In this series, I wanted to showcase the amazing women I recently worked with in a mini-styling and photoshoot session I co-hosted with a photographer in London. We worked together to help women in business use styling, make-up, and professional headshots for their companies.

Today I am sharing how I helped Angela Jarvis, who is a financial advisor who works in an office, with her environment requiring a formal dress code. To enable her to keep her style formal but workable, she tends to wear dresses or skirts and shirts, but no blazers, in either black or navy, with an aversion to yellow, orange and red. During our pre-session consultation, she stated the message she wanted to give at first sight would be approachable, friendly, and trustworthy.

What I suggested:

Prior to the session, I had a look through each of the women’s business websites, and shared suggestions for their upcoming photoshoot and make-up session, for Angela I suggested she wear something blue. Blue is the colour that evokes calm, trust and also suggests loyalty and integrity. As she advises people on their finances, I believed this would be the best colour for her headshot. I suggested she wear a blue dress, in a quite formal cut, as this is what she usually wears, and the picture needed to reflect this.

She shared pics of a few dresses and I asked her to take a couple with her to the photo session, she brought a casual and a more formal style. 

I also asked her to wear something that, on the contrary, doesn't look right for her: a red top and a white blazer. On the day we took a few shots and here you can see how the right clothes have a huge impact on our attitude, and so the final results.

Where she feels more confident, she has a natural smile and expressions that are just lovely, in the red and white blazer, below, she looks too severe and tense.

In the more casual dress she just doesn't look as professional as she wants to, though the colour is still looking good on her.

  And once again the directions of the photographer have been super important!

When you run a business, or have a team that see clients, you need to be able to portray their personality and brand values within moments, as I hope you can see, these little changes in colour and styling can make a huge difference to the image we give off. I loved being able to help Angela during this mini-corporate styling session and love the look of her final photo, what do you think?