Sourcing for my clients brought me face to face with the pieces I was talking about. Dresses that people spent “good money” on, now sitting unworn, likely listed and then stored in a bag in the spare room, carrying a resale price that is still considered massively “overpriced”.

So, what is so unique about occasionwear retail pricing and resale value, because the gap is unusually vast in this category and I have some thoughts on this.

Firstly, the vast majority of consumers continue to assign high street brands to categories. Clarks for “back to school” shoes. M&S for a “fancy picnic”. Phase Eight for “the perfect look for every special moment”. That last one is the brand’s occasionwear tagline, not my words.

For people shopping without the time, inclination or knowledge to consider their own stylistic needs, these categories provide an instant answer to a big question. “My daughter is getting married, what do I wear?” Massive.

Suddenly, they need to know what a mother of the bride wears, they cannot let the side down and look terrible and, conveniently, there is an entire category of the fashion industry just waiting to tell them.

There are brands they associate specifically with these occasions, boutiques dedicated to them, places where you can walk in, explain that your son or daughter is getting married and be shown what someone in your position should wear. How reassuring.

You know you will look appropriate, you know other people will recognise the clothes as appropriate, you know roughly what people spend and you can pay anywhere from £180 to £1,800 for a “proper” outfit.

But do you really feel like yourself in duck egg blue, a boxy dupion silk jacket with 3/4 length sleeves and a shift dress? It is seemingly irrelevant that you never wear dresses or that cropped jackets interrupt all the lines you usually like to make on your body with oversized mens’ shirts and when was the last time you wore a peach fascinator????

All of this is so far removed from how you dress in every other category of your life that shopping secondhand for such a special occasion likely does not even enter your head. Imagine wearing a preloved mother of the bride outfit to your own child’s wedding. Utterly shocking. Yet Vinted is full of somebody else’s “proper” outfit from their very important day.

I saw another version of this play out with my niece last year when she went shopping for her prom dress, because she wanted the experience of going to the shop and finding her special dress, she wanted the moment captured when she said “yes to the dress”, my sister wanted that too and her grandparents went along for the event. Everyone was emotional.

My sister paid £550 for a totally stunning black dress. Obviously it was black, my niece is incredibly chic despite being 15 at the time, that gal knows what she likes.

It is important to note here, I totally get why they did this together because in recent years the prom and leavers ball has been earmarked as a key milestone, they had a milestone experience together, my niece felt special and there is real value in all of that.

But this is the sustainability challenge nobody wants to discuss, there is a VAST distinction between the value of the experience and the value of the dress, because the special experience was consumed that very day, the dress came home, the dress got worn, they took pictures, it was gorgeous.

The problem comes afterwards, because the girl going to prom the following year does not want my niece’s £550 dress secondhand at the bargain price of £150, she wants to go to the shop with her own parents, she wants to try the dresses on, she wants to find hers and she wants to have the moment too.

The EXACT same thing happens with occasionwear.

The wedding finishes, the photos come back and the outfit goes into the spare wardrobe, accompanied by that sentence I hear all the time on wardrobe edits, “I might wear that to another wedding”, except they rarely do because it did not really feel like them, it does not fit into any other part of their life now and, realistically, they aren’t set to be mother of the bride again. If you are buying to fulfil the performative role rather than dressing as yourself, you might never dress for that role again.

On that one occasion we needed to look like a mother of the bride, so we bought a mother of the bride outfit, and once the role has finished we are left with the clothes, likely wincing slightly at the money that got spent and unable to fathom why bloody Gillian on Vinted is offering you £25 for this beautiful, special outfit. How dare she?

But Gillian was not there when we bought it, Gillian did not have the glass of pink fizz, Gillian was not there when everyone agreed it was absolutely perfect and Gillian does not really care that £600 felt entirely reasonable when your daughter was getting married. Gillian is a cheeky mare who just sees a secondhand dress on Vinted.

We have become clever consumers of the codes and social hieracrchy of clothing. We all know what people wear to weddings, what is considered socially acceptable, which brands are for which occasions and roughly how much we are expected to spend, even when the resulting outfit might have almost nothing to do with how we actually like to dress.

How many events have you been to and worn something completely unlike your personal style? I genuinely imagine the marketing teams for brands like Self Portrait and Rixo crawling out of their caves, rubbing their mitts together a little like Michael Bublé at Christmas when wedding season arrives, because they know exactly what consumers are about to start searching for.

But occasion dressing can and should just be you, with all your formality dials turned up to maximum volume, or maybe just one or two categories on max, depending on YOUR style codes.

What if, instead of asking an occasionwear shop, “What should a mother of the bride wear?”, we gave ourselves some time and asked:

“What should I be wearing as mother of the bride?”

The first question begins with a category prescribing outfits that depreciate in value the second they leave the store, the latter begins with the person asking what they might wear because they happen to be going to an incredibly important event that matters to them.

Stylists can help you navigate this kind of event dressing. We don’t just do work for award ceremonies, we can work within a budget, look at what you already own, work out where it is worth spending your hard earned and where it really is not, and help you nail what you actually want to say on your special day without sending you off dressed as somebody’s generic idea of a polite mother of the bride. Think of it as having your very own Franck Eggelhoffer who tells you when you have bought the wrong NAVY BLUE.

You may not need everything in your look to be new. We might decide the shoes you wore to your best friend’s wedding are special enough and they should be worn again, or that the bag from your own wedding or even a christening matters more and deserves a day out, or the brooch from your mother’s anniversary. You likely already own the POV these looks all lack, the pieces that make a look yours.

Perhaps we decide you could spend the money on an extraordinary jacket, alter something sentimental you already love or, yes, maybe even hire the £600 dress or suit.

But if you are spending the money, at least make it epic so you don’t find yourself negotiating with Gill on Vinted, make sure you want to reach for it again and maybe it will be special enough that you can pass it on to the child in question.

I look for this in everything I buy in this category for my clients. How would this look with jeans, a maxi skirt and a T shirt, would it pair with a flat shoe and blazer, where does it go when the wedding is over?

Why not make it matter?

Not because it was the prettiest place I have ever been. It was not. Yet it took my breath away all the same because it felt strange and familiar all at once; unlike other seaside resorts in the UK. Some can feel stuck, this felt like an evolving space, more unapologetic.

Somewhere between wandering the streets and sipping coffee in cool cafés that were still adorned with the tiles of the greasy spoons that came before them, I found myself repeatedly distracted by the details. It dawned on me that I was enjoying the town in exactly the same way I enjoy putting an outfit together and working with clients, not because everything belongs together in line with an external interpretation of conforming but because every part of this town had been allowed to exist with absolute intention.

What struck me most was that nobody seemed interested in homogenising this place. There has been no attempt to make every street tell the same story or every building belong to the same period. The Victorian sits comfortably beside the brutalist, old shopfronts beside contemporary businesses, Rather than editing its history into one neat narrative, Margate seems content to let every chapter remain visible, each one adding another layer to the place rather than competing with the last.

An antique chemist’s glass sign sits proudly above a contemporary ice cream shop in a main square. Buildings with peeling paint and worn façades sit beside bustling cafés filled with families of all ages, this is all offset by a looming grey brutalist tower block. It is strangely poetic and, the more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of how I think about clothing, particularly the philosophy behind visible mending. There is something rather beautiful about acknowledging the lives something has already lived instead of pretending they never happened.

The word that kept coming back to me was dimensional.

Every corner seemed to have another story to tell. Dreamland wearing the words Electric Dreams. Tidy looking terraced houses sat beside homes with tangled net curtains the new owners choosing bar curtains and traditional signwriting techniques for their house numbers. Screen-printed glass in shop windows that nobody has replaced. Nothing felt trapped in nostalgia, but equally nothing seemed embarrassed by where it had come from. The past had not been preserved in a museum vibes way. It had simply been recognised, respected and invited to come along for the next chapter.

This is exactly what I spend my days trying to help women do with their wardrobes. Not to recreate who they were, nor abandon previous versions of themselves entirely, but invite those versions into the life they are living today. Perhaps that is why the town felt so familiar.

My husband doesn’t always get my outfits asking why I would wear beach sandals and evening skirts with men’s tee. I never really know how to answer because I have never been interested in making things make sense to anyone. My version of sensual is an oversized tee and a heel.

When seemingly unrelated things are placed beside one another they do not simply create contrast. They create context. Each allows you to see something new in the other. That brutalist tower block somehow made the previous buildings feel even more important, whilst the older buildings make light of the harsh concrete. Neither was trying to become the other; they simply coexisted, and both became richer for it.

Margate felt like the sort of place that had stopped asking for approval years ago. It was not trying to convince me it was beautiful. It was not performing “creative seaside town” or pretending every chapter of its history deserved celebrating. It simply seemed comfortable with the fact that this was the story, all of it. “It was like have you seen the fucking sunset though”

Oddly, it reminded me of my clients. The women who do the deepest work with me eventually reach a point where they become exhausted by performing for everybody else. They stop asking whether something is flattering enough, classic enough or appropriate enough and begin asking a much better question: Do I actually like this?

Margate is kind of like “that” woman, the woman who has reached a point in her life where she quietly shrugs and says, “You will either see the beauty here or you won’t.” And if you don’t? Well… do one. There was something incredibly freeing about that. Greg Wallace called us women of a certain age. I call it women who are wide awake.

Even the people of this town felt like an extension of it. Nobody was selling Margate to us. They were living in it; sharing it. A recommendation from the barista for a shop selling sun hats. Turned into a proper chat with a walking route because it was cooler in the heat and more enjoyable. A suggestion to skip somewhere because it was overpriced. There was no performance, just a quiet confidence that if you paid attention you would probably fall for the place in your own way.

We have become obsessed with editing our lives into neat perfect eras. We edit and declutter our homes, our wardrobes, our biographies and even ourselves, as though becoming more coherent is always the goal. I now wonder whether coherence is overrated. Perhaps what makes people, places and wardrobes memorable is not how perfectly everything fits together, but how many layers they allow themselves to inhabit at once.

I think this is why I cannot stop thinking about Margate. It never asked me to admire it. It simply got on with being itself, and I realised a long time ago that is the most wonderful thing anybody can do.

This is not because I have anything against timeless clothing. Quite the opposite. I spend my days encouraging people to buy less, wear more and build wardrobes that arguably become better with age.

My discomfort comes from the fact that we are selling people the answer without ever explaining the question.

Every day I see multiple perfectly coiffed content creators offering the same formula. A camel coat, a classic shirt, loafers, a beige knit. The comments are filled with people asking where they can buy the look, and there are affiliate links to whichever retailer has a discount code.

What nobody seems interested in telling people is what these garments are communicating and, crucially, why particular items became desirable in the first place.

Now I might be wrong here, but I am pretty convinced that people are not searching for “old money” content hoping for all the beige and access to the country club. I think the old money trend has come to be as the answer to a very different question, one that consumers are not articulating yet. A response to fast fashion overproduction.

Trends move at extraordinary speed. Most sensible people do not want to replace their wardrobe every season and, frankly, most people cannot afford to. With all of this happening, people might understandably reach a point where they want clothes that work together over time. Clothes that do not immediately date. Clothes they can wear repeatedly without feeling as though they have somehow fallen behind. Never mind whether these pieces fit your life and style preferences. That is a whole other article.

To me, old money is not a desire to look wealthy. It is a desire for quality, reliability and a sense that they are doing something right. Unfortunately, these old money experts are not really offering that; instead, you are given a shopping list. With zero context.

What these fast fashion shopping lists are not teaching is how to judge one garment against another. We need to be showing people what good looks like, so they will not be convinced that the latest fast fashion offerings are the answer.

These people are not taking the time to explain why the thickness of the sole on your shoe matters. Why one leather upper has been stitched in a way that allows it to be repaired. Why the cashmere jumper from the 1980s might still be worth buying today while five brand new wool-blend versions might not reach their first birthday whilst still resembling a wearable garment.

Those are the things people are actually in need of. The little cherry on top of this exploitative pie: this lack of explanation is what makes people more likely to keep buying things that are not fit for purpose and so the cycle continues, leaving people without answers and with less money.

Fast fashion might have become remarkably good at reproducing the outline of a garment, but they will not take their time in producing a piece properly, because time and good materials cost money. Those two things do not lend themselves well to a business model built on cutting corners.

Perhaps that is why I find the whole conversation so uncomfortable. People are being sold dupes and imitations and the appearance of discernment without ever being taught the skills.

As a stylist, I have absolutely no interest in teaching somebody how to “do old money”. I want people to understand clothing well enough that they stop asking the question altogether. I want them to recognise quality whether it is hanging in a charity shop or tucked away on a vintage rail. I want my clients to understand why a particular garment deserves a place in their wardrobe, regardless of trending aesthetics.

Because once you understand what you are looking for, the outside noise falls away.

You start asking whether a piece is worth your money at all. For me, that is a much better conversation and the start of building a closet that supports your daily life.

As usual I made my notes and the thoughts take many twists and turns, and this is where I ended up. Stay with me. This one gets messy.

To start with a none style related analogy that made sense to me. Let’s consider plants, plants do not grow in isolation from their environment. They bend towards light, stretch around obstacles and respond to the conditions in which they find themselves. Human beings are not so different. Our point of view is shaped by lived experience, and our brains continually help us adapt to the environments we inhabit. We adapt to survive. We adapt to belong. We adapt to reduce friction in our relationships. Over time, we become remarkably good at noticing what is rewarded, what is criticised and what keeps us safe. Once I realised my work is tethered the concept of adaptation, I found myself seeing it everywhere.

This week was a turning point in my thinking, I found myself finalising Style Strategy notes for three very different women. Different careers. Different personalities. All marvellous. All very aware something was off with their closets.

Each of these clients was somewhere in midlife, each trying to disentangle themselves from some of the adaptations and compromises they had made along the way.

These were not women searching for a new identity. On the contrary they had worked incredibly hard to become the people they are now. They knew what mattered to them. They knew what they valued. They were also able to recognise that something felt misaligned when getting dressed, that the message was blurred somewhere.

I had not fully realised that the work I had been developing for years was actually helping clients make the distinction between the parts of themselves they had consciously chosen and the versions of themselves that had slowly been shaped by workplaces, relationships, expectations and the environments they had spent years navigating. I get it now.

As I reflected on my wardrobe over the years, I remembered the risks I had taken as a younger woman, risks taken whilst simultaneously trying to fit into aesthetics that were never truly mine. Looking back, I realised that many of the decisions I thought were expressions of personal style were actually responses to my environment and my own fears of abandonment and rejection. I believed I was making conscious choices. In reality, I was adapting.

The third prompt for this article is based on some of my previous notes in the last few weeks, every summer. Every year I hear some version of the same sentence.

“I can get dressed, but I cannot get dressed for this.” People usually book a call thinking they have a summer wardrobe problem. It could be they assume they just need some new ideas on looks with linen.

Yet, I have come to realise that summer is rarely the problem. Summer just has a way of exposing the issue outlined above. When you are always adapting and there is no sign of you in your own closet.

What have we been adapting to?

Psychology helps us understand that adaptation is fundamental to being human. We are shaped by belonging, rejection, reward, expectation and social identity. Erving Goffman described the ways in which we continually adjust the presentation of ourselves depending on the environment we occupy. Social Identity Theory suggests that the groups we belong to quietly shape our behaviour. Even Thorstein Veblen argued that consumption communicates status and belonging as much as individual preference.

None of that feels particularly surprising. What surprises me is that we rarely extend the same thinking to our wardrobes.

When I look back at my own life, I can see adaptation everywhere. As a child, I became exceptionally good at reading environments. Poverty, abandonment and violence teach you that. You learn to do what reduces friction. You learn to read the room do what keeps you safe. You learn how to become easy to understand. Adaptation stops being something you consciously choose. It becomes the way you move through the world. It would have been extraordinary if my wardrobe had somehow escaped that process.

I remembered trying to inhabit aesthetics such as floral dresses for special occasions, those aesthetics were never truly mine. I remembered wanting to experiment, whilst simultaneously wanting to disappear. I remembered believing I was expressing myself, when often I was negotiating belonging.

I do not think I was unusual. In fact, I think this is precisely what I now recognise in my clients.

People often assume that my work begins with clothes. It does not. It begins with understanding patterns. The wardrobe is simply where those patterns leave their evidence.

One wardrobe tells the story of a woman who has spent decades needing to communicate competence before she has even spoken.

Another quietly reveals years of dressing for someone else’s expectations absorbing the tastes of a partner so gradually that it has become difficult to distinguish whose preferences are whose.

Then there are the women who literally apologise for still liking skinny jeans. That fascinates me. Because I find myself wondering how a preference became something that requires confession. Why is taste moralised? How did “I like this” become “I know I should not”?

Of course, this is not a conversation about denim. It is a conversation about adaptation.

It is also why I find the increasingly common advice in response to influencer culture “just wear whatever you want” strangely reductive. Because it is not that easy. Of course we should wear whatever we want. That stands up to reasoning, but to be able to do so without concern is a real privilege.

If all you have ever done is adapt yourself to environments, motherhood, partners, illness, changing bodies, changing identities and changing expectations. Do you know what it is you want to wear?

Perhaps that is why summer acts as such a catalyst for so many of my clients. The coats disappear, the knitwear comes off. The formulas that have carried an outfit through the other three seasons stop working.

Suddenly somebody says, “I cannot dress for this.” It sounds like a practical problem. More often than not, it is an identity lag challenge.

The wardrobe is occasionally responding to a version of life that no longer exists or it simply has no signs of the person inhabiting it.

This is why I always begin by decoding the client before the wardrobe. I can help you decode without even stepping into your closet. Because my adaptability comes from learning to read the room. I am not trying to identify somebody’s aesthetic. I am trying to understand what their wardrobe has been adapting to all these years. What has it been communicating? Which adaptations still serve them? Which adaptations have now become constraints?

The more time I spend inside other people’s wardrobes, the less interested I become in clothes themselves. I find myself far more interested in the lives that produced them.

Perhaps wardrobes are not simply expressions of personal style. Perhaps they are archives of adaptation. If that is true, then personal style is not about becoming somebody new.

It is about recognising the adaptations that no longer belong to us, like letting go of unhelpful behaviours when we recognise something is not serving us, thanking them for getting us this far and deciding, consciously this time, who we would like to become.

Before we ask what our personal style is, perhaps we need to ask a different question.

What have we been adapting to?

“Nothing is original anymore.”

“Everyone has the exact same taste.”

“Why do people have no taste?”

These statements seem to have arrived as fully formed indictments. They are being repeated with remarkable certainty, usually using the same hooks, the same fonts and the same colour palettes by people who, more often than not, look remarkably similar. As a stylist, the irony isn’t lost on me. The people pointing out repetition are often doing so through the very mechanisms that reward it.

I’ve felt that pressure myself. To distil years of my observations into something that can be understood in seconds. In truth it makes me feel weird. As I say, I don’t really do succinct. But, It can feel alluring to package a thought before it’s fully formed because certainty performs better than curiosity on social media.

But the more I sat with these declarations of these content creators, the more I wondered whether we are drawing the wrong conclusions: (again).

Perhaps originality has not disappeared. Perhaps people have become less practised at cultivating it. Through no fault of their own, perhaps they are mirroring everything they see in the algorithms fed to them via the attention economy.

One of the core ideas I keep returning to, one I picked up through my psychology studies is that our point of view isn’t fixed. It is accumulated. Not static but every evolving;

This means you shift everyday, Every conversation, every relationship, every failure, every book we read, every place we visit, every interest we pursue leaves its mark on how we interpret the world.

If that theory is true, then originality isn’t a magical power or something we are born with.

Neither of course is taste. Both emerge and shape shift throughout our lifetimes

So, every time I see one of these reels I eye roll then get ready to start chatting in the comments but instead I scribble my notes.

Doing this makes me think differently about these claims that everybody has the same style now. In fact I end up convincing myself of the opposite, we are not witnessing the disappearance of originality, but we are living through a period where there is a narrowing of the places we gather our ideas from. As screen time increases certain groups of people will increasingly taking their inputs from these tiny black mirrors, dare I say that I feel a course correction coming.

Every generation inherits dominant narratives. Ideas about beauty, success, femininity, professionalism, and what is deemed good taste. Some rules and ideas come from our families. Some from education. Some from marketing. Some from fashion itself. Increasingly though taste is being curated and therefore reinforced by the algorithms we spend hours inside.

Algorithms didn’t invent dominant narratives. They were developed to amplify them.

When millions of people are repeatedly exposed to the exact same references, it shouldn’t surprise us when they begin making similar connections. This isn’t happening everywhere of course, but these claims also infer that it is the fault of the individual that they are morphing into clones of each other, but what do we expect: if you are time poor and want quick answers to questions you are not even sure you have about style, these “must have” messages can appear super helpful. This can leave people believing that their ideas have just come to them without influence.

As a personal stylist, I must say that I don’t meet people who lack originality. On the contrary, I would say that I often meet people who have lost confidence in their own judgement.

They tell me they want a capsule wardrobe, edge, cool or whatever the label happens to be. Yet those ideas usually begin to unravel as soon as we start talking about their lives. The books they loved. The work they do. The objects they’ve kept for years. The places they go. The experiences they relish. When they feel their best. That’s where their point of view lives. That is what they are looking for when they dress.

Not trends and screen shots they’ve saved. In the life they are living and have lived.

Before I can make a recommendation, I need to understand the person wearing the items.

Because I’m not trying to hand someone a brand new point of view. I’m trying to help them recognise the one they have always been accumulating. It is in there. It is just being drowned out by homogeneous inputs, self esteem, life pressures, financial constraints.

Our work is slowing down together, paying attention and doubling down on the data their wardrobe has already, that’s what building discernment is. A practice.

The practice of paying attention to the influences around us instead of absorbing them unquestioningly. The practice of asking where a garment came from before deciding whether it deserves a place in our lives. The practice of separating what genuinely resonates with us from what has simply become familiar through repetition.

Originality isn’t the absence of influence. None of us develops in isolation. The artists, designers, writers and musicians whose work feels truly original are rarely the people who’ve escaped influence altogether. They are usually the people who have curated their inputs and as a result know their craft well enough to bend its conventions with intention.

Perhaps the same is true for the rest of us.

Perhaps originality isn’t something we just discover.

Perhaps it’s one of the things that emerges when we cultivate discernment and slowly learn to trust our own judgement, even when it differs from the dominant narrative.

That’s a far more interesting conversation than asking whether originality still exists.

It’s certainly the one I want to keep exploring.

One shape did not resonate with your style codes and now you are walking around claiming, “I can’t wear that.”

Right now, I hear Bermuda shorts are doing some of you dirty.

Perhaps a different way to think about the Bermuda short shape is this: not everyone loves a midi skirt. Right?

If the idea of a midi skirt cutting across your leg makes you feel all Mrs Doubtfire, you will likely feel bullied by Bermuda shorts.

However, it is not all bad news. The clues to the right shorts for you are probably already sitting in your wardrobe.

First, start with the trousers you love the most.

If, like me, you love a structured, double-pleat-fronted pair of wide-leg trousers, then you probably like feeling held and supported by your clothing.

You like the rise of the trousers. The structure. The support that design language gives your midsection.

So why are you trying to make loose, silky tap shorts work?

Flimsy, lingerie-style shorts held up by a simple strip of elastic. Likely sitting high on your midsection, right at your true waist.

Do you feel like you are wearing a nappy? All loose and undone? Not as polished as you prefer?

I thought so.

You probably need something tailored. We can get into length in a minute.

We are essentially looking for a summer-appropriate, functional replacement for the items you already love to wear. Not pieces speaking a completely different design language and making all your tops feel baggy and a bit too chilled when, actually, you love a tuck-in situation.

What about the people who live for a wide or barrel-leg trouser?

Have you been forcing yourself into slim or straight-leg shorts that feel stiff and, frankly, uncomfortable to sit in?

Petite humans, you might feel more like yourself in a short with a three-inch inseam, a mid-rise and a flared leg opening. On your body, this might create the proportions a Bermuda short creates on someone taller.

Tall humans, as per usual, you might be the cohort who can rock a wide-leg Bermuda with a flat and still feel like yourself.

These are not rules, by the way. In fact, quite the opposite. I am making generalisations based on what I have observed through my work with shape.

I am sharing the logic because I want you to ask yourself this:

Are you considering what has gone before when working out how to expand your wardrobe outside the trend cycle?

When we talk about rewear and I start getting very specific, this is what I mean.

Look at the leg width of your go to pieces before you hit “buy it now” on the latest shorts from the high street.

Now, let’s look at skirts.

It stands to reason that those who love a structured mini skirt might enjoy a structured pair of short shorts.

If you love an A-line mini, try an A-line short short: fitted and structured at the waist, widening through the leg.

Same design language. Different garment.

But what about the people who live in maxi skirts and long, fluid trousers all year? How the hell are we supposed to navigate shorts?

You might be surprised to find that your preference could be the reverse of the shape you love.

Yes. You might just LOVE shorter shorts.

Because perhaps what you really love is creating long, uninterrupted lines on your body, and shorter shorts allow the leg to create that same line.

Add a heel and you are in heaven.

Even my lofty five-foot figure can create the illusion of long limbs with a sculptural heel and a pair of shorts.

Short shorts with tights are another way to explore this shape if getting your legs out is a total no-go for you. We can dig into why that might be another time.

And, to be clear, if your reasons for not showing your legs are rooted in something other than the design of the shorts, this particular logic is not for you.

But if you have ever pulled on a pair of shorts, felt pretty unimpressed with how they made you feel and decided you were sworn off the entire category forever, there might well be a pair for you out there after all.

Never mind what the cool girls are wearing.

YOU are the cool girls.

A number of things entered my personal orbit this week. I read stylist Shiv Lyons writing on Substack about why the creative process is THE point. I saw Emily Tighe from Stylist Elixir sharing her points on the misunderstanding of what styling is. I read an article in 1 Granary about stylists losing work to AI, saw others talking about the money being saved by no longer paying creative teams. Then I got a little reduced on Instagram after commenting that I did not believe AI could replace the soul and heart of a creative. I thought about conversations with clients. I thought about my recent experience of being asked to style inside an AI-powered wardrobe app. The culmination of those ideas led to me these conclusions.

They entered a mind already shaped by other things. My studies in psychology. My work on fundamentalism and dualism. My career working in strategy. My client work. My own experiences of identity. Someone else could have encountered every one of the same things this week and arrived somewhere entirely different.

That is where the idea takes on human embodiment. Not because I invented every component of it, but because nobody else has lived my life; how would they arrive at my POV, connecting my associations between them. Six pages of hand scribbled notes later, here we are.

Sat wondering whether, in all of our current conversations about what AI can replicate, are we asking the wrong questions? If we keep asking whether it’s acceptable that AI should be used to produce an image, an outfit, an article or an idea are we missing the point entirely?

Shouldn’t we ask what happens when we stop investing in the people whose job it is to produce new ways of seeing the world?

The creative process is the point

When I read Shiv Lyons writing that the creative process is the point, something landed. Perhaps because so much of the current conversation around AI treats the creative process as an inconvenience. Stylists in all fields are having to explain the inner workings of their mind. The process is being considered as a costly, time-consuming series of steps between the brief and the thing the client actually wants. If the finished image is the objective, why pay for the conversations, the research, the experiments, the rejected ideas and the people involved in producing it? Why even mention them.

But the finished thing is only the tangible artefact of the work. The intangible work happened in the noticing. In the strange nostalgic reference somebody remembered . In the conversation that sent somebody down a rabbit hole of embodied association. In the years of observation and sensitivity that allowed a person to recognise an association somebody else would easily miss. The creative process is not simply the route to the output. It is the mechanism through which new ideas enter the world.

If we value only what can be seen at the end, AI looks extraordinarily efficient. It can remove costs from the process and still give us something that looks acceptable. But that calculation assumes the output is the only value. It ignores the fact that the process we are eliminating is also the process through which culture moves forward. Society evolves through human observation and creative reinterpretation.

Is it that work of a stylist has been misunderstood?

Emily from Stylist Elixir has been discussing the continued misunderstanding of what styling actually is, she is putting language to the feelings stylists are carrying. The reduction of the work behind the looks that takes place. Styling is reduced to assembling garments. Find a blazer. Add a trouser. Choose the right shoe. Make it look good. I do this everyday but there are humans at the centre of all of this; In truth it is very rarely about the clothes. if looks where the only relevant part the job, then of course a machine capable of identifying products and generating combinations looks like an efficient replacement.

But, that is not what I spend most of my time doing. Nor do any of the stylists I know. I recently sat with a client who owns a beautiful closet of clothing. Ai would see that closet and build all the looks. The client loves much of it. Yet there are certain pieces she can no longer tolerate wearing. They remind her of roles she no longer wants to play. One piece was a substantial investment, but it made her feel slouchy. Meanwhile, she preferred the cleaner lines and asymmetrical detail of a far less expensive jacket. The interesting question was not, What can we wear with the blazer? It was, Why does this particular garment make you feel so unlike yourself when so many other pieces from the same designer feel right?

That is the work. It is noticing that a detail matters to somebody before they have necessarily articulated it for themselves. Recognising that their rejection of a neckline might be connected to a previous version of themselves they no longer want to perform. Understanding that femininity has not been rejected, but renegotiated. Ai isn’t recognising this complexity and humanity.

The outfit is the evidence of the thinking with human embodiment in mind. It is not the thinking itself.

The problem with choosing a side

Perhaps my resistance to much of the AI conversation comes from my studies. I have been thinking about fundamentalism and dualism: our tendency to reduce complex questions into opposing positions, and the comfort we find in certainty. Human or machine. Good or bad. Original or derivative. AI will either save creativity or destroy it. Creative people are either uniquely irreplaceable or hopelessly obsolete.

I do not think either position is particularly useful. I recently styled clients inside an AI-powered wardrobe app. I can see what it does well. I can also see what it cannot yet do. I did the outfits and the client was happy despite having access to Ai powers looks she wanted human intervention. The interesting question, to me, is not whether I must defend humanity by denying the usefulness of a machine. Because the real moral issue may not be whether AI can make things. It is what happens to the human ecosystem of ideas when we decide that making the thing is the only part worth paying for. Where is the progression?

AI stole my job

The piece in 1 Granary about stylists losing work to AI. What stayed with me was the economic argument. Editors telling creatives they are using Ai and others in the comments openly talking about the money being saved by no longer paying creative teams.

I understand why that is seductive. The image still exists for the client. The campaign still exists. The content still exists. Something has been produced and, on the surface, the expensive human infrastructure around it appears to have been unnecessary. If the only measure is whether we got a usable image at the end, it looks like an obvious efficiency. But I cannot stop thinking about what the machine is using to create it.

It feels like a failure to me, a loss of humanity and of course peak stage capitalism to take the accumulated ideas of human beings, put them into AI to mirror the workings of a human mind, and then use its efficiency as justification for no longer paying the humans whose thinking made the system valuable. Wild?

The issue is not that creative people work without influence. Quite the opposite. Every creative person is often vocal about what shaped their ideas. Humans do not simply absorb references and reproduce them unchanged. Every POV shifts is added to a Jenga tower of ideas. We then misremember them through fog of nostalgia. We argue with beauty. We reject things. Connect them to something from an entirely different discipline. Filter them through our own experiences, studies, politics, bodies, relationships and lives. That is how something new enters the mix.

Ideas do not emerge alone

This article is evidence of that. Shiv’s words & Emily’s observations entered my mind. The 1 Granary article entered it. So did an Instagram interaction with a few fired up humans who quickly told me I was wrong and sentimental, a client conversation and my experience of working alongside AI in recent months.

But those things did not simply pile up until they became an article. They passed through me. My hand scribbled notes, I leafed through my module text books to draw on the materials that came to my mind; then I sat and thought about punk movements and all the creative designers collections I love and how I have seen fashion shift over the the years, those small rebellions and details that have shifted narratives.

Through what I have studied about fundamentalism and the human attraction to certainty. Through my thinking about dualism and our insistence on turning complicated ideas into two opposing camps. Through years spent in strategy, where the work was often to notice relationships between things that initially appeared unrelated. Through hundreds of conversations about clothes that turned out not to be about clothes at all.

Someone else could have read every piece I read this week and produced a completely different argument. They would have noticed different things. Made different associations. Disagreed in different places.

That is not a complication in the creative process. That is the creative process.

This is why referencing the minds that help form our ideas matters so much. Not because creativity requires a perfect audit trail of every influence, but because ideas are drawn from different parts of the brain. Emotional; sensory. They move between people. Somebody says something. Somebody else disagrees. A third person applies it somewhere totally unexpected. A new interpretation enters the conversation. Authorship is not the absence of influence. It is what a particular mind does with it. Does the Ai scrape allow for this? Are companies in peak capitalism going to be honest and pay up? What does this shift mean?

The stylist becomes visible

There is something else happening in my own work that feels relevant here. The more I explain what I see, the more people seem to understand what they are actually paying me for. The idea to share my thinking comes from mentors Leigh and Nicci from Slowcoach Studio, they felt it would be helpful if people could see my POV. I’m enjoying sharing it.

For a long time, much of my stylist thinking remained invisible. The client received the outfits, had the style sessions, the shopping links or the lookbook. They saw the conclusion, but not necessarily the observation that produced it. Increasingly, I am making some of that thinking visible.

And the response to that work has taught me something. People are not just interested in the answer. They are interested in the way of seeing that produced it. A stylist is not a neutral delivery system between a person and some clothes. We bring references, biases, experiences, curiosities and years of observation to the work. Two stylists can look at the same wardrobe and see entirely different things. Neither necessarily wrong. That difference is the value.

When the stylist becomes visible, it becomes harder to pretend the work is simply the output.

What AI styling has taught me

I am not writing this from a position of believing AI is useless. That would simply return me to the dualism I am questioning.

AI can identify garments. It can 100% generate combinations. It can help somebody see possibilities within a wardrobe they already own. It can process more options, more quickly, than I ever could. Pretending otherwise would weaken the argument. The question is not whether AI can perform useful styling tasks. It clearly can.

But the most important information I receive from a client is often not contained in the clothes. It is in the pause before they answer a question. The contradiction between what they say they want and what they repeatedly choose. The garment they insist they should love but never wear. The word they use three times without noticing. The shift in their face when they talk about a previous version of themselves. Stylists will get this.

So, What happens when we stop investing in the people who challenge the status quo?

Do we lose the big creative minds. This is the question I keep returning to. AI will get better at producing images, outfits, words and ideas. I think the more important question is what happens upstream? What happens when fewer photographers are paid to experiment? When fewer stylists are given the time to follow an instinct? When fewer designers are commissioned to investigate a half-formed thought? When the people who might have created the next reference cannot afford to continue? Culture does not move forward because everybody agrees on the most efficient answer. It moves because somebody finds the existing answer inadequate. Somebody misuses the object. Rejects the accepted silhouette. Makes the ugly thing desirable. Connects two references that were not previously connected. Looks at what everybody else has accepted and asks, Why do we do it this way?

The people who challenge the status quo are rarely the most efficient people in the room. Creative exploration is full of waste. Ideas are abandoned.

That inefficiency may be where the value is. If we stop investing in those people because imitation is cheaper, we may not notice the consequences immediately. There is already an enormous archive of human creativity to draw from. We can continue recombining it for a very long time.

What will AI have left to mirror and draw from tomorrow if we decide the people who keep challenging, questioning and reinterpreting the world are no longer worth paying?

Why My Marginalia?

For years, my work has revolved around observation. This is what led me to styling and The Trend Disruptor. Not just watching as trends burn bright and fizzle out. Not just unpicking aesthetics. Observation of details and systems.

Every week I sit down with clients who believe they are lacking a cohesive wardrobe. Yet almost always, the clothes are simply the final chapter in a much longer story.

A wardrobe records far more than what we wear. It quietly documents our impulses, compromises, aspirations, identities, seasons of life and the systems we move through every day. If you pay close enough attention, patterns begin to emerge. Over time, those patterns have become impossible for me to ignore.

In the past few years I have noticed the same behaviours repeating across hundreds of wardrobes. The same frustrations. Packaged differently. Humans who have been taught to distrust their own instincts in favour of someone else’s idea of style.

Most of these observations never make it into my client notes. They begin as brief scribbles, swift annotations in my myriad random notebooks. Thoughts captured after consultations, conversations replayed on the drive home, or in the shower or questions that refuse to leave me alone until I have answered them.

This publication is where they will live.

I have called it My Marginalia because books, history and the lived experience of people have always fascinated me. The handwritten notes in the margins of a book are often where the real thinking happens. Ever picked up an old book and found someone else’s scribbles? They reveal curiosity, disagreement, moments of recognition and ideas still forming. This recognition is something I think stylists go through with each client. To me, my marginalia resembles the seemingly throwaway comments people make during a style session.

Stylists LOVE those moments.

A client casually says something they almost dismiss themselves, and suddenly they unfold. A passing remark becomes a window into their values, their memories or their deepest aspirations. Those comments tell us far more than a Pinterest board ever could.

Each week I’ll attempt to share my observations on style, consumer culture as I see it, sustainability, identity and the invisible systems shaping how we buy, wear and relate to clothing. Some entries will be practical. Others will simply be an invitation to look again at, your own wardrobe.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. In fact, I hope they don’t. The most interesting conversations rarely begin in an echo chamber. Just do not come at me with hate for sharing what I see. Here for constructive chats only. I am not a writer, I am a human, I am a personal stylist who has spent hundreds of hours with humans of all ages and backgrounds, helping them muddle through the noise.

If these essays encourage you to become more discerning, more curious about your style, or simply more aware of the systems influencing your sartorial decisions, then My Marginalia will have done exactly what I hoped it would.

Thank you for reading the notes from my margins.

In March of that same year, I also began digitising my own closet in Indyx and logging my outfits within the app on a daily basis. Even the outfits I would wear around the house on a relaxing Sunday were added. The ones with the leggings and sweats. I wanted to keep track of all of my real life looks in one place. To gain an understanding of my needs. I had not consciously considered how this insight would help support my methodology as a stylist in years to come.

Fast forward to 2026, my lifestyle has changed again as I serve as more of a pick up and drop off service for my son. Interestingly, I do still rely on many of the same pieces I reached for then and despite my changing shape lots of the pieces do new jobs for me now. My collection of midi skirts has grown in size as I have carefully added vintage items that bring new textures and colours to my closet. I felt this category was a great example to demonstrate how my life has shifted over the last two years. My needs have evolved, my body shape is relatively stable for now and therefore the lens I used to view my closet has shifted too.

Crucially, because of the daily discipline of using Indyx; I now have two solid years of tangible wardrobe data and an excellent understanding of what pieces have stood the test of time.

Looking back at my 2024 outfit logs, the data tells a fascinating story. Busy mother, building a business where I need to be relatively visible, running a home with a husband travelling a fair amount for work. It is reflected back at me through the outfit images. The time poor compromises I made on pieces that answered easy questions.

Today, I find it fascinating to look at these exact same foundation pieces through a trend disrupting, reference engineering lens: tracking over time how they survived a shifting body and a changing lifestyle. I am always excited to challenge myself to restyle my pieces with a new interpretation and a new lens.

These pieces are what I rely on most in the skirt category. Some of these items have been logged in Indyx from the start.

A white linen E-spirit bias cut midi skirt. Picked up in the charity shop. It has an elasticated waist and I roll it up so it fits me. It sits like a maxi on my silhouette.

The “Tina” Skirt from Elwin Studio. Elasticated waist, A line shape. I bought a medium in 2024. There is consequently spare fabric I can use for new ideas.

A late 2025 purchase, vintage leather midi I got on e-bay for £11. It has the most incredible details. Utter vintage PERFECTION

Item 1: The white linen skirt:

Conventional style rules dictate that white linen belongs to summer, beach holidays and rare heatwaves. My wardrobe data tells me a completely different story. I have not restricted this piece to a single season; instead, it has become a year-round reliable. Rather than archiving it when the temperature drops (an Indyx tool) I have been treating the dense, woven fabric as a specific tactical texture, frequently pairing it with heavy chunky knits and bulky black biker boots to cut through the predictable weight of cold-weather dressing.

Looking strictly at how the styling of this piece has evolved over the last two years reveals the true value of tracking your wardrobe data. Developing discernment starts with slowing down enough to take stock. Indyx has been instrumental in helping me to do that.

My lens in 2024

In 2024, my relationship with this skirt was all about ease. I leaned heavily into subverting its feminine silhouette by pairing it with oversized denim shirts or my favourite back then a vintage khaki Ralph Lauren button-down I got from Goldie Vintage, I wore both of those pieces layered over boxy white or black crew-neck tees. Those looks were clean, masculine, unstructured, and entirely functional for a life spent lugging my sons things around after him. I was not precious about it getting creased or dirty.

My lens in 2025

By 2025, the styling shifted to something slightly more intentional and grounded. The oversized layers continued but I was leaning into pieces that were more sculptural, I had invested in a jacket from Jessica Lewis and this became a hero for me, I was also loving silk shirts, balancing the proportions with delicate suede Mary Janes or slip on mules. It was a subtle refinement, moving away from sneakers and pure survival utility into a more refined aesthetic.

My lens in 2026

This season though I have found myself needing a change-up. Instead of the simple, long lines of my usual midi and maxi skirts, I am leaning back into my enduring love of the drape: Texture in the form of draping, pleats, crinkles has been a thing for me FOREVER, but it is only recently that my daily life has allowed me to consider that level detail when putting looks together.

I am hyper-aware that these everyday drapey silhouettes are saturated across every single Spring/Summer 2026 collection. The fashion industry is relentless when it comes to convincing us that we “must have” the new skirt to participate in a key silhouette shift. But if there is one thing I live for, it is trend disrupting and what I like to call “reference engineering” turning what has gone before into something that perfectly aligns with where we find ourselves now. So here is a little summary of some of the styling tricks I have been trying out over the last few weeks.

Khaite Shay skirt from SS 2026 via Net A Porter

First I have been very drawn to this Khaite skirt and the simplicity of the styling on the Net-A-Porter site. To get the mood I see in this piece I literally tied an old white linen shirt around my waist, the cuff details of the skirt hang loose to one side of the skirt, the fabric textures are so close you wouldnt know they are seperates. I wore my 90s Paco Herrero mules, A vintage blue leather bag with a metal handle, it folds to a clutch and my £1 Red Herring dangly earrings.

I have also had my eye on several other skirts in the Net a Porter sale.

This drapey beauty is from CO. Currently on sale and very tempting to me.

But instead of buying new in or end of season sale, I used a simple kilt pin to gather and drape the front of my linen skirt, completely altering the architecture of the piece and how the fabric falls down the body. To elevate the utility of the pin, I clipped on a handmade trinket of reclaimed freshwater pearls from Jodie at Palmworks. This piece was from her “Of Water” collection and I just love the versatility of it.

This outfit is what I am wearing today. Because it is unreasonably warm in the UK. We do not have air conditioning as standard. These Paco Herero sheer zebra mules are just the dream shoe for me. Picked up on a resale site a couple of years ago they have proven themselves to be a summer reliable. Easy to wear, sculptural heel and texture and of course black.

My “why/” for restyling like this comes down to a simple truth: my life has shifted (AGAIN). I am at a point in parenthood where I can consider my looks. I am not chasing my son, pleading with him to put his shoes on. My lifestyle now allows a little more time for consideration, but with that space comes creative restlessness. Right now, I find I am simply not satisfied with pieces in their prescriptive form. I really enjoy deconstruction in my pieces. This feeling may well shift again for me; as our bodies and lives inevitably do: but for now, I am leaning into the exploration of what feels most like me, right now.

That is exactly what I want to encourage you to do with your own pieces. First if you do not use Indyx, you should give it a shot for a few weeks. The insight you can gain through this kind of observation is incredibly helpful. Next, try and look at your own wardrobe objectively. Before you look outward at the relentless cycle of new season drops, look inward at the pieces you already own. How can you challenge their architecture? What hardware, pins, or styling twists can you introduce to make an old piece align with who you are today?

You can download the Indyx app for free and use my code THE TREND DISRUPTOR to get $10 of styling credit to help you get started. Digitising does not cost a penny.

Style isn’t static, nor is your POV therefore it stands to reason that our closets shouldn’t be either. What piece in your wardrobe is waiting to be disrupted or re-engineered this week? Also if you would like me to breakdown my lens shifts on the other skirts, let me know. It felt good to get this information out of my brain.

Have a not too sweaty Tuesday.

The narrative, as usual, becomes oversimplified and reductive. A body that returned, or a body that did not. As if this is the most interesting thing that happened when a new human was brought into the world. It leaves us with a diminished picture of motherhood from the very start. And, let’s face it, reducing the scale of the transformation to whether a woman’s body returns to its previous form sits very neatly within a patriarchal view of the “perfect mother”. It does not even begin to capture the magnitude of the internal shift taking place. Bravo, patriarchy. You duped us into thinking that was the bit that mattered.

To put the scale of the shift into some kind of context. Every single day, we see and hear things that nudge our point of view. A book can change how we think. A conversation can unsettle long held assumptions. An experience can alter the lens through which we see the world. Becoming a mother is like fast-forwarding through a hundred years of those micro nudges.

The magnitude of the change is seismic.

So how much of a shift should we expect when you become responsible for a small human life? It is not an exaggeration to say you are not the same. A new chapter awaits. Your worldview shifts, leaving almost every aspect of your life altered in some way.

Your brain literally reorganises itself. Your body has carried and delivered an actual person. Your hormones shift dramatically. Your life reorganises itself around the care of another human being. The result is not simply a new routine, but a different way of experiencing most aspects of the world.

Motherhood is a kind of kaleidoscope. Everything evolves. Your perspective, your priorities, your sense of self. The same pieces may still be there, but they have been rearranged into something entirely new.

What your body needs to do throughout the day is usually totally different. You find yourself on the floor far more often. You lift, crouch, stretch and carry in ways that did not previously define your day..

There are also the quieter practicalities that no one photographs. The need to feed a baby. To burp them over your shoulder. To change nappies. To wipe milk or food from your sleeve. To move through the day in clothing that can absorb the constant interruptions of care.

Your life is asking something entirely different of you physically, and your wardrobe inevitably has to respond to that reality. Yet we rarely prepare women for this shift in any meaningful way. Instead we encourage them to fit back into the garments from their lifestyle pre-pregnancy at lightening speed.

When someone is expecting a baby, the preparation is focused elsewhere.

We prepare the nursery. We buy the pram. We read about feeding, sleep cycles and recovery. We are told how to prepare the home and the body. There are conversations about perineums, feeds and changing tables. But very little attention is paid to the person who is about to go through the change.

At best, we invest in a large changing bag and a few nursing bras, as though those small practical purchases are enough to carry us through a period of life that is both physically and psychologically transformative.

Which raises a question I find increasingly interesting: why do we expect everything else to change, yet assume our relationship with ourselves and our bodies will somehow return to normal? Why are we not preparing our wardrobes for this shift in the same way we prepare our homes?

Because the early days of motherhood are chaotic in ways that are difficult to anticipate. Time fragments. Your body is asked to do unfamiliar things throughout the day. Even the smallest decisions can feel oddly complicated.

And yet, when it comes to getting dressed, we are somehow expected to pick up where we left off.

Clothing might seem trivial in the middle of all this. But my work with new mothers and my psychology studies have made me wonder whether we have seriously underestimated the psychological impact this is having on new parents.

As part of my work, I ask clients to grade how aligned they feel in the clothes they wear across the different parts of their lifestyle. It is not uncommon for new mothers to grade themselves as 1/10 in terms of closet alignment. A one out of ten.

Now this is not dressing for an occasional event. Nor for the version of themselves they see least often such as date nights. This is for the clothes they are living in every single day. I find that incredibly upsetting and difficult to dismiss as trivial.

Because participation in life requires getting dressed. Going to a baby group requires getting dressed. Meeting a friend requires getting dressed. Leaving the house for coffee requires getting dressed.

So I find myself wondering what happens when getting dressed becomes a daily reminder of the distance between the person you once were, the body you had before, the lifestyle you had? Where is the support for parents in this chapter?

Does this repeated daily misalignment become another, largely invisible, barrier to participation? Of course good mothers never put themselves first? right?

I suspect part of the problem is that the physical changes come as such a shock to the system that most of us default to whatever feels immediately practical. There is very little space to think about clothing with any intention. We reach for the quickest solution available. But imagine if we were prepared for this in some way.

Imagine if people openly discussed a maternal need for comfort. Not as giving up. Not as letting yourself go. Simply as a practical response to a body and a life being asked to do entirely different things.

For me, the solution became a small uniform of striped T-shirts and generic denim. Clothes that were easy, serviceable and completely devoid of personality.

Looking back, they made me appear exactly how I felt at the time: generic, flattened and oddly irrelevant within my own life.

It was not that those clothes were objectively wrong. They simply belonged to a version of myself that had not yet caught up with the shift that had taken place.

I also think there is another force quietly shaping this moment.

Alongside the shock of physical change, there is often a subtle pressure to step into an existing trope. The mother who has it all under control. The woman who manages the baby, the home, the work, the relationship and somehow still appears composed throughout it all.

Lo and behold, the arrival of the “super mum”.

It is an oddly narrow character to inhabit when you consider the scale of the change that has just taken place. Yet the pressure to perform competence can be strong. Instead of acknowledging that everything has shifted, we rush to demonstrate that we are managing perfectly well.

And clothing can quietly become part of that performance. Practical. Tidy. Neutral. YAWN.

The uniform of someone who appears organised and capable, even when internally everything still feels unfamiliar. I’m describing my own experience here.

I often wonder whether motherhood might feel slightly less overwhelming if someone sat women down before the baby arrived and talked through this transition in practical terms. Not in the language of fashion, but in the language of daily life.

What will you need from your clothes?

What fabrics will forgive the spills and interruptions that are about to become routine?

What silhouettes will let you bend, sit, lift and move without thinking about them? If you have ever worn skinny jeans in a play centre you will know exactly what I mean.

And perhaps most importantly: what will still allow you to recognise yourself while your life reorganises itself around care?

Why don’t we prepare the person who is becoming a mother. Perhaps the question should not be how long will it take until I return to the person I was before motherhood? Perhaps, we should be asking how we might support the person we are as we enter this new chapter?

The word doesn’t accuse you of excess or carelessness. It doesn’t imply you lack discipline. It suggests something softer: that you’re overwhelmed, that life has become heavy, that you’re carrying more than you need. The solution offered is reassuring. Clear it out. Make space. Simplify. You’ll feel better.

It sounds supportive. But something gets lost in all this compassion and softness. We acquired all of these things.

When we label a closets excess as clutter, we collapse very different garment into one emotionally numb problem: this lot is too much. That clutter might be a dress you bought during a career pivot. The blazer from the year you wanted to be taken more seriously. That didn’t work, The jeans from before your body shifted. The overtly feminine top you bought for a night out because it felt like the right thing to wear. They are not the same thing. If everything becomes “stuff,” the only logical response is removal.

The problem is; removal without reflection doesn’t break any patterns. It just resets the space for fresh and exciting new things.

Several years ago, I bought a top for a night out. Blue. Leopard print. Pleated. A soft V-neck. It wasn’t awful, It simply didn’t make any sense.

My evening wardrobe is predominantly black. Slim. Architectural. Slightly austere. It feels deliberately paired back, That top was girlish even romantic. It softened everything. It asked people to see me differently.

When I looked at it the next day, honestly, I felt like I wanted to cr. I had bought an item that was essentially people pleasing in garment form. So I could fit in.

I was asking myself to experiment with femininity in a way that didn’t align with my sense of self at all I was a new mum, I was tired and my body looked different. I was trying on new style codes and they felt off. I learnt from that. Never buy overtly feminine, pale blue, frilly tops again, they are NOT for you.

Once I understood that, the piece had done its job. I understood what it revealed to me. I was buying pieces to fit in with my friends.

Every person I meet has a closet made up of these kinds of items; Layered with micro transitions and momentary purchasing decisions. What is leading those decisions? Aspirations. Social codes. Roles we’ve tried on and discarded quietly. Versions of ourselves that felt plausible at least for a moment.

So let’s remember each item has a monetary value, money you worked hard for: each item represents a decision. So, when everything is reduced to “clutter,” we skip the interpretation phase. We soothe the overwhelm, we tell ourselves it’s for our well being, but we don’t investigate the pattern. We don’t take stock.

In practical terms decluttering without investigation, means the cycle continues. You clear space. You feel lighter. You refill the space. Not because you’re careless, but because you haven’t decoded what is behind the purchasing.

The industry is very comfortable talking about what’s new and very rarely cares for what went before, your insight can be gleaned by doing the opposite of what they want.

A garment that no longer fits you physically still tells you something. A garment that no longer fits your lifestyle tells you even more about how you have changed.

Before you move something on, it’s worth asking yourself some quiet questions.

Who was I when I bought this? Age, lifestyle etc

What was I trying to project?

Was I aspiring, belonging, performing, protecting?

Why am I moving this piece on? Is the issue construction, confidence, or lifestyle alignment?

These questions slow everything down. It is the slowing down that disrupts the cycle of buy me now.

Clearing space feels productive. But understanding your consumption patterns is what prevents the space from filling up again.

Clothes are rarely clutter. They are evidence of who we thought we wanted to be at a moment in time. The real work isn’t in how quickly you can remove these. It’s in whether you are willing to read what they say about you before you let them go.