Guest Writer: Adele Booth from Fashion for Lunch breaks the Fashion Rules

Adele Booth is one of the writers responsible for satisfying our cravings for frequent fashion tit-bits, in the form of posts at Fashion for Lunch. We guest posted for FFL a while ago, and are glad that Adele is doing the same for Fashion Strand, giving us all a Monday morning mind-set makeover with regards to wardrobe dilemas...

Breaking the Fashion Rules.

No not for anarchy's sake, but just because I can't seem to stop it happening. I'm massive on rules personally..no feet on the seats, keep to the right, do NOT talk about Fight Club. All the biggies.

But the rules of fashion? I can feel that twitch starting up again. Trinny & Susannah, for all their mammary-squeezing confidence bolstering, continued to haunt my nightmares and plague my mirror time long after the ”ahh doesn't she look lovely and grown'up?” bit was over. I mean, can I do roll neck, realistically? What about maroon? Quick it's 7.45 already, what does the book say!

A brief walk through..I am short (5ft 3ish), about as pale as they come (on holiday, I get asked if it hurts), and red-headed (thank you Mr Schwarzkopf). This is the 'Ask the Expert''s dream misanthrope. I envisage an entire office of interns at some Weekly Mag rushing around cupboards as we speak, flinging about khaki tops, pencil skirts and brown mascara wands. As far as fashion goes, I have distinct and officially bounded limits.

Rule 1- Wear the 'right' colours.

There lies a mathematical department in a university somewhere, who (and ONLY they) truly knows which colours suit who based on an aesthetic transcript. They must input the data into a giant iPad, which eventually comes out as inscribed reference numbers, and then the retail division of the SAS slap the lot onto big charts ready to place behind the cash desks in Whistles.

The rest of us just make it up. Again with the paleness: I'll read cool tones in one instance, then I'll see 'go warm' elsewhere..stick to pastels..stay away from mint..girl just heed the colour wheel. Anything beyond 'yellow+green= blue' is wayyy too sophisticated as logic for me. And those rules only really apply to plasticine anyway.

Despite being told “not a chance love”, I will continue to wear yellow as often as possible. And I'm taking canary, oh yes.

Rule 2- Dress to Your Shape.

This one, surely, is the most well-intentioned mortal sin known to mankind. If I ever have to read about dressing my 'apple' again I'm sure I'll lose it...If anything, an attempt to simplify what is a very complex issue (er, it is the human body after all, and Channel 4 tells us how mysterious that is on a regular basis) by the nice and cuddly fashion media, has surely muddled the whole thing forever. Now I just pick and choose depending on my mood. “Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be..pear.” I blame Gok for a lot, I really do.

As a confuddled shortie, I will continue to wear the midi AND the maxi regardless. With FLATS. Scandalous, I know.

Rule 3- Coming to a conclusion

There's so many rules I could go on forever- oh it looks like I have- but as you can see, this is an issue close to my heart. A solution? And I believe it's something most of us end up doing anyway without this level of haranguing. Easy-peasy simplification. Just getting on with it, y'know?

Adele looking lovely in her favourite shade

It's nice to know that if all else fails on the trendy trapeze dress front I can always 'cinch in the waist' and put on some sexy heels and still, by the very laws of physics that come to define our cosmos, feel mega mega fabulous darling. But the only thing I ever find truly stabilising is the having a go and then laughing about it part. Sort of like that other mysterious rule-laden domain, 'your relationships'.  A lot of the time I'm gonna look proper damn silly, and enough of the time I'm gonna look smashin', but at the end of the day no one, not even Gok, really gives a crap- so why should I?