Winona Dimeo-Ediger

If you’re at an amazing restaurant, eat the amazing food there! Enjoy it! Don’t limit yourself to one bite of expensive entree because you frantically forced down a pound of undressed salad before the bread basket showed up. Eat salad for its own sake. Eat it because you want to eat it, not because you’re trying NOT to eat something else.

When you’re helping people zip up dresses and watching their reactions to certain items of clothing, you start noticing patterns. Here are four of the phrases I hear most often in the dressing room, and how I wish — oh, how I wish! — I could respond.

Maybe you want to downplay an area you’re feeling insecure about, maybe you’re not in the mood to wear eye-catching colors, but that doesn’t mean you have to buy clothes that effectively make you disappear completely.

"Your quest to stay true to your retro aesthetic is not impossible. Here are a few tips for incorporating your love of vintage into a modern, casual wardrobe."

5. You start feeling insecure about the distinct lack of rappers in your social circle.

You’re washing dishes or sorting laundry or grocery shopping, half-listening to a random Pandora station when it happens: Your favorite song from 7th grade starts playing.

Dear Winona, I’m addicted to black. Exhibit A: my closet. Am I fashionably lazy? Or is it because it just goes with everything—mainly me?

These things could never happen. But WHAT IF THEY DID?

Make a u-turn into the darkest recesses of your psyche. Wonder about your life purpose: Were you put on earth to stare at computer screens and pay bills and die? Cringe while imagining what your idealistic college self would think of you now. Conclude that your life lacks creativity and meaning and simple joys.

Recently, I challenged myself to something radical: What if I didn't wear makeup for awhile?