter!