A trend is defined as the general direction in which something tends to move, and when it comes to fashion, that something is the current or latest style: what's en vogue. Certainly, it's easy enough to be trendy by purchasing the latest looks off the mannequins each season, however this strategy is both prohibitively expensive and does little towards creating your own personal style. Style – and especially personal style – is something which cannot be bought off the rack.

Fashion Trends & Personal Style

Many people make the mistake of thinking that trends are fashion commandments to be slavishly obeyed season after season. On the contrary, trends are merely suggestions of how to develop your individual look - cues in the overall tone of your personal style.

Fashion Fantasy

Each Spring and Fall, year after year, the fashion industry churns out sartorial fantasy: innovative garments on Amazon models marching down skinny runways and poised uncomfortably in airbrushed photographs on the pages of glossy magazines. While exciting and incredibly entertaining, fashion fantasy rarely has any place in the life of real women.

Fashion Reality

Fashion reality requires a woman to perform an ongoing honest evaluation of her body type, frame, and lifestyle.  Fashion intuition is the necessary third ingredient to being a fabulously stylish woman; it's how you incorporate trends into your wardrobe and make them your own.

No trend is for everyone, so you need to be judicious about what garments and accessories, colors and cuts are appropriate for your figure, features, coloring and lifestyle.

Fashion Reality Check: Determining Your Body Type

Need a little help finding the best styles for you? To sort out your fashion reality, you need to make an honest and accurate assessment of your height, weight, and body shape, including bust size, hip size, and waist size. Most women fit into one of five body shapes:

• Inverted Triangle: This body type tends to have shoulders wider than hips, often with large breasts.
• Rectangle or Straight: This shape has a small difference between waist and hips. Women with this shape can run the risk of looking boyish rather than feminine thanks to the lack of a well-defined waist and a flatter chest.
• Triangle or Pear: This shape has hips wider than shoulders with round thighs. This body type tends to be bottom-heavy with a slim torso.
• Hourglass: This shape has proportional upper and lower halves, and is curvy with well-defined waist. Women with this voluptuous shape typically have larger breasts, curvy hips, and a small waist. In a true perfect hourglass figure the bust and hips are equal and the waist is ten inches smaller than each. Think Marilyn Monroe.
• Athletic: This muscular shape is toned and fit where most women are often a bit flabby or lack definition, in areas such as the arms and shoulders, back, bum and thighs.

Fashion Intuition

Fashion intuition is that gut instinct and infusion of personality which defines you and makes you stand out from the pack of other fashionistas.  Admittedly, some people naturally have a stronger sense of fashion intuition than others, but this sixth sense can be learned and honed with proper guidance and attention.

It's fashion intuition that allows people to mentally edit the ceaseless stream of fashion trends season after season, sorting through the hundreds of new looks generated each season and selecting the classic, timeless pieces which tend to rotate in and out of fashion periodically.

Fabulous Style: Putting It All Together for Fabulous

If you allow yourself to be inspired by fashion fantasy, truthful about the requirements of your style reality, and confident in your fashion instincts, then you're well on your way to being stylish.