A lovely reader recently wrote to me with the following conundrum: “I have smooth, wavy hair, with textured skin and have read your post about how to wear texture when you’re naturally smooth, but as I’m the opposite, I wanted some tips on how to wear smooth fabrics when you’re textured.”

Ways to Add Smoothness to Your Outfits When You Are Textured

If this sounds like you, either your hair is coarser, wavier, curlier, or more textured in its cut, or your skin is no longer as smooth as it was as a child. How do you wear smooth fabrics without that contrast between fabric and person becoming the loudest thing in the room?

1. Wear Busy or Dense Prints and Patterns

Print and pattern break up a surface.  Just like the waves of your hair or expression lines earned by years of wisdom, break up the smoother surface of your features.

Think animal prints, florals, paisley, abstract prints, digital prints – the choices are endless. The style of prints and patterns is very much a personal preference.   If you’re more feminine, you may prefer a floral, polka dot, or paisley.  Relaxed and casual may like a horizontal stripe or check.  Creative, think wearable art, whimsical or abstract prints.  Love some drama?  Add some animal print.

The style of print may also relate to your colouring.  High value contrast prints (light and dark) will suit those with darker hair and lighter skin, whilst lower value contrast prints suit those who have more similar depth of hair, eyes and skin.  I’ve got lots of tips on choosing prints to suit your contrast here.

Scale matters too. Larger prints suit taller or more generously scaled women. Smaller, denser prints work better for petite or finer-boned frames. Getting the scale wrong is the most common print mistake, and it’s an easy fix once you know about it.

2. Wear Textural Prints

This is a clever workaround: a fabric that looks textured even when it isn’t.

Marle knits are created from a variegated yarn, which changes colour, most typically seen in sportswear – think that grey sportswear fabric you’ll see in so many track pants and sweatshirts. Even though the surface of the fabric is smooth, the appearance is of a texture.

Snakeskin prints are also another great version of a textural print.

Burnout fabrics work similarly. The pattern is created by dissolving parts of the weave, leaving a sheer and opaque contrast that gives a textural impression without the actual physical bulk.

3. Avoid Smooth, Shiny Fabrics

Not all smooth fabrics are equally tricky. A heavy crepe and a liquid satin are both technically smooth, but they behave completely differently on a textured person.

The problem with shiny fabrics is that they reflect light, which amplifies the contrast between the fabric’s smooth surface and your textured skin or hair. A smooth-matte-heavy fabric (crepe, ponte, most wools and cottons) is far more forgiving than a smooth-shiny-light one (satin, charmeuse, tissue-weight silk).

Choose matte over shiny wherever you can. Your skin will thank you by not being the first thing anyone notices.

4. Use Colour to Bridge the Gap

This one surprises people. Colour itself can do a lot of the heavy lifting.

When the colour of your outfit is close to your own colouring, whether your skin tone, your hair, or both, the contrast between you and a smooth fabric reduces. There’s less visual “jump” between the texture of you and the smoothness of what you’re wearing. This is the camouflage principle, and it’s quietly very powerful.

Colour blocking and tonal dressing with slight variation also create visual interest that distracts the eye from the smoothness of the fabric. A smoothly busy outfit, if you will.

5. Layer Smooth and Textured Pieces Together

You don’t have to choose one or the other. Layering is one of the most effective strategies for a textured person because it creates complexity at the edges and transitions between garments.

A linen jacket over a smooth blouse. A denim shirt under a fine-knit jumper. A bouclé cardigan over a silk camisole. The eye reads the overall outfit as textured, even when individual pieces are not. The transitions between layers do all the work.

6. Look for Textural Details in the Construction

If the fabric itself is smooth, let the construction add the texture.

Frills, gathering, pin tucks, smocking, ruching, and pleats all introduce visual interest to a smooth surface. They create shadow and dimension without adding a different fabric. A plain cotton poplin shirt with ruching at the yoke is a completely different proposition to a plain, undetailed one.

Gathers and frills give the illusion of texture

7. Focus on the Zone Near Your Face

This is the most important zone for a textured person, and the one most often overlooked.

Your face is where your skin texture is most visible. So what you put near your face matters most. A smooth, unbroken expanse of fabric running all the way up to your chin draws the eye straight to the contrast.

Textured accessories do an enormous amount of work here. A scarf in a woven or crinkled fabric, a necklace with interesting beads or irregular shapes, earrings with dimension, a collar in bouclé or a soft cowl neck, even braided or woven bag handles, all create a visual bridge between you and the smoother fabric of your outfit. The transition stops being abrupt.

Suede, unpolished leather, brushed metals, and woven bags all add texture near the body without requiring you to change what you’re wearing. Patent leather and highly polished metal do the opposite, so it’s worth being mindful of finish in your accessories as much as your clothes.

The underlying principle across all of this is the same: you’re creating visual harmony between your natural texture and the smoothness of you

Want More Tips to Improve Your Style?

7 Steps to Style gives you the complete style education you need to choose all the elements of clothing, colouring (including a personal colour analysis) and accessories that work with your individual personality and features. Find out more here.