The Classic: Cameron Diaz in The Holiday

Loads of luggage, snow and a bitter attitude?

Yep, that sounds like Christmas.

For some, Christmas is about spending a peaceful, relaxing time at home with your family. For others, it's about running around airports with massive suitcases, travelling for hours to the middle of nowhere in a car to visit relatives, and taking care of whatever business you left behind last year.

My Christmas is always like the latter. It can get quite hectic.

And because it can get quite hectic, it's often necessary to make sure that your style is not influenced by all the craziness around you. If you're already stressed, do you really need the added pressure of looking like an idiot in all those holiday pictures?

That's why, for Christmas, it's good to tone your look down. Way down, actually. Think: back to basics.

If you need style inspiration for this, turn to Amanda Wood (a.k.a. Cameron Diaz) in The Holiday (2006). Her look is quite preppy, but classic and chic. Lots of white, gray and beige tones, and turtlenecks, knitwear, and jeans. 

Classic, and easy to maintain.

Note: if you stay home for the holidays, avoid this look. If you're not travelling, go for festive glamour.

The Dark Approach: Rebecca Hall in The Awakening

There's nothing quite like English countryside style.

When faced with a winter such as this one - a dull, dreary, rainy one - it's important to take inspiration from characters and films that are surrounded by the same horrible weather.

Last winter, the inspiration was mainly the White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia. After all, there was a fair amount of snow to deal with.

This time though, inspiration will come in the form of Florence Cathcart (a.k.a. Rebecca Hall) in The Awakening (2011).

Florence is a ghost-buster from the 1920s, whose wardrobe rivals that of Miss G (though nothing quite reaches the same level of stylishness). She's smart, confident and ruthless, and her style reflects her strength during a period in time when women weren't perhaps as known for these traits as they are nowadays.

Her colour-scheme is perfection as well. Earth-tones and navy coats add the ideal touch to this vintage form of power-dressing.

If it weren't for the ghosts, I would envy Florence's life.

 

The Dark Approach: Rooney Mara / Noomi Rapace in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

What is it about the darkness that makes you want to dress like it?

Humans are clearly very easily influenced by the weather. Not only does it seem to affect our mood, but our style choices too. With the exception of those freakishly cheery people around Christmas-time, nobody seems to embrace colour during the colder seasons (at least nowhere in the Northern Hemisphere). But is that necessarily a bad thing?

Black, without a doubt, is my favourite choice of "colour" for clothes, even during the summer. But when winter begins to approach, I'm always quite surprised at the amount of people who go from looking like Celia Foote to Lisbeth Salander (a.k.a. Rooney Mara or Noomi Rapace).

Not that I'm complaining. Besides the hair, Lisbeth's look is quite an inspiration; it's goth meets cyber punk, sort of.

The essentials required for Lisbeth's dark approach are:

• Dark hoodies.
• Facial piercings.
• Leather jacket.
• Studs wherever possible.
• Dark jeans.
• Ripped t-shirts.

Hmm. I may have been channelling Lisbeth for a lot longer than I thought, because this is pretty much the entire contents of my wardrobe (except for the amazing dresses, but those are not really very Lisbeth-ian).