First, this is NOT about exercise. This discussion of how to create longer, leaner looking legs is about style choices. How you can make your legs appear longer and leaner than they really are by what you wear.

In the upcoming updated Chic & Slim Toujours: aging beautifully like those chic French women I am including the best information I could find from the experts on what styles, colors and accessories are best to make your legs look longer and leaner. And, of course, in the process make you look chicer and slimmer.

But do these techniques really work? All the accompanying photos I found with this advice used very tall, very young, very thin fashion models who had very long, lean legs. The question: Do the longer and leaner looking techniques work for those of us who are more normal height — and who perhaps do not have legs modeled on beanpoles?

Before I included this information in the revised Chic & Slim Toujours, I thought it a good idea to test this collected advice. And who better to test the techniques on than on myself? Absolutely no one would call my legs long and lean. I am not quite 5 foot 4 inches tall (1.6 meters) with short, stocky legs that are certainly not becoming any longer or leaner as I am proceeding through my 70s. If these ideas work on me, they would surely work on many women.

So I set up the camera and rooted around in my wardrobe for the clothes and shoes to test the experts’ theories.

Did the experts' recommendations work? Mostly, yes, I am happy to say. But what I discovered was, that within the general rule, there were all sorts of exceptions and modifying circumstances. Additionally, just as beauty is often in the “eye of the beholder,” often I found that the call as to whether one color and cut of pants and style of top in combination with a certain style of shoe made the legs look longer and leaner than another was also subjective.

Following are three pages with results of my longer, leaner looking legs techniques tests. View the photos that I took wearing various test outfits, read my discoveries and comments, and make your own decisions about the general rules the experts advised — and about what modifying factors might help or hinder these techniques with your wardrobe on your own body.

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