Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [15]
When traveling, label an envelope with the date and city to contain reimbursable taxi receipts, hotel and restaurant charges, airline ticket carbons, etc. There is nothing more difficult than trying to sort out the debris from a week of traveling to different cities with different expense accounts. Soon, the cities, airlines, restaurants, and hotels all fade into one unrecallable blur.
If you change to an evening purse, consider keeping your traveler’s checks, cash, and credit cards in a money belt.
Once a week, ruthlessly toss out everything you can possibly get along without, keeping that purse as lean and uncluttered as possible.
Good taste in jewelry should not change with what’s currently popular. Similarly, the public person must remember that what looks good in public or on a TV camera does not alter with the changes in fashions.
Your jewelry should enhance your appearance without becoming the main attraction. A few genuine pieces, worn discreetly, are always in the best of taste.
The basic rule is that anything that sparkles or shines too much, dangles in the light (such as earrings), or rattles and makes noise (such as multiple bracelets) will distract attention away from your face and what you are saying. Thus, large surfaces of shiny gold, rhinestones, diamonds, some silver-colored jewelry, and flat white jewelry (such as large fake pearls, white disk earrings, bone or ivory bracelets) are not the best choices.
Big shiny earrings, larger than the eyes, interfere with your eye contact. A strand of oversized beads attracts attention as it migrates back and forth over the chest. No one should hide behind big, gaudy, fake jewelry, which can subliminally transmit insecurity and bad taste.
Better choices for jewelry include:
• Pearls, especially colored pearls such as gray, blue, or beige;
• Dull, satin-finished gold or silver jewelry;
• Filigree pins;
• Cameos;
• Beads in subdued, rich colors, especially semiprecious stones (such as hematite, dark jade, garnet, onyx, tiger’s eye, amethyst, lapis lazuli, or amber) or lighter stones (such as pink quartz, coral, or blue-lace agate);
• Colored, semiprecious stones set in pins or earrings, especially in the darker colors such as amethyst, garnet, or dark-blue topaz;
• Antique or antique-looking jewelry;
• Enamel or cloisonné jewelry in rich, jewel-toned colors, such as deep purple disk earrings or pins.
It takes courage to wear plain jewelry, but the public person must never forget that the wrong jewelry can detract from, rather than enhance, a public image. TV correspondents are often seen removing their big jewelry pieces before going on camera, then putting them back on afterward.
I have one client who is the vice-president of a brokerage house. In her private life she wears a plain, expensive suit, but always seems to top it with scarves, a couple of gold chains, and a rope of genuine pearls. On her, it looks wonderful. But when she started doing frequent business-related TV commentaries, she asked my advice about her appearance on camera. Now, when she comes into the TV studio, she unloads all those accessories down to the plain suit. She exchanges her big earrings for small ones. She goes on camera, tapes her “piece,” comes out of the studio, and puts everything back on. The reason she does this is simple: After I encouraged her to study her video tapes, she saw and learned to understand what the camera sees.
Shoes. A word about shoes. Show me a woman with pain lines around the eyes, and I suspect that her feet hurt. High heels were never made for walking very far, and I feel sorry for the woman who teeters down the street with the pelvis thrown into an unnatural position. Granted, you can’t wear hiking boots on a city street, but these days one sees women striding along in comfortable footwear with the high heels tucked into the briefcase.
As we will discuss