Fashion advice

Fashion advice

I had an absolutely wonderful mother, but she was of no use whatsoever in the fashion advice department. (Think Albert Einstein crossed with Jane Goodall, and you pretty much have her aesthetic.) Still, I had the fashion style bug from Day One: Over the dinner table, while my

mom, an accomplished biochemist, would explain what the lipopolysaccha- rides did in the lab that

day, I'd secretly be plotting my fashion advice outfit for the next morning. So I got to learn

what lipopolysaccharides are (proud of that) but had to pick up my fashion advice wisdom elsewhere.

Specifically these fashion advice gems... 

1. Dress yourself from the ground up. A stylist friend in an early magazine job told me this. (Alexa Chung does it too!) When you're stuck for what to wear take this fashion advice, go for the shoes that thrill you; work north from there.

2. If you have to ask whether it's a dress or a top, it's always a top. This fashion advice one comes from the immortal Tim Gunn. Preach.

3. Sometimes you need to dress up just to remind everyone that you can. I seriously recommend this fashion advice strategy, taught to me by a long-ago editor-mentor, especially in these casual-workplace times.

4. Fashion advice: see the tailor. This fashion advice I learned from the first personal shopper I ever used. She sold me a fabulous dress, but when chirped, "OK, ring it up!" she screeched, "We have to call the tailor!" And we did, and I became instantly four inches taller and five pounds

thinner. Or so it seemed. If you're on a budget, save on clothes, spend on the tailor - take this professional fashion advice.

5. Make up your own damn mind. And this fashion advice is from me: There are a million

people—designers, bloggers, and, ahem, editors—who will try to tell you that it's all about ponchos or forties silhouettes or Talitha Getty in Marrakech this season. Whatever. Follow your bliss.

Even my mom, in her lab coat, would have agreed on such fashion advice.

Cindi Leive, editor-in-chief Glamour USA