Less is more

Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper had a great outfit going here. And then something attacked her necklace:

The Congresswoman's face is a nice long oval shape. The neckline of her top hits her at just the right point to balance the length of her face. The curve of her necklace hits at just the right point to balance the width of her face. All good. And then the extra embellishment on the necklace mucks up those nice clear balance points. It's too bad.

Don't get me wrong. I like this necklace trend in general. I like stuuuuff. (I promise this is the last time I will quote Clueless in this forum.) Necklaces with multiple embellishments can add significant visual interest to your look. But if they draw that interest to the wrong spot, you haven't accomplished anything.

Kathy Dahlkemper in too much of a good thing

Back in February, we saw Kathy Dahlkemper make very successful use of animal print in her wardrobe. I encouraged you to learn from her example by sticking to two fairly simple guidelines:

1. Use a print in an abstract scale.
2. Keep the proportion of your outfit in animal print minimal.

These were useful guidelines, which Rep. Dahlkemper illustrated perfectly. So I cannot explain to you why just two months later, she violated both of them:

This jacket is so distracting that I actually checked her official biography to make sure she doesn't have a hobby of big game hunting that I didn't know about - searching from some reason, any reason why she would choose to wear this. It's so unfortunate, because the congresswoman clearly had something to say about defense spending, but she's being drowned out by her clothes.

Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper discusses statutory pay-go

Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper spoke on the House floor about statutory pay-go legislation. She wore leopard print. Don't be alarmed:

It probably goes without saying that animal prints can be tricky to wear in the public realm. There are two reasons why this outfit works:

1. Scale. This is a large leopard print, which makes it a bit more abstract and moves away from looking like she's literally wearing an animal skin.

2. Proportion. The amount the print in her outfit is limited to less than a quarter of what we can see on camera, and less than 10% of her entire outfit.

You can do it, just be aware of scale and proportion, and keep the rest of your outfit very simple. Really. Don't be afraid.