Nina Garcia - The Little Black Book of Style

The Little Black Book of Style

Nina Garcia

Illustrations by RUBEN TOLEDO

Inspiration gives no warnings.

GABRIEL GARCA MRQUEZ

Contents

I GREW UP IN AN unbearably hot city on the northwest tip of Colombia, a place where style and art were part of the culture. I was constantly surrounded by incredibly vibrant, confident, feminine women, women who knew who they were and what image they wanted to convey to the world. They knew how to buy the right clothes for their bodies, how to edit out what did not suit them, and how to stay away from fads and maintain an aura of eternal style. It is my purpose with this book to inspire you the way these women inspired me.

WHERE IM COMING FROM:

Plastic surgeries, White linens, and L. L. Bean Duck Boots

IN THE MORNINGS IN BARRANQUILLA, I would sit on my mothers closet floor and watch her. My mother was the kind of woman who gave the seamstress the key to our house (and later convinced her to move in), but kept her closet door locked at all times. Her closet was enormous, extraordinary, and off-limitsnobody was to go in there without her. Every piece of clothing was meticulously cared for, and I was not to touch anything. Each dress, skirt, and shirt was perfectly altered to suit her body and she would change them, adding sleeves, raising hemlines, to make them her own. My mothers closet revealed who she was: elegant, a frustrated actress, and a woman obsessed. She had to have her hair done every day; she refused to leave the house without lipstick; Lord knows how many plastic surgeries she had. As a child, I never understood why she cared so much.

My father was incredibly charming and incredibly handsome, and such a player. He had the power to make me think that white linen was the only fabric a man should wear. It was unrelentingly hot in our industrial town near the equator; to stay comfortable, my father wore only white linen pants and white guayaberas (linen shirts from Cuba). Every day I would watch him leave for work in that same outfit, and every day I thought he looked amazing. He was obsessed with traveling (my parents were quite an obsessive couple). My parents would take me out of school for weeks at a time and we would go around the world. Japan, India, France, Italy. My father always took us somewhere cold during the winter months, usually to the mountains skiing with a stop in New York or Paris. Since so much of my fathers time was spent in the oppressive heat and humidity of Barranquilla, he really seemed infatuated with winter. On all of these trips, I learned about the culture, the fashions, the art, but most of all how differently everyone dressed. When we returned home, my mother would have piles of new clothes in need of alteration. My father would change back into his white linens and head to work. And I would return to school in the newest Parisian fashions, but a month behind on long division. I would complain to my father, who was much less concerned about it than I was. But you saw the world, he would say. Theres always time to get caught up on long division!

When I was fifteen, my parents sent me to an all-girls boarding school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. I strutted onto campus in a short skirt, high heels, and rabbit fur. There I stood, surrounded by khakis, jeans, pastel cable-knit sweaters, ribbon belts. Look at the Colombian princess, the American girls must have been thinking. Were gonna eat this one for lunch. I looked around this little bubble of preppiness. The girls all played lacrosse and they all dressed the same, more like boys than girls. I remember thinking, Where the hell am I? Before this moment, I considered myself really American and I thought I had seen everything. I had been to New York, Paris, Rome, but I had never seen this thing they called preppy. But there I was, in maybe the preppiest town in America, nearly hyperventilating from my first experience with culture shock. My mother took me into the Wellesley town center to see if we could find something that would help me blend in a bit. The only item I found somewhat appealing was a pink angora cardigan with pearl buttons (I know). I regretted the purchase almost immediately and the cardigan was soon stuffed into the far depths of my closet, never to be worn again. I decided to hold my ownI was not going to be intimidated, especially by girls who wore L.L. Bean duck boots.

Nothing can prepare a Colombian girl for the sight of one hundred American girls trudging across campus in duck boots. Im sure I thought myself quite superior, but now I admire a lot of those very American things. I think that blue jeans and a white shirt can be the most fabulous outfit. Its all about how you wear it. And I love a Chanel bag, but I also see the perfection in an L.L. Bean canvas tote. Functional, chic, simple. Its about how you carry it. So I am proud to say that I owe a lot of my style to a strong, colorful Colombian woman, who taught me that how you present yourself to the world is important. And I owe a lot to a man in white linen who shunned mathematics and instead pushed me to see the world. And I also owe quite a bit to a group of American prep school girls, who gave me my first culture shock, who gave me the opportunity to hold my own, and who understood simplicity long before I did (though Im still not sure about those boots).

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Fashion fades, style is eternal. COCO CHANEL

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This book will change your life. Okay, maybe thats a bit dramatic. Maybe it wont change your life. But it will change your closet, which will in turn change your attitude, which can in fact change your life. So maybe its not a bit dramatic. You be the judge.

This is not a book of rules. It is a book on style. I am not going to tell you when to wear white pants or when not to wear sandals. Instead, I am going to help you build your style confidence, find what works for you, edit your closet, teach you what to look for, and give you a few tricks of the trade. This is a crash course on style references, insider tips, and avoiding being the fashion victim. With this book I offer my own insights, a smattering of suggestions, some personal philosophies, and a bit of history. I hope to help simplify your approach to personal style by helping you build a foundation, cultivated through the perspective of a fashion editor who has already done the legwork (years of fashion shows and Ambien-aided flightsoh, youre welcome).

This book is meant to awaken the fashion editor inside you and help you decide what image you want to convey to the world. Above all, The Little Black Book of Style is meant to inspire you and make style fun. And if it changes your life along the way, well, dont say I never did anything for you.

Nina

Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful. SOPHIA LOREN

W hen a beautiful woman walks into a room, I may glance up for a moment, but I soon return to my entre or my conversation or the dessert menu. Lets be honest: beauty is not all that interesting (and certainly not more interesting than the dessert menu). But when a confident woman walks into a room, it is entrancing. Ill watch as she moves with poise and self-possession. She is not usually the one in the plain black dress. She is the one in the interesting shirt and the vintage skirt, and I immediately want to know where she got them. And she may not be the most stunningly gorgeous woman Ive ever seen, but she has a way about her that can make her one of the most intriguing. Confidence is captivating, it is powerful, and it does not fadeand that is endlessly more interesting than beauty.

The first and most important step to developing style is to project this kind of confidence. The kind of confidence that tells others that you respect yourself, love yourself, and dress up for yourself and nobody else. You are your own muse. Style comes from knowing who you are and who you want to be in the world; it does not come from wanting to be somebody else, or wanting to be thinner, shorter, taller, prettier. Many of the most stylish women in the world have not been great beauties, but they have all drawn from an enormous amount of self-confidence. They made us think they were beautiful simply by believing it themselves. They did not let anyone else define them; they defined themselves.

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