Don’t be afraid to look good, ladies

New York Fashion Week has arrived. I’m using this time in the year to foster reflection on what we put in our closets and on our backs.

As you read this and think about what your own personal style means for you, fashion week will come and go. It will showcase what we’ll be wearing come spring, before we even get into our winter coats. But, at any time during the year, I want you to dress it up.

Poring over photos and articles of Marc Jacobs’ new spring collection, I noticed that the designer chose not to accompany his East-meets-West theme with high heels — flats and sandals with everything.

It’s a bold move, because everyone knows that high heels make the wearer look better, leaner and sexier.

I think flats are fine with garments retailing in excess of $3,000, but I’m making a call to the ladies of our campus to bring back the high heel this year.

The simplest pair of jeans that you wear every day can be made into your favorite outfit just with an inch or so boost in the height of your heel.

I asked a few UNC girls what their preferred footwear was.

They, of course, said keeping a pair of heels intact while walking the uneven bricks on campus was next to impossible.

They said they loved to wear them when they go out on the town, trying their best to dress to impress. Some said, sadly, that they caused blisters.

The last group has an easy problem to fix: Buy the correct size, not too loose nor too tight. Not all women wear the right-sized shoe, and of those even a smaller portion have blisters.

Feet are rugged.

A little high-heeled femininity really helps the ruggedness to be wrung out.

And where’s the lipstick? Most girls I spoke with on this subject were either afraid or reluctant to smear color on their lips.

They thought it made them look like they “tried too hard,” as one girl put it. Some said their fear stemmed from looking like their grandmothers. They associated lipstick with the color red and conjured up memories of “Leave it to Beaver” in Technicolor.

Lipstick doesn’t have to be red, although it is much appreciated. But it is predominantly red because of our species’ inherent laws of attraction.

The same principle can be applied to the long, slenderizing effect high heels have on the legs, as having longer legs is associated with higher fertility. Red lips and red cheek color show that the female circulatory system is doing its job, and a bit of accentuation doesn’t hurt.

Lipsticks can be of a more moderate tone, if not nude. They smooth out the various imperfections on the lips and make them a uniform color. Gloss doesn’t do that alone.

All the makeup artists I know line the lips, apply the lipstick and top it off with a coat of gloss. The attractive properties of gloss on lips are evident.

Combined, as some of the girls said, you will “stand out.”

Four-inch heels and red-orange lips aren’t the best way to duck under the cover of a crowd at a party.

If you want to stand out, use these tricks of the trade. They’re proven, and there’s a reason they’ve been passed down to the generations before us.

I’m a patron of the arts; most definitely the art of attraction.

Justin Chandler Wilcox is a sophomore philosophy major from Hickory. Contact Justin at justinchandlerwilcox@gmail.com.