PERSONAL STYLIST TIPS: NEW YEAR, NEW WARDROBE?

As we head into a new year, often we may feel refreshed and invigorated to stick to goals we have set ourselves! If one of your resolutions is to feel more stylish, confident, or even work on making new connections, get a new job, or build your business – one way to start can be understanding your wardrobe and style in a better way.

Where to start with a new personal style

The first step to discovering your new style, is to understand what you want to portray through your fashion. A few questions I always ask my styling clients are:

• What are the first few words you’d like people to think of when they see you?

• Who are your style icons or inspirations?

• Do you feel a certain way in particular colours?

When you know these, it can help you start developing a sort of style mood board, which is what I create with my personal styling clients on Pinterest, to help you see a selection of options in one space that will help you with future purchases.

Remove items for your wardrobe that don’t fit within your style

When you know the type of style you want to portray through your clothes, that you feel confident in and showcases the personality you’d like to convey, you can then start to edit your current wardrobe.

Having a wardrobe detox helps with several things when it comes to developing your personal style:

• It will save you time each day – no more wondering what will go with what!

• Your wardrobe will work smoothly together as full outfits that you can mix and match easily.

• You’ll no longer have any clothes that you don’t feel comfortable in – removing items that don’t fit you is one of the most important parts of this process, as well as the ones you don’t love or feel confident in when you put them on.

Once you have a wardrobe of items you already own, that work within your style you can move onto the next step – finding new items that work with your current ones!

How to find clothes that work with your personal style

Now you have a wardrobe that you can maximise outfits from, that makes you feel your best, and you have a curated mood board for your style inspiration, you can begin your shopping journey!

As a personal shopper myself, I am sure you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I think making a shopping experience fun, enjoyable and functional is the most important part of your shopping experiences! You’ll want to make sure you do a few things before heading to the shops (whether online or in person).

• Note which items you want to purchase to create outfits from your current pieces in your wardrobe.

• What new items do you want to get to create new outfits?

• What is your budget for this particular shop, or perhaps your quarterly shop? Knowing your finances that you are happy to spend each season for particular items will make sure you know what you can invest in and what you need to save for.

• What colours do you want to add to your wardrobe, if any?

• Which accessories would be a great addition to your collection to help develop fuller more diverse outfits? Whether it’s a belt, a bag, shoes, jewellery, or hair pieces, accessories can transform a look and finish an outfit!

When you have a plan, and an understanding of the style and messages you want to convey through your styling choices, your shopping experiences should be more economical and more useful for you. When we reactively buy because of new year’s sales, a sudden need for something quickly, and without thought, it can cause us to buy items that we ultimately don’t wear. Fast fashion, trends, and garments that don’t last cause us to spend our valuable money on pieces that don’t suit our style for the long term. Taking time to consider what you want your style to showcase, why you want to create that style for yourself – perhaps for your work wardrobe, your confidence, journeying into a new age bracket, or merely to feel great – can truly make a huge difference to how you feel.

Clothes and fashion should work for you – not against you. I hope you will walk into the new year with more confidence and joy each day, and if you’d love help to do this using fashion as one of the tools to manage this, please get in touch.

PERSONAL SHOPPER TIPS: THE GREENWASHING PHENOMENON IN FAST FASHION BRANDS

If you know me, you know that sustainable and eco fashion are top of my list for the reasons why I do what I do. When I can help my clients save money and the environment by having wardrobes that feel perfect for their needs and no longer need to get more items to try to make outfits work, I feel like I am doing just a little to help the environment as well as their wallets!

However, it can be a tricky thing to navigate when you are looking for sustainable garments, as so many companies say they are green, but how do you know if they truly are?

This is where I was so fascinated (and admittedly, disappointed) to hear about the Greenwashing Phenomenon that has seemingly become fashionable with fast fashion brands.

What is Greenwashing?

So, let’s start with the basics first, before we get up in arms together to protest all brands! Greenwashing is when brands that are perhaps less than sustainable use words that we believe to be sustainable within their branding but actually are not. Using words like “green”, “sustainable”, “conscious” and so on, in their marketing to attract the more conscious shoppers, but actually are not environmentally sustainable or looking after their fabric makers & garment makers.

Loopholes are currently being used by brands to help them continue to make money, ultimately deceiving people into believing they are sustainable brands. It sounds illegal, it generally is, but as these large fashion brands have excellent marketing, and legal support, they can work around many of the legal requirements

Marketing is an incredible thing, so it can be really difficult to truly discover which brands are doing this, and how to recognise it. 

Who is known for Greenwashing?

According to this excellent YouTube video, by Justine Leconte, the biggest brands that are Greenwashing, and should be avoided on your next shopping trip are:

• H&M – “Conscious Collection”. You may have seen their advertising, with outdoor styling, green imagery, and the H&M Conscious Foundation – which contributes funds to a trust that is dedicated to helping working conditions in Bangladesh. It looks on the outside to us, that these are excellent steps to being a conscious fashion brand.

  However, in their 2019 Conscious Collection launch campaign, they claimed that “every piece in the collection is made from sustainably-sourced material, such as 100% organic cotton”.

  According to Justine, this is a very deceiving statement due to the sourcing, rather than growing, as well as every garment being exclusively made from sustainable material, whereas, on their website, they state that at least 50% of each garment is made from more sustainable materials, like organic cotton or recycled polyester, the only exception is recycled cotton which for quality reasons can only make up 20% of a product.

  This may be a lot of numbers, but in short, they are only using a certain percentage of sustainable fabrics in each garment. They also do not mention how the garment workers are being treated – which is an incredibly important part of us ensuring that people are cared for and have safe working environments. They did, however, commit to paying a fair living wage by 2018 – but they missed this commitment. The video explains a lot more about this issue, and I highly recommend watching it to understand this issue fully.

• Primark – “Sustainable Denim”. Primark launched their very own sustainable denim collection which, they state, was made of 100% sustainable cotton, from just 15euros. There is no definition for the word “sustainable” which means brands like Primark can use this word without really delving into whether the cotton is organic.

  Primark have actually started an initiative with India and Pakistan which are big cotton-producing countries, and trained the farmers the techniques that are used by organic cotton farmers in organic fields. However, the farmers are still using chemical pesticides. This therefore means these 100% sustainable cotton jeans are not quite what we want from sustainable fashion! Primark has stated that if they stopped using pesticides, they would not be able to stick to their required production levels.

Another thing to look out for in Greenwashing campaigns is “100% vegan leather” – pineapple, and mushroom are great, but PVC is not due to the way in which they are grown, cleaned, and disposed of.

What can we do to prevent Greenwashing?

The best thing to do is to read up and do your research. When you intend to change your purchasing habits to be more sustainable and support workers more ethically, you are best to do your research on the brands you want to use. Check their sustainable plans, where they are creating their garments, the fabrics they are using, and look out for words like “sustainable” and prefer to find companies that use “organic” as this is a criteria-led requirement, and they have to be certified to be able to use this in their marketing.

You can also use the hashtag #whomademyclothes or #whomademyfabric to discover more about the production process. You can also follow & engage with “Fashion Revolution”, to discover more about how to engage in these hashtags and how we can continue to make sure companies in the fashion world are held accountable for their production, their factories, their working conditions and the garments they create.

Consider why your garments are costing what they cost. Often, the cheaper the garment, the less likely the garment workers are being paid fairly. I know this can mean more for your fashion costs, however, in my experience, when we pay a little more for our clothing we get so many benefits:

• The clothing lasts longer – therefore we can wear it, prevent having to throw it away and causing even more landfill, and we can love it for longer.

• The garment workers are paid fairly – which means everyone is cared for throughout the process.

• We are supporting independent fashion brands, that work hard to ensure their garments and workers are ethical.

When we consider taking a step back, wondering where our clothes come from, where our fabrics come from, who makes our clothing, and how we are impacting our environment, the world can be changed for good. I recommend making sure your wardrobe is becoming more of a longevity collection, rather than a one-event and throw away a selection of clothes.

If you have any questions or would like to know some of the brands I recommend in the UK that are sustainable, organic, and ethical, please get in touch.