I’ve styled literally thousands of women and I don’t think I’ve ever met one who arrived at my studio feeling entirely happy with her appearance. Even those who have been blessed with good looks and great figures have their insecurities – curiously often more so than those who are not as conventionally “good looking”.

When we women look in the mirror, we tend to focus on our supposed shortcomings and overlook our good points. The beauty of having an image consultation with a professional like me, is that I can help you identify those good points and show you how to dress in a way that will help you look and feel your very best. This involves not only assessing you shape, scale and proportions, but also getting to understand your personal preferences and any particular “hang ups” (don’t worry, most of us have at least one!) you may have.

To look and feel your best, you need to take into account the following:

Your colouring

There are so many different types of colouring. That’s why I use the Colour Me Beautiful tonal system which offers 24 variations of colour palette so that we have plenty of options to choose from in order to get your colours spot-on. Wearing your best colours enriches and enhances your natural colouring. Skin will look fresher and more even toned, eyes will look brighter and your hair colour will look richer.

Make-up

If you’re not a make-up wearer, you could be missing a trick. Make-up in the right shades for you will make you look fresher, healthier and altogether more vibrant. It’s also a great way to draw attention to your best features and doesn’t have to take more than a few minutes to apply.

Your body

Wearing the right style of clothing makes such a difference! Understanding how to dress your shape and your proportions is fundamental to looking your best. Too many women who feel they’re carrying some extra weight hide behind baggy, shapeless clothing which only serves to make them look bigger. Added to that, they often end up covering up their best bits in the process! Getting the proportions of what you wear (and how you wear it) right is also important. It can make your body look more balanced than it may be in reality. These two photos of me illustrate the point. In the first, by wearing a long top over my skirt, I have made my torso look long and my legs short; I have also “lost” my waist in the process. Simply tucking my top in and wearing a belt, corrects my proportions and highlights my waist.

Ready to make changes?

Take a look at yourself in a full length mirror and, instead of automatically homing in on all the parts of your body that you don’t like, I invite you find three things about your face and figure that you do. If that’s too much of a challenge, find three that you at least don’t mind. For example, do you have nice eyes, a great smile, dainty hands, a good bosom, nice legs, a smooth decolletage, a curvy bottom, slim legs, clear skin etc? Once you’ve identified these, think about what you could do to emphasise them.

Here are some simple ideas:

Colour – wear colour on the parts of your body you want people to notice. This could mean choosing colourful trousers to show off long legs or a vibrant nail varnish to draw attention to pretty hands.

Make-up – lipstick will highlight a great smile, blusher will add a healthy glow, mascara and a subtle liner will draw attention yo your eyes.

Jewellery – wearing  jewellery on or near the parts of your body you’re most happy with will draw attention to them. Slim wrists and hands are crying out for bracelets and rings; a lovely decolletage can be enhanced with a necklace.

Hemlines –  the eye is drawn to horizontals so people will notice the part of your body where your hemline ends. Therefore, if you’ve got slim ankles, 7/8^th trousers are a great way of drawing attention to them. Likewise, if you like your legs, you may want to wear shorter skirts or draw attention to them by wearing some colourful statement shoes.

Belts – I see a lot of women with voluptuous, hourglass figures wearing shapeless clothes. Just adding a belt makes them look slimmer and more shapely. If your waist is small compared to your bust and hips, why not give it a go?

Once you start accentuating the positives, you should find that you are much less aware of what you perceive to be the negatives. And, by the way, very often I find that what my clients feel most self-conscious about wouldn’t even be noticeable to most people! But that’s a whole other story.