How Not To Look Frumpy | RULE OF THIRDS: 3 Easy Style Hacks

Anybody out there feeling kind of frumpy, me, me, anybody?

Hello and welcome back to Ada Style Minute! For those of you who know me, welcome back. And for those of you who don’t, my name is Ada Deferrari and I’m here to help you build a confidence closet. In other words, a closet that when you open up the doors, you’re feeling empowered you’re feeling rejuvenated, anything you put on helps you look and feel powerful, and stylish, and confident.

So, today we are talking about how to create an anti-frumpy outfit. Anybody out there feeling kind of frumpy, anybody? All right, I’ll show you exactly why.

You know those days when you get a reflection of yourself in the mirror, or maybe somebody shows you, like a picture of you and you’re like looking at, like, “Why am I always looking frumpy? Is it because I finally reached the ripe age of 50 or 55? What is wrong with me?!… I know I gotta lose some weight”. And you’re thinking “okay, starting tomorrow, I’m gonna start eating salmon and asparagus, drinking nothing but water and exercising my booty off, and then I will look less more frumpy”. And then that doesn’t work. So then you think “okay, next paycheck, I am going on a shopping spree, I’m going to buy a new wardrobe, and that is going to fix my frumpiness. Or maybe I’ll just get surgery!”.

No, you don’t do that. Well, you can if you want to, but it’s not the shopping spree, it’s not the exercise, it’s none of that. It’s just putting together the outfit the right way. So what’s the key to anti-frumpiness? Drums, please! The RULE OF THIRDS.

Some people refer to it as like the third item you put on so a top, a bottom, and then a third item, it could be a vest or a blazer or necklace, that third piece and, yes, that could be also the rule of thirds. But the rule of thirds that I’m talking about is like the architectural artistic, the rule of thirds in photography.

So basically, what the rule of thirds says, is whenever you’re taking a picture of something or you’re on video or you want to break up the photograph into three pieces, and put the focal point on one of those thirds. And what that does is it’s just more pleasing to the eye instead of it being right in the middle with like an even amount of space on the sides. And then the same thing with our outfits.

When we think of our bodies like if you kind of break yourself up into thirds, one of the most flattering lines on our body is actually our waist, even if we don’t have a waist, if you draw attention to our waist, it is a very flattering focal point.

And so if you put together and you create outfits around basically drawing attention to your waist, then it’s going to create a stylish outfit, a more flattering outfit, and an anti-frumpy outfit.

Now, lots of caveats here, because some people are like “well I don’t have a waist, I don’t want to draw attention to my tummy area because that’s the biggest part of me” Some people so say is like “well it doesn’t make me feel as comfortable, I don’t think it’s as flattering, but what if I wear a loose shirt?”. Blah blah blah… I get it.

So here are just a couple of very simple rules and just ideas of how to follow the rule of thirds, but still, stay in your own comfort zone. Now, you know when you go and buy a dress, and it kind of comes with a little seam, right? Typically, that seam will never just be halfway. Designers know that’s not very flattering for you to break yourself in half. So usually, if they put a seam in a dress, that will be on one of the thirds a little bit higher or even lower and just kind of shapeless and then they leave it up to you to throw on a belt and give it a little bit of a waste.

Now, most of the time, like I said the waist on the dress is going to be a little bit higher because it’s following the rule of thirds. Now, it depends where that third is on everybody because we’re all different. So go ahead and download the Body Shape Calculator, try to figure out your body shape, and also you could take measurements of yourself and figure out your vertical body shape as well, and where your waist is, and bring attention more to your waist not as up your tummy area but your waist.

So how can you do this? These are a few different ideas of how you could bring attention up instead of breaking yourself in half, which is like… Kind of frumpy and not as attractive, and not as flattering.

So, you could do that with a half tuck, you could do that with a belt. Voilà! Well, so much easier.

You could also do that by throwing on a necklace, and having the focal point, again, some kind of pendant on the end of the necklace, where it’s drawing attention there.

You could also wear a peplum top, where it creates a waist and draws the attention back up. You could also wear some kind of print, where it’s print or pattern or some kind of color block, where is also drawing attention up to your natural waistline and it doesn’t have to necessarily be super tight.

You could also wear high-waisted pants or a high-waisted skirt and tuck in your top also drawing the attention up.

You could also just layer a cardigan or a captain on top and then draw the attention back up because it’s more cropped, perhaps.

So I’ve given you many different ways to do it I’m sure you’ll probably still have questions, so go ahead and leave a comment for me below, or send me an email if you have any more questions on the rule of thirds. But just go and experiment, and it’s all about putting together the outfit. Again, it’s not about the shopping, it’s not necessarily about losing weight, is just putting together a more flattering outfit and I’ve given you lots of ideas here on how to do that.

I hope you enjoyed this Ada Style Minute. Again, leave a comment for me if you have any questions if you have agreed or disagreed, and I’ll see you next time on Ada Style Minute!