The Pocket Stylist

One of the most useful books on dressing yourself. It talks about 3 body types: apple, pear, and hourglass, helps you determine which one do you belong to, gives you an idea of what type of clothes would look good on you, emphasize your best features and conceal your worst... Also it will teach you how to take your measurements correctly, where to buy clothes and accessories while staying within your budget, organizing your closet and much more.

In addition to 3 body types, the book takes into consideration not only skinny women of these types, but also those who are bigger than average. Therefore, there are 6 types listed in the book: A,B,C,D, E, F. Where A is pear shape regular, B - hourglass, C - apple, and D - pear ample, E - ample hourglass, and F - ample apple shape.

The book is pretty compact in size and can be easily carried with you

Dressing Rich: A Guide to Classic Chic for Women with More Taste than Money

This book really encourages you to clean up your closet getting rid of the cheap looking pieces. It helps you to create a wardrobe of more quality and if you follow all the up to date advice, discarding what can no longer be used in today's society, you will never be overdressed or underdressed (don't know which is worse...:)).

It also teaches you a bit about different fabrics, which is helpful if you don't know anything about them.

The book talks about a bunch of different dressing styles. Personally I would never make one of them my own, but nevertheless I enjoyed reading about them.

After reading this book I went through my closet and was very happy to discover that I mostly own natural fabrics and there were few pieces I had to get rid of to make my wardrobe more of quality.

What I found the most interesting in this book is when it talks about an article of closing being "quality" depending on how you use it. For instance if you use plastic coat as a raincoat, it is "quality" or "q", but if you use it as a "leather" coat, it's non-q. I like this kind of philosophy. I am passionately against fakes - clothing that looks like couture but not, fake D & G, Valentino etc. I'd rather wear generic clothing than something with a false pretense of a brand name.

I believe this book is a must have. Even though it is pretty old, it is still useful and will be for a long time. After all that's what defines a good book, piece of clothing or anything else - timelessness

Nothing to Wear? A 5-step cure for the common closet

A pretty useful book for those who wants to clean up their closet a bit and actually ending up having more to wear. Personally, I got rid of half the things in my closet and as a result I have a lot more to wear and also I stopped buying impulsively and filling up my closet with items I never wear.

Mistake number one for most women is that we do not always stick to our style when shopping for clothes. Some times we just like something, other times we cannot walk past a real bargain. Either way, we end up buying things that are not a part of our "signature" look.

This book helps you define your style, if you already haven't and encourages you to get rid of all the clothing that does not constitute your style "uniform".

The book presents you with 5 steps to improving your wardrobe:

1. Define your style

Five different styles are presented in the book:
Classic
Chic
Bohemian
Whimsical
Avant-garde
















There is a style type quiz you can take to determine which style do you fit in with. One can belong to more than one type. For example one's style can be Chic-Classical, etc.

2. Edit your wardrobe - discard everything that is not your "uniform"

3. Fill in the gaps - build a backbone of your closet, the basics, and then add the "frosting", items beyond the basics

4. Put it all together - get out your digital camera and take pictures of outfits, build wardrobe capsules, photograph them etc.

5. Nurture the new you - instructions on how to care for your wardrobe, how to store clothes and such

Here is a sample inspirational board from the book: