CLASSY VIRGO VENUS

Image: Cristian Girotto

With Venus now in cool-cat Virgo until Aug 8th, we're all about elegant personal discipline, discriminating good taste, intelligence and earthy, pragmatic efficiency in romance, love, beauty and art:

And when it comes to love, in Virgo it all begins with respect. We respect our own choices in romance, take responsibility for who we've chosen to love (our standards are pretty high!) and take personal responsibility for maintaining the highest possible standard of romantic conduct within our relationships. Because we respect our lover enough to treat them well, and also respect their emotional boundaries enough not to try to force or manipulate them into whatever behaviour we expect/desire from them-we allow them be who they are; and if they love us back for who we really are then we're dealing with a beautiful, sustainable romance we can respect, right?

Intelligent conversation, stimulating repartee and respecting one another's beautiful minds is also a major turn-on here, and helps us to negotiate a romance that involves truly understanding one another, which is always pretty special:

So we have an excellent shot at high-end, healthy romantic dynamics this month; doing the work to get it right and really enjoy the reciprocal mutual understanding that we crave with our lovers. But if anyone is repaying our respect with shoddy conduct or taking us for granted we recoil and freeze up at warp speed-and exercise strict quality control. If it's not on it's not on, as they say.

Same goes if we're single and on the prowl, it's all about high standards -we only go for the kind of high class attractions we can respect ourselves for pursuing, or we're quite happy on our own thank you very much. Virgo has the art of self-contained, self-reliant, whole-unto-oneself, satisfied autonomy down pat, if needs be.

Of course the shadow of this is control-freaky, micro-management; where we attempt to critique/nag one another into subservience to the great Virgo cult of unobtainable perfection (nobody is actually perfect and Virgo energy can be a fuss-pot); so yeah no, let's not go down that tedious path huh?

And Venus rules beauty, and in Virgo we keep it clean and pared back to the essentials:

Good skin is fundamental to Virgo beauty- we want the glowing, radiant complexion that comes from a healthy organic diet, hydration, sleeping well and investing in high-quality, super-natural skincare products (no petro-chemical crap and definitely not animal tested, obviously).

Image: Paolo Roversi for British Vogue

And the Virgo dress sense begins by tackling our wardrobe with a ruthless cull and ditching anything naff/clogging up space-that overflowing bag of 'maybe one day' tat, maybe time to cart it off to the op shop already? Virgo loves a good de-clutter! So once we've dispensed with the crap-especially anything of poor quality fabric that rubs our lovely, sensitive skin the wrong way; we're only left with good-quality, truly stylish pieces (according to our personal taste), and we wear them with simple, timeless chic. We don't need too many accessories or bling here, it's more about well crafted garments, clean lines and an impeccable fit for our particular body type -simple and comfortably functional is best:

Image: Cher

And because we are feeling more productive and efficient with Venus in Virgo; and more likely to be busy and 'on the tools' so to speak this month-so we're not so much tottering around on stilettos or whatever as dressing to get things done -albeit as elegantly and classily as humanly possible. Yes Virgo energy can pull this off!

Image: Helmut Newton

And Venus rules art and creativity. It's all about a disciplined work ethic and mastering our tools/skills/technique this month. It's all very well to be wildly talented (and we've been exploring that in Leo recently), but Virgo says if we don't put the work in to refine our creative practice, and get a bit more perfectionist about the final product, it's only going to take us so far...This is particularly handy for writers, especially the editing part of the any project you're working on right now.

So let's get on with living well and making things happen with some lovely, stylish composure this month. Happy Venus in Virgo x