MEAGHAN SMITH PERSONAL STYLIST

Be careful when you’re wearing something to try and disguise/minimise/play down an area, that you’re not in fact accentuating/making larger/playing it up.  (Or alternatively, in the process you’re also hiding one of your best features)

These tops are a good example…

If dressing in a conventionally flattering way is important to you but you’re unsure whether the pieces you’re wearing are doing that, consider booking in for a Wardrobe Overhaul. It’s designed to clean out and analyse the wardrobe but also to educate you on the most flattering proportions, styles and fit for you.

The details of my Wardrobe Overhaul can be found here

Follow me on Instagram here

When I first started this career, I had a very clear idea of what it was I wanted to do – I just wasn’t sure how to go about doing it or what title to give it. I decided on Personal Stylist after I thought that best described primarily what I do and nobody would find me if I called myself a Shopping Frustration Solver or Women’s Self Esteem Booster.

What I knew for certain was I wanted to help women feel better about themselves.  I wanted to help them improve their confidence and self esteem and I knew that I could do it (If I sharpened up my skills and gained more knowledge) through helping them to dress.

Certainly the fashion side of my job is important to me because I’m passionate about it, along with style and beauty – and clothes are the tools with which I use to help people feel good, but realistically what I do isn’t really about fashion and beauty at all, it’s about inspiring, guiding and encouraging women to be and feel the best they can.

I always knew a lot of women struggled with their identity, their bodies and aging – I was one of them, so I recognise the issues – but it wasn’t until I started doing this job, and spending time with different women, I realised just how deeply unhappy some people are with their appearance.

Often, a style consultation is so much more than trying on clothes. Sometimes personal issues are eating away at a person’s confidence and affecting how they see themself and they need to be listened to, understood and then reassured.

Recently I worked with a really lovely lady who I discovered during our time together, saw herself so differently to how she really was.  She was in her early fifties a mother of three grown children and she contacted me because she felt “frumpy” and because she felt she “had no style”.  She wanted me to take her shopping.  So we met and we wandered around, talking all the time about how she saw her current style, how she’d like it to be and how together we might achieve that.

Once we had a clear idea of how she wanted to look we headed into the stores to try some clothes on.  I got her to put on a pair of pants she would never have dreamed of trying by herself. She looked amazing. Even another shopper in the change rooms commented on how she looked.  She was tall and slim and the pants highlighted her figure beautifully.  But she couldn’t see it.  All she saw was the faults that she looked for every time she looked in the mirror.  When I asked her if she felt she was very self critical her eyes started to well up. She went on to tell me she was constantly given negative feedback by those around her, about her body and how she looked. She was like a little puppy that had been beaten. She was sad. It really affected me that she felt so poorly about herself. For the next hour or so of our time together we just wandered around the stores, chatting.  I made her try on several different things to give her a good understanding of what worked for her shape and to encourage her to sample different things, but the emphasis now was on making her understand how special she was and how she needed to tell those who made her feel bad about herself, how their comments were affecting her.  I got on the train to come home and I couldn’t stop thinking about her.  And I realised that this woman was not alone. There are so many of us who live with low self esteem.

So you see a Personal Stylist is what I call myself, but for me, it really is so much more than that.  My absolute focus and intention is to show each woman I work with how amazing they are and to help them to get the best out of themselves. Sure I do that with clothes, but I certainly don’t just enter a home, take measurements and tell you what you should be wearing. I listen and try very hard to understand each person’s issues, provide advice, ideas and encouragement. And that’s why I love doing what I do.

You can read what styling services I offer here

Follow me on Instagram here

Here’s a little story about a client whose clothes weren’t making her feel great.

She was prompted to contact me because..

She’d recently lost a lot of weight and needed to upgrade her wardrobe but wasn’t sure what to buy to suit and flatter her new shape. She was also bored with her current clothes and needed some guidance with developing a new look, as she felt she was going into a new phase in her life and wanted to enter it on the right, stylish foot.

After talking about what direction she wanted her style to go in and when I felt we were both clear about it, we got stuck into working through her wardrobe.   Which consisted of:

• Outdated, tired and daggy clothes she’d had since the nineties. Some from her uni and back-packing days
• Clothes that were nice BUT didn’t fit properly or were unflattering to her particular body shape or completely opposite to her personal style
• Pieces that were making her feel and appear older than she was and making her look frumpy
• Items that were for exercising

As we continued to work through the wardrobe I observed that a large amount of her (newish) clothes had been purchased from the same local shop and it became apparent to me that my client had been misled into believing these clothes suited and flattered her body shape, when they didn’t.

My client had been enticed to shop at this particular fancy city boutique because it was close to where she worked and therefore convenient, because she’d noticed the girls working in the store looked ‘trendy” and because she wanted to update her look and was uncertain how to do so.

But…not only were these clothes unflattering, they were also not her style.

Although we’d determined together this girls style/personality was “Classic” (tailored, clean, simple, somewhat traditional)  she had been talked into purchasing things that were very pretty/floaty/whimsical/patterned.

She could never work out how to wear them. They looked great on the people in the shop but when she took them home and put them on, they felt all wrong.

Because they weren’t her style.  They were someone else’s.

The boutique in question sold beautiful clothes, just not pieces that suited my clients style.

This is why it is so important that you know exactly what your style is, what the image that you want to portray is and what styles flatter your body shape.

If you don’t want to waste your money by filling your wardrobe with clothes that don’t make you feel great, you need to:

• Learn and understand what flatters your body shape
• Know which shops don’t have the clothes that suit your personal style and which shops do
• Define and develop your own unique personal style and be sure about what you buy fits into this image
• Learn how to be a smart shopper or take someone with you who is, so that you don’t buy into fake flattery
• Don’t be talked into buying or wearing something unless you love it

I don’t entirely blame the staff in the stores for selling things to us that don’t complement our style or shape.  They’re like all of us, trying to earn a living and more than likely doing what their boss has instructed them to do.  Some of these girls would be students, working part time and they haven’t been educated about body shapes.  We need to take responsibility ourselves by knowing what we’re shopping for.  I guess if you asked does this flatter my shape, and they lied to you, that’s another issue.

If you feel like this is happening to you and you’d like help defining your style and then achieving it, book in for a Wardrobe Overhaul and Personal Shopping session here 

You can read what styling services I offer here

Follow me on Instagram here