How to Dress Well on a Budget:
Review of Wardrobe Magic eBook

In these days of economic gloom and doom when so many of us have less money to spend on everything, including clothing, it's a good idea to investigate more budget friendly ways of how to dress well. Wardrobe Magic fills that need. 

What does it take to consistently look well "pulled together"?  As an ex-model and a certified image consultant since 1994 the author, Diana Pemberton-Sikes, is well qualified to answer this question.

She answers it in the ebook by detailing all the aspects involved in how to dress well and look stylish.  She then explains how to go about achieving an organized wardrobe that meets your lifestyle needs and suits your colouring, your body shape and your clothing personality.  It's a fun, easy and informative read.

The main focus of the ebook is on assessing your lifestyle needs and understanding and building wardrobe capsules.  For the book's coverage of these 2 topics alone I highly recommend it!  You'll save the purchase price many times over by following the advice in this ebook.

How to Dress Well Effortlessly, The "Secrets" Revealed

With this 155 page ebook Diana covers a lot of ground.  Every possible aspect of how to dress well are covered.  So, as you might expect some areas are covered better than others, as I discuss below.  However, overall the advice is practical, easy to follow and invaluable.  The idea is to spend more time planning and less time stressing and panicking.  Sound advice indeed!

Wardrobe Magic is divided into 3 parts...

Part 1, Basic Wardrobe Principles

This part starts with finding your best colors and then determining your horizontal body shape.

Understanding your best colours and the styles for your body shape are the basis for evaluating your current clothes and for buying new clothes without making mistakes.  However, these 2 topics are too large and complex to completely cover in this ebook.

The ebook gives a way of assessing your own colors.  However, color analysis is not easily done on yourself.  I advise (and indeed Diana does suggest) you get an image consultant to perform your color analysis.  Also, the ebook says that your undertone does not change.  We now know that this is not true and that your undertone may change with age.

The ebook only considers 4 horizontal body shapes and none of the vertical body proportions that are so important for choosing lengths.  You will get a better coverage of this topic in my body shape pages.

Also covered in basic principles is recognizing your clothing personality. It's great to see this topic included.  Understanding that you have a clothing or style personality is such an important element to dressing stylishly.  Understanding your clothing personality will make it easier for you to consistently look stylish.  This is another large topic and Diana gives a good summary of it here.

My favorite part of the whole book is Diana's coverage of clothing capsules.

This chapter contains lots of really useful picture illustrations.  I recommend Wardrobe Magic for this chapter alone!  Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of other great information and useful checklists, but to me this is the highlight of the ebook!

Part 2, Preparing Your Closet

Having covered the theory this part of the ebook leads you through preparing your wardrobe by...

• Assessing your needs

• Closet cleaning

• Creating a shopping list

• Determining your budget

Assessing your lifestyle and understanding clothing "levels" is important for dressing appropriately.  I like Diana's lifestyle assessment approach.  It can be challenging to quantify your lifestyle and the ebook gives an easy approach to follow.  There's also a useful checklist of suggested wardrobe basic garments by lifestyle category.

There's great practical advice on how to identify your clothing personality, how to identify the look you want to achieve for the upcoming fashion season and how to build your shopping list.  It doesn't mean you'll buy it all in one go, but it does mean you'll be less inclined to impulse buy, since you'll now have a prioritized shopping list (especially if you keep your list in your handbag).

This part also includes more great practical examples of how to put together clothing capsules from within your current wardrobe and for your different lifestyle needs.  The wardrobe worksheet and the example of how to use it are useful tools to help with remembering your capsules and for starting to build your shopping list.

The first time around it could take you a while to work through the wardrobe cleanout and planning steps, especially if you haven't done a wardrobe clearout in a while. However, the good news is that in subsequent cleanouts the process will get a whole lot faster and easier.

Do you set yourself a clothing budget?  There's financially sound advice on how to set your budget along with worked examples and strategies for prioritizing your clothing purchases.

Part 3, Pulling It All Together

In this final part the ebook covers shopping advice for what could be called investment dressing including...

• What to look for in a garment to ensure it will last and to ensure you'll want to wear it again and again

• How to determine if the garment is a good buy regardless of whether the ticket price is low or high

Periodic wardrobe maintenance is also covered.

Wardrobe Organized!

Wardrobe Magic covers all the style elements needed to achieve a wardrobe that works for all your lifestyle activities.  If you follow the advice you will be able to put together an organized wardrobe that allows you to effortlessly looked well "pulled together".  To get there, just like anything worthwhile, takes a bit of time and effort. However, it really is worthwhile.

This ebook is particularly useful if you already know your best colors and your body shape and you're now ready to get to grips with the next aspects of how to dress well.  Especially if you want to achieve the look you want without spending a fortune.

"I just ordered Wardrobe Magic yesterday and I LOVE it! It is filled with so much information that I feel I can actually put to use.
Thanks so much!"
Gail -- Plainfield, IL, USA

Learn more about Wardrobe Magic here