Do you still have to follow the fashion rules of matching shoes to handbags and also shoes to your belt?
When deciding on the colour for accessories like shoes, bags and belts, what are some of the different strategies you can take to make your outfit harmonious and still express your personal style?
To Make Your Legs Look Longer
Match Shoes to Your Trouser Hem
This is the best option if you’re petite as it helps to create an unbroken line in your outfit and elongates your legs, without creating a foot focus.
Match Shoes to Your Legs (For Skirts and Dresses or Cropped Pants)
Another leg-lengthening option is to match your shoes to your legs (the nude shoe) which again doesn’t draw attention to your feet and creates a longer legged look.
Sandwich or Bookend Your Shoes
There are two options here as well.
Match Shoes to Your Hair
This creates a set of bookends at your top and bottom. Your hair colour makes for your universal shoe colour and having a couple of styles of shoes for each season in your hair colour means that you have a pair of shoes to go with most outfits. The technical name for this approach is “visual grouping”.
Match Shoes to Your Top/Jacket
This is known on social media as “Sandwich Dressing” as the bread is the colour of your shoes and top or jacket and then the filling of the sandwich is the colour of your pants/shorts/skirt. It’s a great option if you have long legs but not as great if you have shorter legs and don’t want to make them look shorter.
Feature Shoe Colour
Maybe you want to wear an alternate colour that isn’t already in your outfit (or you), if you choose a feature shoe colour, it needs to be repeated elsewhere in accessories in your outfit as this helps to draw the eye up your body and creates harmony and rhythm in your outfit.
How About Belt Colour?
Blending your belt to your outfit makes for a less obvious waist, whilst if you want to highlight your waist you can choose an alternate colour.
If you have a short waist, match your belt to your top colour to lengthen it.
If you have a long waist, match your let to your pants to balance.
What colour should a feature belt be?
It can be the same colour as your hair (as you’re always wearing your hair, so that colour is in every outfit you wear), again hair colour makes for a universal colour for your belts as well as your shoes.
It can be in an alternate colour, maybe you choose a necklace or other accessory that you’re planning on wearing closer to your face, or it could be in the same colour as your shoes if you choose to wear a feature shoe colour.
Does Your Bag Need to Match Your Shoes or Belt?
Again you have the same three options that you go choosing shoes.
- Match your bag to your hair.
- Match your bag to a colour in your garments.
- Match your bag to other accessories you’re wearing (this is what Brenda Kinsel called a “beauty bundle” .
Remember that if you only match shoes to your bag, and they are a feature colour, if you go to work, put down your bag and don’t pick it up again until you go home, then your shoe colour won’t relate to anything else in your outfit.
None of these is more right than the other, but each of these will help you create harmony throughout your whole outfit from head to toe.
