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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 enough life experience to know what I wanted from it, and once I had a baby, it felt a lot like my path was already set out for me. Looking back at this with a decade of hindsight, I can see that I clearly separated my mum/family self and my young/fun self. I had my routine during the week, and then on a Saturday night (babysitter willing), I went out with my friends and was a regular twentysomething with no responsibilities. I was compartmentalising the different areas of my life. I think I was protecting my ‘me me’ from my ‘mum me’ so as not to lose myself completely. At the time, I thought my struggle was only that of a teen mum, but I’ve since realised that this is not an age-specific battle.
A lot of women struggle with the weight of motherhood. Transitioning from a pregnant version of your regular self to Mum without feeling any different at all is impossible. But you can find your way back to someone you recognise after such a life-changing event—it just isn’t going to happen overnight. Some throw themselves into their new parenting job so entirely that they forget they are separate entities from their children. When those children then grow up and need them less, these women have a hard time adjusting to life in some role other than that of a mother. Others are so focused on not being swallowed up by parenthood that they try to retrieve their former lifestyle too quickly. This can result in major ‘mummy guilt,’ coupled with resentment that they can no longer squeeze into their favourite skinny jeans. It’s hard to know who you are as a woman after becoming a mum. From all angles, we’re being told what is and isn’t appropriate, and that ‘advice’ is changing constantly. Is going back to work empowering, or am I abandoning my children? What’s the current feminist temperature?
If I do go back to work, what do I wear? Is there an etiquette once you have kids? Do I want to be a yummy mummy? Is that still a thing? Or is it all knee-length skirts and no cleavage now? What if I stay home? Am I expected to look frumpy, or do we dress up for playgroup? What about those lycra-clad mums at the school gates? Is that appropriate,