Notes on Styling | 59 | Things I’ve seen and heard in fitting rooms.
...and the learnings I have to share.
They say men look at clothes, whereas women look at what life can be in them. No wonder we put pressure on the fitting room experience. Things come up once we step inside that fitting room. If the item or outfit doesn’t reach the highs of our expectations, those experiences stay with us and get carried forward. And can impact where our style goes.
It is my experience that true feelings and red lines fully emerge when we are faced with a mirror. The clothes bring out our perceived truths and biases around who we are and what we feel we can wear.
It’s taught me that finding clothes that will be loved and worn and built upon is about so much more than understanding our bodies and lines and colours. It’s about looking at our personal and long-held biases that in lots of cases aren’t based on facts but layers of feelings and experiences.
This week, I wanted to share some of the most common from over the years styling along with some of the truths I have come to learn along the way.
I hope what I share opens up a little space for you to look at the feelings you might be holding onto, with kindness. This will make it much easier to let them go, and when you do, there’s so much fun and exploring to be had on the other side.
Things I’ve seen and heard in fitting rooms and some of the learnings I have to share
(in no particular order)
People telling you (but lots of times you can’t remember who) that you can’t/ should not wear x or y for your body shape.
What I know to be true
⤑ There is nothing really we cannot make work for our bodies once we understand our bodies. Styling is our own interpretation of the ideas we love. You can wear whatever you want once it feels good to you and you understand what’s really going on and how you can tweak it to make it work for your body.
✨ Also/ Outsourcing our clothing decisions to anyone else, particularly considering they also have their own biases reasons for saying things, is not helpful. No one will ever know you or your style or body like you have the ability too.
Feeling unsure about walking out of the fitting room in something you have never tried before.
What I know to be true
⤑ It’s perfectly normal to feel strange and even uncomfortable in something that is new for you to try. But it’s is not a testament as to whether it will end up being something you will love or not. Walking around in the outfit in a real-life scenario (I always encourage going to a mirror somewhere on the shop floor) can make something that feels ‘not for you’ behind the fitting room doors something more real and tangible. This can help to soften your feelings towards not just the process of change but perhaps the outfit itself too. Feelings take time to change but new little habits help to break it down.
Make the most of your mirror moments with a curiosity and kindness rather than self criticism. One of the methods I like is - R.A.I.N. Recognize (your feelings), Allow (them to come), Investigate (continue to walk around & feel the items on your body) & Nurture (be kind, always. They are only clothes).
Feeling and expressing the idea that you weren’t born with an eye for style and this is why you think you can’t find nicer clothes or try new things.
What I know to be true
⤑Your style is figureoutable. Fact. No one is born with great style. Some are born with a love and a desire for style which they then experimented with over the years. They nurtured a passion. And yes some women do indeed have a natural eye for things like putting unusual colour combinations together or are great at seeking out unusual pieces but maybe they are not for you anyway. The things you will feel great in and enjoy wearing in your own day to day life can be found, focused on and nurtured. Once you find your core style, you will be amazed at how your confidence can grow to find your own gems, aswell as your feeling of being so much more creative with your wardrobe. I have seen it happen so many times.
I don’t care too much about what I wear. I just need clothes! I have nothing.
What I know to be true
⤑ Over time, on the law of averages, what I came to believe a person really meant when they said this was ‘my style does matter but I don’t know how to get there myself and so it’s easier to pretend that I don’t care’.
And I get how this is easier than trying to face the uphill battle.
But the truth is looking good makes us feel good and this has a knock on impact to everything else in our day-to-day lives. In the end every woman who came out of a fitting room with beautiful outfits on felt in her heart that she did care and she felt great.
“I don’t have the time to have nice things or too dress well”.
What I know to be true
⤑I’ve yet to meet a naked woman who says this to me. What this means is ‘I don’t have time for layering and tucking and thinking about all the things I think I have to think about in order to look and feel good’.
Think of dressing like being a good cook (or whatever it is you like to spend your time on). It takes less time when you have the right tools and the confidence to get on with the job. Your clothes are your tools and having a core of great starter pieces changes the game, builds your confidence and focuses the mind when getting dressed - it does not have to take any time. But yes, it is true that you do have to invest time into yourself and the process of getting to this place.
I wish I was more creative and brave with my clothes.
What I know to be true
⤑We can believe great style is about a lot of things that it is not.
Like
✨ Having all the amazing things you think everyone else has.
✨ Buying a lot of new things on a regular basis.
✨ Having an innate creativity that you just don’t think you have.
✨ Being brave enough to not care what others think.
When the truth is a more creative style (no matter what your core look is) is built in first of all having good everyday rituals, repeated and nurtured over time with our core items so we learn and understand the visual aesthetic we love. Then it will feel much more doable to build in creative little tweaks to this. It’s difficult to jump from feeling one way in a fitting room to feeling like Sarah Jessica Parker on SATC in one swoop. Go easy on yourself girl. To develop a muscle we have to use it and that just takes a little time.
There is a balance in styling and sometimes expanding and playing with things you already like is easier than learning to like things that are completely different. You’ve got to measure what feels good and the pace of bringing in new ideas.
You could wear that but I never could.
What I know to be true
⤑ Always know that if you have a good personal stylist, you should never feel they have their own style on their mind when picking for you. The biggest skill in helping others with their style is to be able to listen, look and observe in order to choose items & outfits with your needs and wants in mind. And usually needs and wants you don’t yet know you have! Because it is not something you have considered before, it is normal to feel the person is picking for someone that’s not you.
It’s also ok to also give yourself permission to like what you like.
Not everything that goes into the fitting room will be loved by you. It is a human experience of learning together. Trying is how you experiment and build in your layers of knowing the outfit recipes and ingredients that feel good to you. Though something might ‘suit you’ - for many reasons (like it reminds you of a school uniform or it’s something your mum used to put you in) you just know it’s not for you and that’s ok. In fact, it’s great. You are tuning into you!
I really don’t know what I like. I envy those women I see who have their own clear style.
What I know to be true
⤑Life pulls us in so many directions and without meaning too and unless we nurture or invest time in our style and clothes over the years, it makes sense that we begin buying and dressing for the roles we have in life over connecting to a clear vision we have ourselves of an aesthetic we love.
In my experience we all have 2 or 3 dominant influences in our lives that impact how we shop and dress.
✨ Who we are at work.
✨ How we dress at home/ at the school gates/ being mom.
✨ Long-established family dynamics and the desire to fit in.
✨ Geography; where we live - ‘what would people think?’.
You can see how they are all external to who we really are or what lights us up.
But the thing is we often think this elusive style we might love will be wildly different to what we already wear or won’t fit our practical everyday life. We build it up in our head, when the reality is, that creating a clear style and what that looks like, may not be so scary for you or the people around you. It’s doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing change. It’s a tweaking of things, a realigning of a picture and a strategy for buying that you feel more in control of.
But yes, sometimes it does require a letting go of others expectations and fear of judgement too but with some self reflection work, this can be a very empowering feeling.
I’ve seen so often women being surprised by the sizing I bring in to the fitting room.
What I know to be true
⤑ Most women don’t buy the right size for their body. Buying a sizer bigger than we need is much more common. There are many reasons we pick the sizes we pick but it’s usually not based on facts but more on the size we think we are or used to be (or maybe wish we were). This can result in a visually out-of-balance outfit, which focuses the eye even more on the ‘problem’ as you see it.
Focus on
a) Understanding your body in its two halves. Really understand it. Visually experiment with sizing and what bigger and smaller silhouettes really do.
b) Have just a general idea of sizing for your top and bottom half but then remain open-minded when trying. Sizing with brands is so wildly different now, it pays to bring in 2 or 3 different sizes to compare. Little things make a big difference.
c) Focus on how you can best create visual balance between your top and bottom half.
On the other hand, maybe the aesthetic you are trying is an oversized look. If it is, you just have to consider your body with truth and honesty. Experiment and just be aware of your body in it’s two halves. If you are very petite trying a looser aesthetic, that’s brill but just know what your working with means there is a balance you are trying to achieve between feeling things are looser while not feeling lost or like the clothes are wearing you and also having a visual balance between your top & bottom half.
When I lose weight I will make more effort/ feel more stylish/ buy better things. (today I just need clothes!).
What I know to be true
⤑ Changing our bodies or/ or losing or putting on weight won’t automatically change how we shop, wear or feel. I have learnt that feeling stylish has nothing to do with weight. I’ve met really style-confident women who are curvy size 16+ and really unconfident women with the ‘perfect figure’. I’ve learned our style is a state of mind and an acceptance of our bodies over anything else.
What I’ve also learnt over the years is just how fixed our ideas are on what ‘the perfect body’ is for styling and dressing when the reality might surprise you. This may surprise you but creatively, curves are much more interesting to style - particularly apple, where weight is held in the middle. This is a cinch to style, while every woman hates being an apple! The hourglass (the one we are all supposed to work towards achieving in our clothes), can actually be the hardest to dress (especially if you are hourglass with a bigger bust). The body shape that’s most underrepresented on the high street is the Inverted Triangle/ Strawberry (broad shoulders/ big bust/ smaller sizing on bottom half). The facts are that our biases are built around what we have read or been led to believe when the reality can be different if you choose to look at it differently.
There’s also lots of learning I have been through too!
Like never taking things for granted and taking the time to explain why I put x with y or why I think we should try certain colours together. There is so much learning in those four little walls and each step can be something entirely new for a person.
I remember when I first started it felt like a kind of race to the most outfits. Overtime, I knew it was not a race but a relationship that is centred on trust. If you gain trust, everyone can relax and have some creative fun, which is when all the good stuff happens.
Like everything in life, it is also a human experience on both sides. One with so much reward & so many little opportunities to be kind to ourselves, which in the end helps our style so much more.
And if in doubt Remember R.A.I.N. Recognise. Allow. Investigate. Nurture.
Speak to you all soon,
P.S. Sometimes, if we are very lucky, there might even champagne & strawberries!
So much great stuff here Julie. I particularly resonate with the idea of buying for the roles I have, rather than for me. I’ll certainly give RAIN a go!
Love this Julie. Everything you say is so true. Nit just for clients but sometimes for us pro’s too. Great advice as always