What's the WORST bit of style and beauty advice you've ever been given?

[LazyCake]

Just that really, as a follow on from the recent thread on best pieces of advice.

Me first: I often hear the advice that women should wear less makeup as they get older, go for more muted colours and effects, etc. To me, this seems to be a tantamount to saying 'fade out, don't draw attention, become invisible.' My Dad's new girlfriend is 70+ and wears loads of makeup, which looks absolutely fab, IMO.

What are your worst pieces of advice?

'You'll look healthier with a tan.' So glad I ignored that one.

So called anti aging products. Fucked my skin right over.

Use lemon juice to naturally dye yor hair blonde. 15 yr old me shunned the sun in (no bad thing) and duly sat in the sun with lemon juice in my hair. Result was crispy dried out hair the same colour it was before and which took weeks of conditioning to get back to normal and bleach stains all over my favourite t shirt !
Now I wisely pay lots of money for a professional to add 'sun kissed' look to my hair!!

Ha ha, the lemon juice! I remember trying that with a friend in our youth but my mum didn't have any lemon juice so we used concentrated lemon squash.
Got no blonder, just wasps and sticky tangled hair.

Nettle . We are so on to you Hemsley sisters.

lol at putting cordial in your hair!

A few years ago, it was the fashion to wear a belt directly under your breasts. It looked daft on everyone. Gok Wan was a big fan of it, saying that it was flattering because it was drawing attention to the slimmest part of the body.

Except for people whose waist is smaller than their ribcage.

It sounds well weird esp. if the dress was shaped with a waist. It was what the women wore in Jane Austen's time, the dress went straight down from the bust. to the floor of course.

To grow my hair long, what worked in my 20's looked awful at 40.

That vaseline was a sun block

"You should wash your hair as often as you wash your face"

Er, how about no?

This is the kind of thing I meant, ppeatfruit

Looks frightful.

Yes it doesn't do anything for her figure that's for sure Derelict

"You're so tiny you can wear anything" No actually, floaty tops make me look pregnant. Quite a lot of stuff doesn't suit me, because it's not about size, it's about shape and style and colour. Gah.

I've tried on loads of dresses cut like that, especially in winter 2014/15 (by last year I had worked out that those styles didn't suit me so wasn't trying them on) and things which are cut to my actual waist, which does actually go in a bit, look much better.

They would have been brilliant when I was pregnant though. When of course dresses like that were only rarely to be found.

"Someone at work asked if 'everything was ok' when I arrived (with curls) looking like I'd slept with my head in a hedge."

I genuinely guffawed with laughter when I read that!

I hope the old 'bright scarf makes you look slimmer ' has stopped, because it never did, did it?

Pluck your own eyebrows