Personal Stylist Leeds - Personal Shopper Leeds - Image Consultant - Arash Mazinani
Something stops my mindless scroll through Instagram, interrupted by a comment rather than an overly staged photo. It wasn’t the words but the underlying sentiment that grabbed my attention.
“I find myself caring less about looking stylish I’m more about wearing practical pieces”
“this dress is one of the new things I’ve bought recently and it has all my essentials: cotton fabric, a loose fit and pockets.”
“I don’t care how basic that is… I’m here for it”
I recently met a new client for a coffee to have a chat about working together. While discussing various things she highlighted:
“I don’t want to look like mutton dressed as lamb”
I remember a 2 year period where I looked for clothes but never ended up buying anything. I put it down to not only being fickle but wanting whatever I looked at to be perfect. I ended up dismissing so many things because I felt they didn’t look right aesthetically but were probably what my wardrobe needed.
This might sound strange, but I’m not alone. When I think about all the different ways people approach shopping, there’s a similar approach I’ve seen that causes the most frustration…
Do you ever just look at your wardrobe and think I’ve got too many clothes?
Well, recently that happened to me.
I wouldn’t describe my wardrobe as fit to burst, however, it was starting to get a little bit bloated and I knew I had clothes that hadn’t seen the light of day for quite a while. I needed to do a ‘me’ on my own wardrobe. Once I’d decided which pieces to get rid of I faced a bit of a dilemma.
The clothes you’re wearing right now tell a story. Do me a favour, take your top and turn the hem over. Look at the seams. Another human’s hands have touched those. If they could talk what would they say? How would they describe the conditions they were produced under? What would they say about the person who created them? About their pay or rights? How about the fabric, where does it come from? How has dye that’s been used impacted the local environment?
When I used to get dressed to go on a night out in my early 20s, one of the the ways I kind of knew that I’d got my outfit perfect was generally just a gut feeling. It’s difficult to put into words. It’s just a feeling in the pit of your stomach that you know that something looks right. This gut feeling is what I used to help me work in high fashion when really I had no previous background in it, other than working in a stockroom in River Island. I’d never actually dressed anybody, or put outfits together for people, but when I went to my interview at Harvey Nichols, they didn’t know that.