Jenna Lyons and Nigel Barker School Us on How to Take the Perfect Selfie

Jenna Lyons’s J. Crew presentation this morning featured a mix of formal and fun: denim, anoraks, palazzo pants, Navajo ponchos, Oxford shirts, and fantastic glittering pencil skirts. The long-limbed designer spoke about the intricacies of snapping the perfect self-portrait and photographer Nigel Barker backed up her tips.

“When this whole selfie thing started, I told my assistant Nicole, whom I’m adore, that I need to do it myself! It sounds so crazy but because I’m so tall, people are shooting like up my nose or at weird angles,” Lyons says. “I mean I have a big nose already! Between the shadows and the angles sometimes I would look 1,000 years old! I taught Cindy Leive all about it last night. She needed a lot of help. She might need a follow up lesson."

Perhaps "Glamour” editor in chief Leive should follow the tips Barker gave to Joe Zee at Yahoo Styles’ first ever live stream, which gave viewers an all-access pass to New York Fashion Week, including an inside look at Alexander Wang’s coveted show. The host of “The Face” says it’s important to look up, then down, and then stare into the camera. Although it will feel a bit awkward at first, it makes you look relaxed and natural when posing. He also suggests that you don’t hold the camera too far over your own head. “You look really little,” Barker says, but “it makes your head look very large in the photo.”

But the greatest trick of all has to be finding the perfect filter. At Lyons’s show she was taking snaps with Lucky’s Eva Chen, when a reluctant Bill Cunningham, the legendary lensman from the New York Times, and a random Spanish lady who claimed to work for E! approached her to snap a selfie. For the latter, she made sure that she took the pic and then kept it on her personal phone. "Needs a filter, my assistant will send it to you.”