While getting ready for work you remember that you have an important meeting today. You head to the closet to grab your favorite navy suit. This suit has always been your go-to-piece so you find yourself surprised by the less-than-enthusiastic feelings about wearing it and hear yourself muttering, “Not again” under your breath.

“What happened?” you ask yourself. What was a favorite is now boring your socks off. As you go to grab your standard white top to throw underneath it, it all becomes clear. It’s not the suit that you dislike any longer, it is how you are wearing it that is making you feel like you are accessorizing with Valium.

You decide that you are going to pep things up a bit and start figuring out what you could do differently with your suit to wake it out of its coma. Unfortunately, this is when it goes from bad to worse. As you try to come up with some other things to do, besides wear what feels like your "uniform," anxiety sets in along with many unanswerable questions: “What other colors can I wear with navy?" "Would pink or green work?" "Are there other shoe choices other than black?"

As the questions in your head start running rampant, you feel yourself quickly losing ground. You start ransacking your closet and find yourself standing there with clothes strewn all over the place right back where you started, in the navy suit and the white top. You think to call one of your friends for advice but realize that she is just as clueless as you are.

You can fill in the blank with your own safe basic that has made you feel like you are in your style rut. Sick of the jeans-and T-shirt look? Do you feel that you should just Velcro® your pearls to your little black dress because that is the only way you know how to accessorize it? This is the universal dilemma; we want to make our outfits more interesting but don’t know how. You feel foolish for being so style-challenged yet decide that it is better to be safe than sorry and stick with the tried and true.

I call boring outfits chicken outfits. Like chicken, your basics need to be accented with something to make them tasty. Your style rut is equivalent to throwing chicken into a pot of boiling water and just eating it … blech! It’s edible, but it sure isn’t exciting. Like spices, the best way to pump your basics up is through your accessories.

Would a red shoe be more interesting with your navy suit? What about a colorful necklace with your little black dress or a fun bracelet with the jeans and T-shirt? In most cases, it isn’t more clothes that you need; it is accent pieces that are missing. The next time you feel bored, notice if you are wearing a chicken outfit and think about what you can do to spice it up. And if you are afraid of stepping out, just remember, nobody is noticing anyway. They too busy worrying about their own fashion mistakes to notice yours.

Style expert Bridgette Raes is the author of “Style Rx: Dressing the Body You Have to Create the Body You Want.” Raes, a former fashion designer, is the founder and president of Bridgette Raes Style Group, a Manhattan-based image and style consulting company for women. In addition to her work on SmartNow.com, Bridgette writes for Budget Savvy Magazine and Brideboard.com. She is featured in a number of newspapers and magazines such as Woman's World and The Boston Globe, and appeared on CNN, and “Good Morning America.” Send your questions to Bridgette@smartnow.com.