Grooming: Picture perfect from head to toe
- Thread starter thefrancofille
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^ I hope you don't wear that uniform too! 
I am not sure where it came from, but I sort of think it might have to do with all the celebrity candids we see now of stars grabbing coffee or leaving the gym. They have made it acceptable to look like you just threw yourself together in 30 seconds.
I am not sure where it came from, but I sort of think it might have to do with all the celebrity candids we see now of stars grabbing coffee or leaving the gym. They have made it acceptable to look like you just threw yourself together in 30 seconds.^ I hope you don't wear that uniform too!
NEVER!!!! I stand in defiance of our school uniform!!!
hmmm... I never thought about the celeb candids thing before, but I'm sure you're right... we need some of the old Hollywood glamour back...
^ Exactly. Some of the old time actresses, such as Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, had impeccable grooming and always looked polished. We don't have many good influences today. Don't me wrong...they can be found, but they are just not the women who the paparazzi likes to snap everyday. I think that Queen Rania of Jordan always looks amazing, put together, and polished. 
I agree about Queen Rania. She is absolutely impeccable. Queen Rania always looks stylish, put together and appropriately dressed for the occassion. She doesn't wear a ballgown while at a school in the middle of nowhere and she doesn't wear jeans to a formal event. The woman has real class.
fashionista-ta
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I so totally agree, thank you Ta-ta
Although I try to keep my morning grooming routine down to a minimum, I do spend 30min~1 hour doing yoga, which really helps me to spend the day focused and calm.
I simply adore dogs, and admire those with the discipline to live with dogs and get everything done properly and on time. A friend of mine has two Corgis, a Jack Russell and a two-year-old boy, and it's pure chaos trying to get out the door according to schedule...
You're welcome
I love the way we all three have part of our routine that centers us for the day (journal, yoga, playing with the dog). That is so important. It really doesn't matter what you look like if you're not centered. Or, perhaps, running out of the house without doing this is the spiritual equivalent of curlers in your hair and writing across your butt
fashionista-ta
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I recently switched jobs and now work closer to home and can therefore leave the house later. I still get up early though and use the extra time to eat breakfast at the table and not standing up at the kitchen counter (gasp!) and now spend some quality playtime in the morning with my puppy Emma. It puts me in a great mood. Of course, I have to play with her before I get dressed and primped because she likes to lick off my makeup!
One of mine does that too ... and even more than makeup she loves lotion. While I'm standing captive at the mirror she will come lick the lotion off my ankles and legs. One of the reasons I try to keep everything as natural and non-toxic as possible--you never know what the dogs are going to lick!^ LOL. I totally relate! She is also obsessed with my lotion...and she has a foot fetish too.
I bought a nice journal yesterday at a gift shop in town. Tomorrow morning, I am going to sit and reflect before heading out the door for a hectic day at work. I think that was a great recommendation you had, fashionista-ta. Writing down my goals for the day and what I want from the day reminds me of "The Secret".
I bought a nice journal yesterday at a gift shop in town. Tomorrow morning, I am going to sit and reflect before heading out the door for a hectic day at work. I think that was a great recommendation you had, fashionista-ta. Writing down my goals for the day and what I want from the day reminds me of "The Secret".
It really doesn't matter what you look like if you're not centered. Or, perhaps, running out of the house without doing this is the spiritual equivalent of curlers in your hair and writing across your butt
Brava, you captured the truth!
And grace, poise and centeredness can make even rags look good.
Cosmogrl, I may try the journal thing too, sounds like a great idea!
Brava, you captured the truth!
And grace, poise and centeredness can make even rags look good.
Cosmogrl, I may try the journal thing too, sounds like a great idea!
It is really working wonderfully for me. I find that it relaxes me before work and puts my thoughts together, so I am more productive during the day. Plus, it feels like something special I am doing for myself.
Today I don't feel so put together though because I desperately need a manicure and an eyebrow waxing. Once those things are taken care of, I will feel much better!
I thought this was very entertaining. It was supposedly published in the late 1800s though to be honest, I don't think it sounds like that is true. Anyway, interesting nonetheless...
The Well-Groomed Woman
( Originally Published Mid 1800s )
We must be neat; not neat but cleanly. -Winter's Tale.
When one wishes to briefly epitomize a woman as exquisitely neat, perfectly dressed, and correct in all the appointments of a thoroughbred daughter of the nineteenth century, one says of her: "She is a well-groomed woman."
Practically, it means that the lady in question is most delicately fastidious in everything pertaining to her toilet and personality. The well-groomed woman would much sooner relinquish her breakfast than her morning plunge, and about as willingly submit to an attack upon her moral character as to a suspicion that her linen was ever other than absolutely immaculate.
Good grooming has nothing whatever to do with make-up in any form.
Indeed, it is opposed radically to paints, powders, and artifice generally. The well-groomed woman is she who takes her two baths daily, and whose bath at night is known as and called the hot scrub.
The friction of the various bath brushes used for this function gives the skin a satin-like bloom which no subterfuge will impart.
The well-groomed woman's hair is lustrous, soft, and, above all, with never a suggestion of dandruff. Her scalp is as clean and shining as her brow.
She is as careful about the cleanliness of her head as of her face, and, if necessary, the hair will be washed twice or thrice a week, for cleanliness and furfura, as she knows, are incompatible.
Her hands are proachable ; her boots as well-fitting and tasteful as knowledged best-dressed lumbia.
Her skirts and jackets appear each time she wears them, until they are cast aside, without a frazzled edge or spot. Her gloves fit to a nicety, never pinch, and are always whole and carefully buttoned.
It requires so much time, I hear a reader say. Yes, it does; but it is time well spent. It pays particularly for middle-aged women to be thoroughly well groomed.
Not long since I met an old friend of mine who is certainly fifty, possibly older.
She was positively a radiant, handsome creature; so sweet, so wholesome looking, so deliciously nice to the eye, that I said to her:
"You are better looking, handsomer, more attractive than you have ever been. You were stout ten years ago -too stout. You didn't look at all as you do now. What do you mean by playing such a trick, and you a grandmother ? "
And my friend laughed, and showed two rows of glistening teeth, and, looking at me with the merry bright eyes of her youngest daughter, said:
"Why, I am younger than I was fifteen years ago, for then I weighed over two hundred pounds and had three chins.
"Then I had an idea that I must settle down and wear middle-aged clothes -'costumes' the dressmakers call them-and bonnets with strings under the chin, such as are worn with costumes and wraps-large, voluminous wraps," continued my friend.
"Oh, I was playing my middle-aged role to the very limit, when suddenly I awakened to the fact that my husband was constantly referring to this or that woman's beautiful figure, charming appearance, and well-groomed look.
"Sometimes the women he spoke of were younger, sometimes about my own age.
"Gradually I awakened to the knowledge that my husband, at five and forty, was just as much of a man and just as susceptible to beauty and grace as when he first found me pretty and charming twenty years before.
"All in a moment I realized that I had grown fat and dumpy and indolent, and that I was losing my husband's love.
"Now, it may be unfashionable, but I am just as much in love with him as I was the day we were married. "When I actually understood the danger I was in, I can tell you I made up my mind to defend my most priceless possession.
"I got a book on physical culture. I learned how to reduce my flesh systematically and how to keep at a certain desirable weight. I learned the ritual of perfect cleanliness and practiced it religiously, getting back my old-time freshness.
"I stopped wearing `costumes' and became tailor-made for the street. I ordered the prettiest gowns and negligees for home and the most elegant little wraps and waists for the theatre, and you never saw any one so astonished and delighted as my husband.
"When the first grandchild came, I wore such a perfectly stunning gown to the christening, and I looked so well, that my husband and my son-in-law kissed me and called me a `regular peach."
"It wasn't an elegant expression, but it made me happy and it made me doubly appreciate the merit of being a perfectly groomed, well-dressed, and attractive woman, especially after I had passed the golden prime of life and was descending the shady side of the hill.
"Some may say,"Oh, it's all very easy for such a woman with ample means and time at her disposal, to keep herself in the `pink of perfection,' to parade in tailor-made gowns and ape the juvenile appearance and manners of the young women of the so-called `400."
There is no force in such a protest. If you had seen this well-groomed friend of mine you would have been struck, not so much by her apparel as by her neat, fresh, and wholesome appearance, and you would have said and known that she would, on that account, look attractive in even the plainest and simplest garb.
I am confident you will believe me when I say that when it comes to downright attractiveness, one cannot always say "Fine feathers make fine birds." My own ex perience in life amply bears this out. It has been more varied than falls to the lot of most of my sisters. I have been what one might style "a gilded child of luxury," I have been a business woman at the head of an important enterprise, and I have been a toiler working more hours in the twenty-four and harder than most men work, yet at no time have I seen the day when I felt that my apparel alone made, lost, or kept my friends, while almost from my girlhood I have been deeply sensible of the benefit I have received and the satisfaction I have enjoyed from the general observance of the hygienic hints herein given-hints which help to make the well=groomed woman in the best and truest sense of the term.
source: http://www.oldandsold.com/articles03/beauty4.shtml
The Well-Groomed Woman
( Originally Published Mid 1800s )
We must be neat; not neat but cleanly. -Winter's Tale.
When one wishes to briefly epitomize a woman as exquisitely neat, perfectly dressed, and correct in all the appointments of a thoroughbred daughter of the nineteenth century, one says of her: "She is a well-groomed woman."
Practically, it means that the lady in question is most delicately fastidious in everything pertaining to her toilet and personality. The well-groomed woman would much sooner relinquish her breakfast than her morning plunge, and about as willingly submit to an attack upon her moral character as to a suspicion that her linen was ever other than absolutely immaculate.
Good grooming has nothing whatever to do with make-up in any form.
Indeed, it is opposed radically to paints, powders, and artifice generally. The well-groomed woman is she who takes her two baths daily, and whose bath at night is known as and called the hot scrub.
The friction of the various bath brushes used for this function gives the skin a satin-like bloom which no subterfuge will impart.
The well-groomed woman's hair is lustrous, soft, and, above all, with never a suggestion of dandruff. Her scalp is as clean and shining as her brow.
She is as careful about the cleanliness of her head as of her face, and, if necessary, the hair will be washed twice or thrice a week, for cleanliness and furfura, as she knows, are incompatible.
Her hands are proachable ; her boots as well-fitting and tasteful as knowledged best-dressed lumbia.
Her skirts and jackets appear each time she wears them, until they are cast aside, without a frazzled edge or spot. Her gloves fit to a nicety, never pinch, and are always whole and carefully buttoned.
It requires so much time, I hear a reader say. Yes, it does; but it is time well spent. It pays particularly for middle-aged women to be thoroughly well groomed.
Not long since I met an old friend of mine who is certainly fifty, possibly older.
She was positively a radiant, handsome creature; so sweet, so wholesome looking, so deliciously nice to the eye, that I said to her:
"You are better looking, handsomer, more attractive than you have ever been. You were stout ten years ago -too stout. You didn't look at all as you do now. What do you mean by playing such a trick, and you a grandmother ? "
And my friend laughed, and showed two rows of glistening teeth, and, looking at me with the merry bright eyes of her youngest daughter, said:
"Why, I am younger than I was fifteen years ago, for then I weighed over two hundred pounds and had three chins.
"Then I had an idea that I must settle down and wear middle-aged clothes -'costumes' the dressmakers call them-and bonnets with strings under the chin, such as are worn with costumes and wraps-large, voluminous wraps," continued my friend.
"Oh, I was playing my middle-aged role to the very limit, when suddenly I awakened to the fact that my husband was constantly referring to this or that woman's beautiful figure, charming appearance, and well-groomed look.
"Sometimes the women he spoke of were younger, sometimes about my own age.
"Gradually I awakened to the knowledge that my husband, at five and forty, was just as much of a man and just as susceptible to beauty and grace as when he first found me pretty and charming twenty years before.
"All in a moment I realized that I had grown fat and dumpy and indolent, and that I was losing my husband's love.
"Now, it may be unfashionable, but I am just as much in love with him as I was the day we were married. "When I actually understood the danger I was in, I can tell you I made up my mind to defend my most priceless possession.
"I got a book on physical culture. I learned how to reduce my flesh systematically and how to keep at a certain desirable weight. I learned the ritual of perfect cleanliness and practiced it religiously, getting back my old-time freshness.
"I stopped wearing `costumes' and became tailor-made for the street. I ordered the prettiest gowns and negligees for home and the most elegant little wraps and waists for the theatre, and you never saw any one so astonished and delighted as my husband.
"When the first grandchild came, I wore such a perfectly stunning gown to the christening, and I looked so well, that my husband and my son-in-law kissed me and called me a `regular peach."
"It wasn't an elegant expression, but it made me happy and it made me doubly appreciate the merit of being a perfectly groomed, well-dressed, and attractive woman, especially after I had passed the golden prime of life and was descending the shady side of the hill.
"Some may say,"Oh, it's all very easy for such a woman with ample means and time at her disposal, to keep herself in the `pink of perfection,' to parade in tailor-made gowns and ape the juvenile appearance and manners of the young women of the so-called `400."
There is no force in such a protest. If you had seen this well-groomed friend of mine you would have been struck, not so much by her apparel as by her neat, fresh, and wholesome appearance, and you would have said and known that she would, on that account, look attractive in even the plainest and simplest garb.
I am confident you will believe me when I say that when it comes to downright attractiveness, one cannot always say "Fine feathers make fine birds." My own ex perience in life amply bears this out. It has been more varied than falls to the lot of most of my sisters. I have been what one might style "a gilded child of luxury," I have been a business woman at the head of an important enterprise, and I have been a toiler working more hours in the twenty-four and harder than most men work, yet at no time have I seen the day when I felt that my apparel alone made, lost, or kept my friends, while almost from my girlhood I have been deeply sensible of the benefit I have received and the satisfaction I have enjoyed from the general observance of the hygienic hints herein given-hints which help to make the well=groomed woman in the best and truest sense of the term.
source: http://www.oldandsold.com/articles03/beauty4.shtml
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FASHIONLOVA
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How to be High Maintenance???
It's all in the question!!
I'm talking Kim Kardashian type like high maintenance
What are the dos and donts to always looking polished as if you just stepped out of a salon or a runway
Feel free to post all the tips you have or can get your hands on.
Thanx
It's all in the question!!
I'm talking Kim Kardashian type like high maintenance
What are the dos and donts to always looking polished as if you just stepped out of a salon or a runway
Feel free to post all the tips you have or can get your hands on.
Thanx
I can never pull the polished look off. For one, my damn skin is never perfect no matter what I do and even when I get close to the well-groomed look I can't seem to keep it for more than 5 minutes. I don't always want to look like that, but it would be nice to pull it off from time to time.
fashionista-ta
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^ kalli, life is inherently imperfect, I think it's better to just face it right away 
thefrancofille
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It's all in the question!!
I'm talking Kim Kardashian type like high maintenance
What are the dos and donts to always looking polished as if you just stepped out of a salon or a runway
Feel free to post all the tips you have or can get your hands on.
Thanx
I wish I was a little more high maintenance. I mean, it takes me little time to get dressed (because I don't have much time in the morning!) but I'm going to make an effort to take more time on the weekends rather than rush like I do during the week. Gosh, I don't even wear lip gloss.
I would love to have that just stepped off the runway look.
fashionista-ta
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I think this is exactly right ... but you forgot the personal trainer, and a personal chef doesn't hurt either
fashionista-ta
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I wish I was a little more high maintenance. I mean, it takes me little time to get dressed (because I don't have much time in the morning!) but I'm going to make an effort to take more time on the weekends rather than rush like I do during the week. Gosh, I don't even wear lip gloss.
I would love to have that just stepped off the runway look.
There's a lot of territory between no lipgloss and just stepped off the runway
But I find lipgloss to be the perfect last step before I run out the door. I keep several shades (mostly MAC) ... hot pink, plum pink, peach/beige, bright red, wine/maple. I have more shades of lipstick, but these seem to cover all the color bases. So step 1, go stock up on lipgloss, and slick it on as you take your last look in the mirror ... It's also helpful to have shorter hair that doesn't stick in the gloss when the wind blows 
thefrancofille
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There's a lot of territory between no lipgloss and just stepped off the runway
You're right! There's a lot of room there.I have lipgloss, I just don't wear it.
It's because I'm not used to it. So I bought neutral shades for daytime, but I still don't wear it. My gol for tomorrow will be to put some lipgloss on. 
