personal stylist

Life of a personal stylist: What I learned from the V&A Gabrielle Chanel Exhibition

Life of a personal stylist: What I learned from the V&A Gabrielle Chanel Exhibition

I’ll admit – I love heading into London, and while most of the time I am there at my studio helping clients, I sometimes get the opportunity to have some time for inspiration.

One of the more recent examples of these is visiting the V&A Museum and their Gabrielle Chanel exhibition. It focused on the influence this world-renowned fashion designer had on the fashion world. From the little black dress to the iconic women’s suit, Coco Chanel has made a huge impact on our fashion world. Here’s just some of the ways she has done this.

PERSONAL STYLIST TIPS: HOW CAN I ADD MORE COLOURS TO MY WARDROBE?

As spring is welcomed here in the UK, the colours are bright and abundant. This is usually the time when people yearn to add colours to their outfits. If this feels alien to you, and you are wondering where to start with colours, then I am here to help.

If you are just beginning to dip your toe into adding colours to your outfits, or haven’t yet tried to do so and are feeling overwhelmed, then here are my tips for adding colours to your wardrobe.

PERSONAL SHOPPER ADVICE: WHAT'S NEW THIS SEASON?

With February fast-approaching, this means Fashion Week is coming to London from the 17th – 21st February to showcase the Spring/Summer trends to look forward to.

With the catwalks filled with warm-weather looks, you may be wondering what new items may work in your current wardrobe that you may want to invest in.

While I work around the ethos of a sustainable and capsule-like wardrobe, there are sometimes seasonal pieces that certainly feel right to add to my wardrobe. As long as they work alongside at least 3 of my current outfits, and make me feel great (and will last!) then they are worth purchasing.

Being a considered shopper makes each season more exciting as you take a moment to consider if the pieces you quickly react to will have a long-term effect. This is one thing to bring into your mindset each time you go shopping – give yourself the time to question if you have pieces that work with that garment, or if you love it enough to make some!

With this in your mind, let’s share a few of the new season favourites I have found.

PERSONAL SHOPPER TIPS: HOW TO FIND THE PERFECT HANDBAG

As accessories go, you can’t get more diverse than the handbag. From clutches to briefcases, backpacks to crossover body bags, you can discover a huge array of styles, colours, patterns, and designs to add to your outfit. But how can you find the perfect handbag for your style?

In this article I’ll share with you my top tips to finding the right handbags to suit your needs, personal style, and lifestyle.

COLOUR ANALYSIS: THE 18 SEASONS METHOD AND HOW TO DISCOVER YOUR COLOURS

As a personal stylist, colour is one of the most important parts of my work with my clients. Colour can completely transform how our skin looks in dramatic ways, and I use my colour analysis service to do this for my clients. We work together to discover their seasons, and the colours that they can gravitate towards to help them feel their best whenever they next go shopping. I wanted to share a few insights into the colour analysis method, and help you dip your toe into discovering the colours that best suit you, but of course, if you’d like to have the knowledge of the colours that help you feel most confident, I’d be delighted to help.

PERSONAL STYLIST TIPS: NEW YEAR, NEW WARDROBE?

As you enter a new year, is your resolution to be more comfortable in your skin, more confident within your styling choices, or to discover your personal style? Here are my top tips to help you do just that!

PERSONAL SHOPPER TIPS: TOP WAYS TO ADD COLOUR TO YOUR WINTER OUTFITS

Want to bring some colour to your winter wardrobe, but unsure where to start? In this article I share my top tips for how to use colour in your wardrobe from adding little touches to going all out with your fashion choices!

PERSONAL STYLING TIPS: 7 PERFECT PARTY OUTFIT IDEAS

Parties – let’s face it, dressing up can be a big headache if you are unsure on what to wear. Whether you already have a fabulous wardrobe or not, the dressing up side of parties, particularly during the festive season, can become tricky.

In this article, I wanted to share 7 of my favourite party outfit ideas that are headache-free and some that may already be in your wardrobe!

PERSONAL STYLIST TIPS: HOW TO LOOK AND FEEL CONFIDENT, FROM THE WAIST UP

With the recent announcement meaning many of us will be continuing to work from home for a while yet, I wanted to share some more tips to help people look and feel their best for the online meetings we will continue to be hosting!

PERSONAL STYLIST TIPS - HOW TO PACK SMART

In this article, I wanted to share a few of my tips to help you pack smart, and make your break the most enjoyable it can be.

PERSONAL SHOPPER ADVICE: HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR OUTFIT FOR A WEDDING?

Summer 2017 is approaching and so the Wedding Season (as most of the weddings are celebrated in summer indeed!).

Stefania, image consultant - founder of One of a Style - wants with this video share 3 tips for guests (women) who are attending one or more weddings in the coming season, to help them with their selection of dressed and outfits. 

This idea came after as she dealt with lots of clients in the past who asked her consultation to find dresses and accessories to attend weddings. It is clear that this is not an easy subject and that most people (especially women) get lost, and sometimes crazy, in their seeks of an appropriate outfit for the occasion.

1st tip Stefania gives is about the location and venue, and so the style, of the wedding (villa or country house?! Castle or restaurant?!) that can make the difference in the choice of the dress'style!

2nd tip is about the accessories features! An outstanding outfit is not just done by the dress but by the whole set of elements and embellishment. She suggests to find metallic accessories (gold / silver/ rose gold...) that can be easily matching between them and with all the colours of the spectrum for a dress! A smart choice above all if you have more than one wedding/even in a single season, so that you can change the dress but leave the same accessories (shoes, clutch, jewellery).

3rd tip is more than everything the answer to a question many clients asked her : can we wear white or black at a wedding? If you wish to know the answer have a look to the video :-) We don't want to spoil you everything, do we?! 

LIFE OF A LONDON STYLIST: MY INTERVIEW BY AN ITALIAN TV CHANNEL

Here a skype interview released by an Italian TV Channel (RTV 38). 

Pity it is in Italian, but I hope someone of you will be able to understand it. It explains a bit of me, my job, how and why I decided to start my business. Enjoy!

EVENTS: THE POWER OF COLOUR

"the best colour in the world is the colour that looks good on you" C.Chanel

Yesterday, Thursday the 12th, there have been a workshop organized by Stefania Bartolomei, about the colour as powerful styling tool!

Of all the styling tools, colour is maybe the most underestimated, yet it has the great power to affect not only our look but also our mood.

As the right colour can, in fact, confer us a healthy look, enhancing our features, making our eyes shine bright and our skin looks like porcelain, so the wrong colour can wash us out, highlighting the eye circles and the skin flaws. We perceive the effects that colours have on us, but most of the time we are not aware of it and we think that the causes of our look, whether it is good or not, are entirely of physical and mental status nature.

Being conscious of what our best colours are can really have an effect on our attitude. as I always say : when you look good, you feel good! And when you feel good, you have more self confidence, so you can be successful and get what you are aiming to, that in the social life as well as in business.

Let's go deeper now into the technical side of the workshop and its subject.

As you probably know, one of the services that Stefania offers to her clients is the colour analysis; the seasonal color analysis (to be precise) is a scientific way to determine's people best colours. 

As in nature, the seasonal colour analysis is based on the 4 seasons : spring, summer, autumn and winter.

These seasons recall the colours that we can find in nature, from spring, with its bright, powerful and warm colours , that become softer and lighter in summer, to autumn, with everything getting warmer and deeper, to the winter, with its crispy and sharp colours and its high contrasts. 

The colour drapes, used for the colour analysis, recall the properties of the seasons in nature, reproducing the same general characteristics. 

The same characteristics can then be found in our own features. So, generally speaking, people with light soft coloring would most likely belong to summer, while people with dark colours and high contrasts in their features would most likely belong to winter.

But it is not easy to recognize all this values in ourselves and there can be also exceptions. So it must be clear that this are general rules and that the only way to build up our palette of best colours, in the end, is to have a professional colour analysis.

During the workshop Stefania shown the effect of the colours on our features, whether they are good or wrong, explaining how to recognize our features through 3 values:

  • temperature (warm vs cold)

  • brightness (soft vs bright)

  • light (light vs dark)

giving eventually practical examples on how to make the most of our colours through the use not only of clothes but also of accessories, make-up and hair colour choices. 

At the end of She also did a funny "celebrity game", where people were called to guess the properties, and so the season, of some star, among which Lucy-Liu, Amy Adams, Cate Blanchett, Julia Roberts and so on... this was lot of fun! 

The workshop has been a great success! The atmosphere was cozy and nice and seen the great enthusiasm shown by the public Stefania will surely plan another one very soon! 

In the meantime, if you want to find out more about the subject and discover what is your season and what are your best colours book your session with Stefania writing at stefania@oneofastyle.com 

Special thanks go to : Veronika Damiani for the make-up of the models; Laura & Kim for being my models.

LIFE OF A LONDON STYLIST : VISITING TRADE SHOWS

There's always something new to know about fashion... new trends, new brands and new connections! Visiting this trade shows, even as image consultant and not a buyer, can be very interesting and gives you new inputs and ideas for your clients, and even new connections, that are always important! 

And I am very happy and proud to see lots of Italian names to thrive among the PURE LONDON's stalls today with their genuine made-in-Italy products.  This is not a good moment, the fashion marked is full of valuable and fierce competitors and it is very difficult to conceive innovative and unconventional ideas with; but I've seen good proposals today, for quality and originality, between lots of cheap and, I daresay, dull products. I really hope that the buyers had noticed the same , choosing their suppliers wisely!