Are you totally kidding me? Of course I grabbed up O, The Oprah Magazine the minute I saw this cover line, and the story inside did not disappoint. The tip that stung the most: Dump the dowdy jeans and turtlenecks, illustrated by the photo, left, which is basically what I wear every weekend, and whenever I can. But there’s lots of other good advice that doesn’t sting quite so much, including 25 Top Clothing Items that Just Gotta Go. (Thankfully the list includes holiday sweaters with appliques ….)

Interestingly, all this advice is from the forthcoming book of the same name by Charla Krupp, a longtime fashion/style editor in New York who you might recognize from her segments on the Today show (or by her picture on the book’s cover).

When I was a baby magazine editor in New York, I have a strong memory of Charla talking to some professional group I was in one afternoon on the subject of networking, something she was/is evidently very good at. (That’s Charla, on the right, a couple of years ago with Kate White, the editor of Cosmopolitan.) “Look carefully at the people sitting right next to you,” she said, ominously. “These are the people who will determine the direction of your life.” Or something like that. The point, of course, is that your professional friends are your first and best career guides, but as a recent college grad with less than no idea of what I was doing in New York anyway, it literally scared me to death. Even though she was right.

So let’s share some secrets: What’s the one thing you do that keeps you from looking “old,” no matter what your age?