We’re entering into the season of Valentine’s Day, and I wanted to try something different instead of writing about gift guides and date night ideas. This post is dedicated to how to make every basic outfit look amazing.

In my last blog post, I talked briefly about how I feel that similar to how having a great skincare routine can make your makeup look fantastic, having a fitness routine does exactly the same thing for each of your outfit looks. I want to go one step further today. Using the same analogy, you can’t expect to have a great makeup look without having the right makeup. You want to pick makeup that is bendable, pigmented, and suits your skin tone and type.

Clothes work very much the same way. Picking the right clothes is so crucial to knowing how to wear every outfit with the utmost confidence. To me, the trick to making every outfit look amazing is exactly this: you have to pick the right clothes that highlight and accentuates the best part of your body.

I chose this more basic outfit to show that you don’t have to spend your entire paycheck on a new wardrobe in order to look like a million bucks. Using this t-shirt and jeans outfit, I’m going to break down what exactly makes this simple outfit look great.

tip #1: find out what your body shape is

Finding your body shape type is not limited to people within a certain weight range. This applies for everyone, and being familiar with your body is the first step to picking the right clothes.

Oprah has a fantastic article that helps you break down the different body shape types and how to measure yourself. To summarize, the options are inverted triangle, triangle, rectangle, and hourglass. My body shape is an hourglass, which means that my shoulders and hips are the same size with a more defined waistline.

Different types of body shapes dictate that different dresses will look better on certain people. A mermaid dress would flatter an hourglass body, just as an A-line dress with standard wide-set straps would suit an inverted triangle body.

A general rule of thumb is this: knowing what your body shape is will tell you exactly what type of clothes to shop for!

Since I have an hourglass body shape, I like to pick shirts that are more defined. Bulky shirts and dresses don’t flatter me as much as clothes with a defined waistline do.

tip #2: find out what you won’t compromise

Some people won’t show skin, no matter what. Some people won’t sacrifice comfort.

For me, even though I’ll occasionally sacrifice comfort, I will never sacrifice the ability to wear underwear. There are some super cute pants with cutouts at the side to show skin that I just can’t wear because I have to wear underwear. There are also some types of dresses that rely solely on tape to hold the gals up top in place, and I just can’t feel comfortable knowing that I might suffer a nip slip if my fashion tape malfunctions.

This eliminates a significant number of clothes that no matter how cute they are, I will never wear.

What I constantly see is women buying clothes that are so cute and then never wearing them because they realize that XYZ reason prevents them from feeling comfortable.

No shirt, pants, or dress is worth you feeling uncomfortable because you’re constantly tugging at your shirt to make sure you don’t have a nip slip, or stumbling in heels because you prefer flats.

Go through Pinterest and Instagram and look through all the outfit ideas that you’re presented with and make a list. Is there a dress that is super cute on a blogger, but it would require you to wear heels and you hate heels? Make a note of that. When you have a list of everything that you dislike wearing, that full list is your list of things you won’t compromise for fashion.

My list looks like this:

1. Heels taller than 4 inches (stilettos taller than 3.5 inches)
2. Bottoms I can’t wear my normal underwear with
3. Tops I can’t wear a bra with
4. Scratchy sweaters (typically wool for me)
5. Shirts that are too tight at the armpits
6. Flare pants
7. Any clothes that I would lament being in if a zombie apocalypse were to occur at that exact moment

tip #3: find clothes made with good quality materials

I know you might look at this tip and roll your eyes. You might think, “didn’t this girl promise me that I won’t have to spend millions of dollars on clothes to look good?”

You are right in thinking this; I’m not asking you to spend more than what your comfortable with, but something that I find incredibly important is picking clothes that will last through more than 10 washes. I often see girls that clothes with fabric that easily pills and get frustrated they have to buy a new shirt.

I’m not saying that Forever 21 clothing is always terrible quality, or that fabric pilling can’t happen to clothes made by higher end retailers (though in theory, they should not).

There are so many different types of materials that when used to make different types of clothing, work better than others. My recommendation is to do your research before you buy something. If you find a sweater with a polyester blend, research to find out whether this will pill easily or look like you’ve owned it for 10 years after one wear (spoiler: never buy a sweater with a polyester blend).

tell me what your favorite clothes are!

Those are all of my tips for you today; there are so many resources out there, and everyone has different tastes.

I would love to hear what works for you guys and what doesn’t. Especially, if you make that list of what things in fashion makes you super uncomfortable (refer to my list in the tip #2 section for reference), I’d love to see what your list looks like!

Let me know what you think, and remember, no one knows your body better than you do. If you have tried these tips and you realized they helped you make every outfit look amazing, then I want to hear all about how you were able to make that happen!

Lastly, if you are a Lakers fan and you just need this shirt to support the Los Angeles basketball team, you can get this exact shirt here.