Vanessa Valiente: the cure for Costco couture

Vanessa Valiente is San Diego’s original fashion blogger and an elite personal style consultant. Her services sit behind a long wait list and a battery of screening questionnaires, and for good reason. She knows what she’s doing.

Vanessa got her start as a stylist on “crappy television shows.” Three days after posting an ad for the general public on Craigslist, she had her first client — a man. Now, about 35 percent of her clientele is male. Most of them come to her wearing Costco couture.

I asked her what constitutes the essence of a stylish look. She answered without hesitation.

“Fit, texture and color. As long as you have colors that pair well, textures that pair well, and it fits you, you’re good to go... If all those things work, you could be wearing a workout outfit [and be stylish]. You could be wearing around-the-house clothes. Grocery chic.”

If your grocery shopping attire is un-chic, don’t feel badly about it. You’re not alone. “Most people are not stylish, period. Men, women. That’s what makes stylish people so bold looking. Your eyes immediately go to the stylish person, because most people in the room are not stylish. If you walk into a room where everyone is stylish, you don’t know where to look.”

I asked her if San Diego deserves its reputation as an unstylish city.

“Men are dressing very casually, but what I love about the style here is that you can see a man in flip-flops standing next to a man in a suit and no one thinks that’s weird. San Diego is very versatile.”

For the bewildered, she offers a very simple nutshell: “Match your shoes to your belt and tuck your shirt in and you’re going to look pretty good.”

You can read more from Vanessa at vstyleblog.com and vstyleformen.com.