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How to Be Glam
Book Excerpt: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me: A Guide to Living With Impeccable Grace and Style
By Lucia van der Post
Never underestimate the power of glamour. It’s life enhancing, and even the plainest woman can be glamorous. Glamour is quite different from beauty. It depends a lot on a sense of personal style and some inner confidence, which isn’t always easy to come by but can be cultivated. A great help, though, is a terrific haircut. Don’t be tempted to go to cheap colorists.
A tiny, but I mean tiny, bit of eccentricity — or perhaps a better word is individuality — helps. As does well-chosen jewelry, but not too much of it, just some stunning earrings, for example, or a fantastic necklace that works with the clothes you’re wearing. For instance, I bought some amazing scarlet amber gobstoppers in Oman, which look wonderful with plain black, fizzing it up no end, but I wouldn’t dream of wearing them with much else (except possibly plain white linen in the summer). They’d be too much. But some of this sort of jewelry can be bought inexpensively in the mall — just don’t be timid.
Sexy shoes (I keep coming back to them because dowdy shoes kill anything stone dead) and a good handbag help, too.
A fine perfume — but never too much (it’s vulgar and bad manners to douse yourself in a smell so strong that nobody else can escape it). If you can’t afford an expensive scent, it’s worth looking at natural essential oils, sold in lots of spas and slightly hippie shops and galleries, which don’t have that horrid chemical smell of the cheaper scents.
From Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me: A Guide to Living With Impeccable Grace and Style by Lucia van der Post. Copyright ©2008 by Lucia van der Post. By permission of Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Book Group.
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