How To Dress Like an It Girl

Stuck in a fashion rut, or just jonesing to bump your look to the next level? Creative director Joe Zee takes four devoted ELLE readers from under the radar to ultrachic.

First Joe started with 30 year old Ms.Aivette Moreno: 

Aivette's hometown is Baltimore,Maryland and she works as a registered nurse. 

Style Challenge: When she’s not shuttling her six-year-old daughter to and from school, Aivette spends weekends working in the O.R. Read: She’s always in scrubs. So when she told me she was craving a bit of glamour and had always been attracted to menswear looks, I knew just the thing: this Helmut Newton-esque classic tuxedo, with a French-inspired bow-blouse underneath, balancing old-school elegance with modern cool.

Then she went onto Emily Homonoff who is a 22 year old recent graduate. Emily's hometown is in EastGreenwich, Rhode Island. 

Style Challenge: Just out of Hampshire College, Emily is on the job hunt. And while studying the politics of pop culture may have prepped her to do her dream job in publishing, it didn’t quite school her in what to wear to land the gig. To amp up her personal style—and to have her make a killer first impression in interviews—I dressed Emily in easy, preppy layers with a confident twist: a mix of patterns boldly paired with leopard lace-ups.

As Joe moved on he came across Alicia Ellison who is a 23 year old assistant manager at Sarabeth's in TriBeCa, New York City. Where she originally came from her hometown in Kenilworth,New Jersey. 

Style Challenge: Alicia’s personality couldn’t be more vivacious and welcoming, which makes her a perfect fit for the hospitality industry. Embracing vibrant colors, though? Not so much. She gravitates toward earth tones and—despite that gorgeous figure—loose shapes. She revealed, however, that she harbored a secret love for the color red. To warm her up to the bright side, I paired a scarlet sweater with shiny black pants, a zebra-striped coat, and offbeat heels.

And now last but not least we have 32 year old Jenny Crane. Jenny is a associate art buyer at Art.com in Walnut Creek, California.

Style Challenge: When your job is to scout new artwork, having some edge should be a given, right? Well, Jenny’s old uniform consisted of sweaters and jeans and the occasional vintage dress—generally in her favorite color: pink. She was desperate to shed Elle Woods and find ELLE chic, so I opted for muted tones and clean lines. While maintaining a measure of girlishness, this circle skirt in a slick, high-tech synthetic material is undeniably cutting-edge.

Now the man who has helped these fine women into making them who they were truly meant to be, Mr.Joe Zee.

When he started as ELLE’s creative director back in 2007, he had a clear mission: to make sure that the idea of the ELLE woman was alive and prominent in each photo, on every page of the magazine. In his first month on the job, the design director and him hung up a list of words in their offices—modern, sexy, strong, cool, smart, fun—in order to keep the code of the ELLE girl dancing in our heads. She was this life-loving, blog-reading, savvy-shopping, smart individual who was as passionate about Balenciaga as she was about, say, Barack.

In reality, of course, there is not one individual woman who defines ELLE. And that’s proven to him every day as a parade of ELLE girls—who also happen to be ELLE staffers—walk by my glass-walled office. Editors and interns roam the halls clad in everything from classic Manolo pumps to studded Saint Laurent boots to Converse sneakers, talking about everything from the latest political throwdown on Meet the Press to the most recent celeb engagement on the cover of Us Weekly. It’s not what they wear but how they wear it: If you’re ELLE, you know it, because you own it.
For this month’s Make Better Issue, he had the pleasure of styling four definitively ELLE girls, each of whom reads the magazine every month and exudes the spirit every day. Late last year, when they were prepping for this issue, they sent out an invitation via ELLE.com and social media, asking readers in need of a style pick-me-up to make the case for why they should come to New York and be ELLE-ified by yours truly. The submissions were overwhelming; it was nearly impossible to choose, but we eventually whittled down the pile of entries to the most enthusiastic and compelling of the bunch: Aivette, Emily, Alicia, and Jenny—all of whom arrived at our shoot already fabulous, then waltzed out decked in new looks from H&M and rocking a little more spring in their step.