My Fashion / Beauty Pet Peeves

Ok, let's just bear in mind that it is Monday, and a rant is always therapeutic on this first, most trying day of the week. Today I bring you my fashion and beauty pet peeves - the things that I just can't bear in any way, shape or form, and that every time I lay my eyes on, I cringe and pray for there to really be a Fashion / Beauty Police to charge the wrong-does.

So let me go all Joan Rivers on these:

• The jacket: bomber

This is the least forgiving of all shapes.  You have to be rake thin to carry it off and it has to sit right on the waist-line.  Cropped versions just make one look like an American football player while longer versions just drown the figure and not in the appealing way boyfriend blazers / coats do.

• The pants: mum jeans

High-waisted, loose around the hips/bum shaped jeans and shorts are a hipster girl's heaven.  But not mine. Possibly because I remember these jeans way too well from the first time they were round.  Dear millennials, you're not doing yourselves any favour with these jeans.  If you really need to go high-waisted, the slim-hipped bell-bottom ones from the 70s are way cooler.  I promise.

Bomber jacket + mum jeans - pinned from vogue.es in this arguably adorkable look, but just doesn't work for me ... sorry!

• The skirts: micro-mini

Anything which is shorter than 2 inches above the knee is a no-go zone for me.  Not because I'm a prude.  It's because of the message lengths impart.  Such short skirts can hardly ever infer an air of elegance and sophistication, unless worn with opaque tights.  And even that is pushing it.

The best - and modesty saving - way of wearing very short skirts is by pairing them with opaque tights and oversized tops.

• The tops: ruffled shirts

Anything with ruffles really.  Despite being a very girly-girl, I'm averse to most things ruffled. Especially when the said ruffles are strategically placed around the placket front.  Busty girls like yours truly end up with a fin de siecle look reminiscent of Downton Abbey's Dowager Lady Grantham ...

• The dresses: body-con

I don't know how many times I've said this, but I just hate body-con dresses.  This is most definitely because, as a curvy girl I can't quite pull them off as well as a skinny (UK) size 4 or 6 girl.  But when I look at curvy celebrities squeezed into such dresses, I just feel they are trying to hard.  And I don't want to be like them.

Body-con might be short for 'body confidence' and Kim K sure isn't lacking of any of that.  But with such a skin tight dress, she leaves little to the imagination (we've seen it all before anyway, whether we wanted or not!)

• The shoes: platform stilettos

I've had a few of these.  And I've managed to fall or trip in each and every one of them.  This may be the basis of my aversion, but for quite obvious reasons, they kind of remind me of the shoes the less savoury characters used to take off just pre-fist-fight on The Jerry Springer Show back in the day.

Not for the faint hearted, and not for me.

• The bag: cheap looking bags

There are some really nice bags around which are of fantastic quality, even in non-leather varieties, which still don't cost a fortune.  Why oh why would one therefore choose to buy a bag made of tatty material that is quite obviously the cheapest of plastics, adorned with some ridiculous glittered chiffon rosette in a matching shade of bubble-gum pink? Why?

• The make-up: matching eye-shadow and nail lacquer

I have to qualify this: I'm an adventurer when it comes to nail lacquer but extremely conservative when it comes to eye make-up.  I like my make-up to complement the outfit by picking up notes from the pattern or contrasting with the main colour.  But having, say, blue eye-shadow and blue nails? Not for me! Especially if the rest of the outfit is of the same colour.

Perfect on an editorial, much harder to pull off in real life.

• The hair: perfectly formed top-knot

Overly-coiffed hair is my nightmare.  And the donut-shaped top-knot, when it's perfectly done, with no stray hairs or straggling ringlets jutting out of it takes the biscuit in my opinion.  What started off as (another) hipster trend has been mainstreamed into ubiquitousness.  And it is not nice.

Top-knots are by nature, relaxed hairdos so the operative word here is to actually keep them relaxed!

Now, now, as a rant, this post is not intended to be offensive to anyone.  I just needed to get these things off my chest - it's only my opinion and I'm sure it counts mostly for just me! I'm also sure that there are other things that make my skin crawl: for instance, the skort and the wedged trainers, but I'm guilty of owning both so I can't hate them as much as I'd like.

Do you have any fashion / beauty pet hates? Come on, I know you do ... let me know xxx