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Let me set the scene for you. I’m currently wrapped in a blanket (because May is now a winter month in England) at my dining table (because no room for a desk), wearing a hoodie, faux Ugg slippers, and a sheet mask (because thirty-two). Those who know me will not be surprised by the hoodie or the mask or that I’m on my second energy drink of the morning even though it’s only 10:37.
What I’m trying to do here is manage your expectations. I’m not a lifestyle guru. I do not have all of my sh*t together all of the time, but I have learned enough to fake it when necessary. This book is a style guide in the loosest possible terms: a guide to life in general would be more apt. Want to create a cohesive wardrobe, learn your colour palette, and pack like a pro? I can absolutely help you with that, but if you’re not ready to give up the sweat pants, I’m here for you too!
This is not about reinvention. I want to reintroduce you to yourself, and I want you to put this book down (after you’ve read it, not now) and have a clearer idea of who you are, not just what you want to wear. I’m going to cover the basics of colour theory and dressing for your shape, but we’re also going to talk about how social media is (or isn’t) affecting your style and confidence and where you should be drawing your inspiration from instead.
I know you’ve heard about capsule dressing, but did you know there are different ways to adopt it? I am not a capsule wardrobe person (I’m what my husband would refer to as a ‘recovering hoarder’—it’s genetic), but I’ve implemented some of the tips I’m going to share, and it’s made a huge difference in the way I get dressed every day without the need for a personality transplant.
I wrote this book for the little girls who used to love those cutout paper dolls with paper clothes and borrowed books about makeup from the library before they were old enough to wear it—the girls who grew up thinking everything had to be a certain way and that if you didn’t wear high heels every day, you didn’t ‘have style’.
I wrote this book for the women who are struggling with their identities since becoming mothers, those balancing that new role with work and relationships while competing with the mental image of the glamorous woman they thought they’d grow up to be.
Motherhood isn’t a reason to ‘give up’, but it is a reason to get real and stop beating yourself up for not ‘making an effort’. It’s about accepting your current phase of life (which changes all the time) and creating a blueprint for your new style, as well as identifying some techniques you can lean on to give you confidence when your tank is low.
Finding your style is not about becoming someone else; it’s about learning who you are. And just as style is about more than just clothes, this book is about so much more than style.
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If the word ‘style’ is daunting to you because you feel like you have none, you’re wrong. So many people tie style and fashion together, but they’re two different things. Fashion is what is available to you, it’s what a third party has designed with current trends in mind. Style is how you interpret the fashion that you encounter. Whether you feel you have a style or not, every item of clothing you choose is just that—a choice—and those choices build your unique style. That style should be something that excites you (which is probably why you’re reading this book), so what you gravitate towards is good to keep in mind while shopping for your new style. If you live in leggings and sweatshirts but keep buying button-down shirts because you think they’re what you should be wearing, you’ll end up back in that sweatshirt by Friday.
Who Are You?
We may as well get the hardest question out of the way first, I suppose. Who are you? Don’t answer me, I can’t actually hear you, but metaphorically speaking—do you know who you are? I had a really hard time with this one. We’re thrown so quickly from school into adulthood that there’s very little time to get to know ourselves, which is why I think many of us feel so lost in our thirties.
I’ll start you off with who I am.
I had my daughter when I was nineteen. At an age when I should have been footloose and fancy-free, I was struggling to find maternity clothes that didn’t look like they belonged to my mother. Let me tell you…bump-dressing has come a long way since then! I basically lived in linen trousers with a stretchy waistband and spandex vest tops. I looked like a very uncool member of The Backstreet Boys. I’d never been super body confident and had no particular style that I gravitated towards at that point, so I embraced middle-aged-mum-chic until my daughter, Ella, was about two years old.
Aside from having no idea what clothes I wanted to wear, I didn’t know myself yet. I hadn’t had
