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Thursday 17 August 2017

7 Steps To Style Step 4 Your Lifestyle

As mentioned previously I am working through Imogen Lamport's 7 Steps to Style.
https://insideoutstyleblog.com/7-steps-to-style-system

I think of this as an online course, with Imogen as the tutor and a forum (via a private Facebook page) to talk to other course participants.
It does require quite a lot of work yourself, to use the materials and get the results.
We are all individuals and this is a way to gain the self knowledge to really be yourself through how you dress.

In Step 4 now you know more about your personality, bodyshape and best colours you think about your lifestyle.

This one mostly uses exercises to explore more about things like
- why you like some of your favourite garments
- how much time you spend each week doing different activities
- looking at how the wardrobe/activities matches up
- making sure you have garments which cover activities you want to do

So for example if you have a very casual warrobe but this stops you accepting invites to lunch or something, then get a nice going for lunch outfit. If you have loads of formal special occasion things which you use for balls/ certain events then perhaps keep those in a guest room closet so you can see your everyday stuff more clearly etc.

The main thing I did in response to this step was as I have two hanging sections in my built in wardrobe, I made the left one just for work and hung up dresses, skirts, trousers, jackets and tops which I thought were work suitable. This meant I could really see what clothes I had that were work suitable, and due to step 3 remvoing some things I could see I was quite short on work suitable tops.

I then had anything casual in the other hanging section with some jackets/cardis I was unsure about too. I also made a section for more dressy things on this side and things for choir (where we wear black which isnt in my palette). I put the choir and special occasion stuff in the part where the cupboard goes over the stairwell and is harder to access.

I found this very useful, because I work full time in an office where you can only wear jeans on a Friday and some of my male peers wear full suit with tie. So I need to be relatively smart for work. I can always get changed into comfier clothes when I get home.

I've not had a big lifestyle change as I've had a similar sort of office based job for many years, but the wardrobe had been creeping too casual. Favourite suits had worn out and proved difficult to replace so had more mismatched stuff.

For other people who've gone from full time work to home with kids or retired, moved countries/region or changed jobs to one with a different dress code this is probably a much larger area.

At least I now know what I have that I can wear for work as its all in the one area, so should make work morning choices easier.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A useful exercise to help you identify what to sew next. I've done something similar recently, and realise I need some plain clothes for work more than the dramatic print summer clothes I'm drawn to making!