Jess’ brother Stephen, pre-makeover |
Have you ever been really excited by something and you are not sure why? That is pretty much how I feel about dressing my little brother up in clothes. Ever since we were children I have wanted to convince him to be my life-sized doll and play dress up with me. There are pictures of us as a two headed ghost or him as some great warrior. But the really exciting thing was when I would try and see how much girl clothing I could get him to wear. On the rare occasion he would willing play, I would have to exchange a piece of candy for each piece of clothing. He would put the dress on over his dirty shirt and shorts, one piece of candy. I would then haggle for him to wear a necklace, finally in exchange for two pieces of candy! And so the game would go all afternoon, until I realized I was never going to get him to wear tights and should leave it be. It was then that we would prance around the living room and he would call himself Stephanie. I think my mother really didn’t know what to do in those situations, but was a big believer in letting kids figure out those kinds of things out for themselves and let us be.
Years later I still love dress up and jokingly told Lindsey we should give my brother, Stephen, a “man makeover” during our fall fashion theme. When I half-heartedly made the comment to my brother, he surprised me with his willingness to agree. He said the timing was right as he was in need of some new clothes and would go along with my “project.”
Stephen has a lot of brown shirts and jeans |
We started the project in the most basic way possible. We made Stephen bring over all his clothes and try them on for us so we could get a feel for what was going on with his current style. He could talk to us about what he liked about it and what he was looking to change. From this we realized two main things to focus on. The first was that Stephen was wearing shirts that did not fit him properly. They were too baggy and we explained that the seam on the shoulder should actually hit the shoulder. By wearing the looser clothes he was appearing to be a larger guy, rather than the leaner build he has. The second was that Stephen needed more color in his look. He had almost exclusively brown and black. It was a shame for him not to be utilizing color to make his blue eyes pop.
Stephen also has a lot of dark collared shirts! |
Tune in tomorrow for part two of our makeover story and Stephen’s big reveal.
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