Notes on Styling | 34 | I could not love this more... a reminder to 'do you' ◡̈
I am going wild and writing to you on a Friday :-) I have a special weekend of catch-ups with friends in Ireland this weekend so I am writing to you early but also, I am bursting to share this week & I like keeping this place a little fluid. I have just found out that Lyn Slater of The Accidental Icon fame is now on Substack and I’ve basically lost the week reading her page and being inspired by her. What a lady. I have some new people joining this week too - welcome! Remember, style is not just what you choose to buy, it’s what you choose to do with it. It's a recipe, a feeling, a moment of creative play that gets you closer to yourself. If you like it here, please consider a paid subscription for only £5/month to support my work for 2024.
Enjoy and see you soon.
Julie x
Some people just enrich your thinking. Help you through life’s personal metamorphoses. I was on a zoom call last weekend to the person who is that to me. Sue Donnelly. Sue has been my coach and teacher in the Chinese 5 Elements, which I use in my Styling work, and over the years in this crazy world of fashion, is one of the people who has shown me how important it is to align what you wear with who you are not what others see as stylish or what the style rules dictates will work for you.
My work with Sue has helped me develop the ideas I work with now, including my innate belief that when we understand our most natural creative, practical and aesthetic instincts in a world that tells us how we should see things, a whole new way of looking at clothes is likely to open up before you.
Last weekend as Sue and I chatted on a zoom, she mentioned Lyn Slater (The Accidental Icon) now has a Substack page - ‘How to be Old’ (she has written a book also with the same name). Like me, Sue is a big fan of Lyn.
For those of you who are not familiar with Lyn, she became a mega fashion influencer after being photographed completely by accident at Fashion Week in New York in 2014. I’m pretty sure she was 64. Her friend was meeting her for lunch and turned up just as she was being asked would she interview with journalists. By the time her friend arrived, and saw what was happening, she said, “Oh, look at this. You're an accidental icon!” The name for the blog was born and the rest is history. I remember I came across Lyn when I googled, ‘stylish women with grey hair’. I too was hooked on her unique sense of style and her ability to truly be exactly who she was through her style.
Lyn has worked with mega-brands and been photographed for the biggest magazines around including Vogue and she never meant for any of it to happen. She is in fact a college professor and writer. She created what she wanted to see represented more. Real women not afraid to be who they are and wear what they love with no apology for it.
“I started accidental icon because I was having trouble finding a fashion blog or magazine that offered an urban, modern, intellectual aesthetic but also spoke to women who live what I call “interesting but ordinary lives” in cities. Women (like me) who are not famous or celebrities but are smart, creative, fashion-forward, fit, thoughtful, engaged, related and most importantly clear and comfortable with who they are..”
It’s so fascinating to me to read on Lyn’s Substack that she felt she lost herself when she started doing the Accidental Icon full time. Rather than being known as a creative older woman who reinvented herself (which is what she wanted), she lost herself.
This is what Lyn recently wrote on her new Substack page…
After retiring officially from academia in 2019, when I started doing Accidental Icon full time, I somehow lost myself, and in doing so, got commodified and became a brand. Traveling at 120 MPH through life and social media left me no time to reflect or think critically about what I was doing. Writing on my blog, which was why I started it in the first place, became sporadic and littered with sponsored posts. Rather than being known as a creative older woman who reinvented herself into a completely new career, I became known as a social media influencer, the kind that influences you to buy; no longer the kind that inspires a cultural shift. I was miserable and felt guilty about it because I had a life on social media, many people would envy.
I love that Lyn shares openly about this struggle. How seemingly glorious life tractories don’t always bring the happiness you expect and can make you feel like your swimming upstream in your own life. That’s the thing. Sometimes life takes you to places you meticulously plan for. You can vision board and manifest and all those you love are rooting you on. But sometimes these very paths can feel like they bring you far away from yourself and come to feel not truly yours anymore. Or maybe like Lyn’s experience, you didn’t plan any of it.
I love Lyn’s decision to take things writing back to what felt true to her, reflective of real life for her now. But also, her bravery to share this new part of her life, and how she reflects on getting older with fashion. This to me is so much more inspiring that the big ads and fashion spreads. It’s life’s evolution and it’s real.
You can have all sorts of experiences in life and paths you fully go down, only to stop and turn. They shape you and teach you and Lyn shows that when you build enough awareness of what truly matters to you, it’s the veering back that is part of the story - your story. Both are you.
I had felt this too for a long time in fashion, most especially after I was on Dragons Den, when I felt the weight of others expectations to be a certain way and look a certain way in order to achieve what they wanted me to achieve. The world is quick to tell us who they want us to be. Sue and I talk about this a lot. And it’s not just us working in fashion, but for every woman. The comments we can get when we wear things others don’t find agreeable (and it’s usually those closest to us who are the quickest to comment) makes us question our own judgement, what we see versus what others see. The need to feel like ourselves versus the need to belong.
But the truth is, the joy in life is in our differences. In knowing who we are and how we want to show up. It is women like Lyn who do impact others’ bravery to do the same. An unapologetic living of one’s truth. Making brave decisions and changing course because something doesn’t feel right. Deciding not to take the well-worn path and choosing something else or taking the well-worn path but making it your own.
There are times when we all need to plug back into ourselves again. To ask ourselves, What’s it for? What makes me happy? How can I live better for me? How do I live my truth? What is my truth?
Thank you Lyn for doing what you do.
Some of my favourite pieces on her new page:
What to wear for fashion week (when you are old or any age for that matter).
A Look created with a client this week that plays with her Style Words
Ok, yes, a look that is a bit premature (-7 this week anyone?). I mean legs won’t see the light of day for an age yet but then also, isn’t it lovely to look forward to Spring?
This week I’ve been working with a client on her Style Words and this is a look that has been helping us bring those words to life. All items are available to buy in these temperatures :-) but I love it because it makes me think of coffee outside again, Spring sunshine and new season collections coming soon! I will be sharing more on bringing our Style Words to life next week.
P.S The words we are playing with here are - Modern, Creative, Classic.
Click to see the Styling Board with all the items linked. x
Have a lovely weekend (feels nice to end with that!).
Julie x