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Lookin’ Good

So, this chapter is about lookin’ good. I’ve heard some people say that only frivolous, shallow people care that much about how they look. I think that frivolous, shallow people are the ones who
don’t
care about how they look. More serious, deeper people are smart enough to know better. So, who should care about appearances?

You
should care.

For starters, throughout history and cross-sections of various cultures, women have transformed their appearances and used their hair, makeup, and clothing to conform to a beauty ideal. There must be some inherent reason for this—can zillions of women be crazy? Not likely. Fact is, you can find scientific study after study informing us that today attractively turned-out people have a much better chance of getting hired, getting promoted, and landing clients and fat paychecks.

Like it or not, attractive women also attract more exciting men—and I’m not talking drop-dead, naturally beautiful, movie-star women: I’m talking women who know a little something about fashion and makeup. I’m talking women who
have learned how to package their product—themselves. Good-looking people have a better shot at being noticed in a positive way than people who are sloppy about appearances. And although I wouldn’t go so far as to endorse Billy Crystal’s Fernando character on
Saturday Night Live,
who says, “You look mahvelous—it’s better to look good than to feel good,” he’s not altogether crazy. It is important to always feel good, and looking good is an ingredient to feeling good. And, as we say in Brooklyn, “not for nuthin’,” say what you like, people do judge others by their appearances. And here’s one for Fernando: when you know you look good, you feel good. Tell me that’s not so.

Some General Rules

I think I resent more than anything, now that I’ve lost some weight, when people say to me, “Oh my God, you look so good.” Once I asked my husband, “Al, did I look so horrible before?” and he answered, “No, baby, you just looked different, but now I think you look happier, which makes you look better.”

So, that’s
rule number one.
When you pull yourself together, feel happier, and look better to yourself—you look better to everyone else. When I’m dressed in my favorite dress and I put on a pair of good shoes that I got on sale for $19.95, and some woman (forget about the guys) says to me, “Oooooh, those are the greatest shoes,” few things make me happier. My self-esteem soars to a million.

Rule number two?
Think of yourself as a package: you know when you give a gift, the wrapping counts as much as the present. It will take a while for Mr. Right to find out what a doll lives inside the package, but in order to attract his interest, the outside wrapping has to be sweet.

Rule number three?
Pulling yourself together doesn’t mean only when you have a big date or going to your cousin’s wedding. I don’t want to put pressure on you, sister, but I think you should try to look your best whenever you leave the house, and, if you have a good-looking neighbor who may want to borrow a cup of sugar, even when you’re
in
your own house. When you walk your dog or run out for a quart of OJ, feel good about how you look: your future might be waiting at the counter in the corner deli. If you don’t feel great about your appearance,
you won’t look him in the eye and do all the little come-on tricks that are a prelude to saying hello. He’ll drive off into the sunset, and you’ll drive off a cliff in disappointment. Personally speaking, I’m a glamour girl 24/7. You will never see me outside without my fake lashes. If you’re my friend, and I’m lying in a hospital bed so sick I don’t even know who’s around me, please have somebody assigned to come in every day and glue on those eyelashes. If you want me to get better, don’t let me lie there without the lashes—oh God, I’ll know it from somewhere deep within, and it will make me crazy and very insecure, and I’ll lose my will to live. I’ll take the real mink lashes, please, as opposed to the synthetic mink. No, wait, maybe paste on the purple ones—I’ll need a laugh.

Rule number four?
This chapter will mainly cover the rudiments of fashion, makeup, and hair as I practice them, but if you want to be your most gorgeous, be aware of the other packaging ploys:

• Visit your dentist. There’s nothing as pretty as a white-toothed smile, and today there are inexpensive ways of getting those teeth gorgeous—even if you took a gray-tooth-making antibiotic when you were little.
  
• Check your breath—either by having your very good friend smell when you exhale, or blow into a small paper bag and smell what comes out.
  
• Smoking is pretty horrible both for your health and certainly for your teeth and breath.
  
• A boozy breath is the worst.
  
• Get manicures and pedicures. If you bite your nails, this is the one perfect way to encourage yourself to stop.
  
• Finally, do I have to say this—do you look clean? Do you have a nail brush to get the grime out? Is your hair oily and limp-hanging? Are the pores in the oily places on your face speckled with blackheads?
  Arrrrrgh.
  

But I bet you clean up good. Do it.

Fashion

I have always felt that fashion is a cool form of self-expression available to anyone, no matter how rich or poor. Dressing up has always been my favorite game since I was very small, and here’s the way I play it.

Suppose you feel mousy or awkward. Suppose you really don’t know where to start being fashion savvy? Here’s an idea: be someone else.

If I’m not feeling particularly Star-like when I’m out buying a new outfit, I’ll often think, “Who
doesn’t
feel mousy today? I’ll bet Halle Berry doesn’t feel mousy.” Then, I’ll project—I’ll be Halle for a couple of hours, I’ll try to take on her mind-set and look at clothes in the stores through her eyes. Now, I don’t mean you or I ought to dress exactly like Halle if one of us has a size 16 butt, but only try to emulate her confidence and know-how. Becoming Halle once in a while allows me to go out there and serve it up.

Here’s my fashion philosophy: you become a new person every time you put on a new outfit. Last week when I went to the tennis match, I was definitely the black Audrey Hepburn. I had on the black picture hat, the little purse, the delicately flowered dress. Never mind that she was a size 2. I was Audrey, kids. Here’s another thing: I never mind looking different from what others expect from Star because I know who I really am. That translates into if I wake up in a Sheryl Crow jeans state of mind, I’m not intimidated by someone who woke up in an Audrey Hepburn state of mind.

The truth is that clothes allow me to be someone unique every day and to have fun at it. Fashion is fun; I don’t do very much in life anymore that doesn’t bring me joy and happy up my outlook.

If a bad hair day can change your whole outlook for that day, a bad outfit can do the same thing. I believe this: the way people look at you, the way you march through your life depends heavily on how attractively you’re turned out. You may be the wisest, finest potential friend or lover in the world, but few people get to the inside of you until they check out the outside. Your appearance has to be appealing—and that’s the truth. You can’t judge a book by its cover, true, but a great cover sure entices you to the read.

When I was ready to look for the man who would be my life’s companion—or rather, when I was ready for him to look for me—I also started to pay greater attention to my clothes. This wasn’t exactly the hardest task ahead of me, because when it comes to fashion, I’m a willing girl. Still, in my life, so far, I’ve always had two impediments to looking like what every magazine told me was attractive. The first impediment was money—or lack of it. When I was young, I was thin, but I didn’t have money to buy the good clothes I admired. When I was older, I had the money, but then I also had the excess weight. High-class fashion designers, the original thinkers who dress the magazine models, definitely were not designing for me.

So, I always had to be creative within the context of my own needs. The first thing I did creatively was develop my most sacred fashion mantra.

Thou Shall Not Pay Retail

There is almost nothing that you love in any magazine that can’t be inexpensively duplicated. We’re so lucky to live in a world where clothing outlets are ubiquitous and elegant bargains are everywhere—if only you know the location of the places where they hang. Some of my fabulous friends can buy Chanel direct from the Parisian shows, and although now I can afford to do the same, I choose not to. I love a great bargain. My personal motto is “You can fake it even when you make it.” I love to put outfits together that look and feel expensive but are not. Included in this chapter is Star’s Insider Guide to Fabulous Fashion Finds all across America and internationally too. But how do you know what’s a fashion find, and how do you know if it’s for you? Here are some basics where I suggest you start:

Cut Off Their Heads

For as many years as I can remember, I’ve clipped photographs of beautiful women wearing the clothes I thought I loved from the newest fashion magazines. Then I’d paste the photos on the inside of my closet door. Well, actually not the whole photo. I’d always decapitate the photos of the models or movie stars wearing the clothes (who annoyed me no end because I could
never
look or be like them). Say I saw a great photograph of Nicole Kidman wearing navy blue pants and a navy blue crewneck sweater with a cute Peter Pan collar blouse, I’d cut out the picture, minus Nicole’s head, and hang the photo on the inside of my closet door. It would hang there for a couple of weeks while I studied the look, deciding if it would be good for me. Sometimes, I’d put a photo of my own face on a photograph in place of, say, Catherine Deneuve’s. If Deneuve was wearing a little navy blue Chanel suit with the gold buttons and the delicate gold chain belt, I’d decide if it genuinely was a look that would be good for me.

Now, Kidman and Deneuve are both a whole lot more slender than I was, and very white and blonde to boot, but we did have one thing in common: I knew I could wear
classic
with style, and they were nothing if not classic. So, if the answer was yes to the look, I duplicated it. On the trail of Chanel, I’d go to Lane Bryant or a small boutique up in Harlem, buy the best navy blue suit I could find, go to a store that sells vintage buttons (there are many of them in every big city), and carefully sew original (or copies of) Chanel gold buttons on the suit jacket. Then, I’d find a gold chain belt as close to the Deneuve picture as possible. I’d find a fabulous copy of those long Chanel pearls. I’d emulate the look—and when I finished, I tell you, it would take a Chanel scholar to know I was faking it. Making it by faking it.

I have to be real here. When I weighed over 250 pounds and cut out a photo of Halle Berry wearing a body-skimming satin dress, I had to live in the truth of what I was and what my body was. As true as the fact that I couldn’t afford real Chanel back in that day, I also couldn’t dress like Halle Berry. Her dress would not work for me—for my butt, for my breasts, for my waist. Big deal. There were plenty of other role models.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to cut out photographs of those who
have body types similar to yours, from the start: it makes life easier. If you can’t bring yourself to cut off their heads, draw little mustaches on them so you aren’t intimidated by their perfection.

You have to assume that those people in
Vogue
and
Harper’s Bazaar
have plenty of money to spend, so steal their expertise! And when you wear the duplication, strut your stuff, baby. Diva everyone with your attitude. Don’t be meek, don’t wait for tables in crowded restaurants, don’t take no for an answer when you’re negotiating.

Educate Yourself

No one is born knowing what “good” looks like. You have to observe and hang out with people who shop well, then use them as mentors to learn what quality fashion looks like. Browsing the great department or specialty stores also is an education. Go into a fine leather store in the closest big city. Touch a leather coat or purse to feel how soft and supple it is. Check out the lining in an Amsale gown; see how it’s sewn with the tiniest of hand stitches and attached to the gown. Then check out a leather purse or coat in a low-quality/low-price store: see how the latter feels brittle and crackly in your hand. See how linings are either glued on or sewn with careless machine stitches.

Just as an example, let me decode the inspection of a good leather purse.

First, touch the leather of the purse. Does it feel like
buttah,
soft, delicious? Good. Open up the bag. Does it have a fabric or suede interior? If it’s suede, is it real or synthetic? Does the purse have several compartments for you to safely store your valuables? Check the zippers in the interior compartments—do they stick or move smoothly up and down? See how the zipper is finished off: it’s best if there’s some sort of leather jacket covering the zipper edges. Check the purse straps—how are they attached to the body of the purse? The straps on really good pocketbooks are stitched onto the body of the bag, not just held to the bag by a grommet.

Then I personally evaluate how I’m going to carry the bag. If it’s a clutch, I stand holding it in my hand the way I’m going to carry it, and check out my reflection in the mirror. Do I like the way it looks in my hand? I walk around with
the bag. If it’s a clutch and it feels too big in your hand when you walk around the store, it’s sure going to feel too big at a cocktail party. If it’s a shoulder bag and doesn’t hang smoothly, lightly, and securely on your shoulder, it’ll drive you crazy when you get it home. If you’re a student carrying books, a parent grabbing for your kids, or a list maker always jotting something down, you need a shoulder bag, not a clutch purse. When you shop, everyone
definitely
needs a shoulder bag: there’s never anyplace to put your clutch when you’re frantically going through the racks.