Find your gorgeous

Personal style can be very empowering, and I firmly believe how you dress and what you wear can have a profound effect on your life. Not just how you are perceived and how you look, but more importantly on how you feel and your level of confidence and motivation;

At KARA&I my business partner and I know style isn’t about fashion, it’s more evolved than that, it reflects personality and is a hallmark of self-expression. 

Developing a personal style is a lifelong process influenced by our age and maturity, our lifestyle, our environment and climate.  It is unique to each person and finding the style for you at this moment in your life is key.

Aging can be joyous as we gain insight into ourselves and our lives, it can also be a time when many women begin to struggle with a changing body shape, that leaves them feeling frumpy and unable to identify what used to be their unique personal signature, their style. 

On the inside we might still be that energetic, slim, young woman, but on the outside, we no longer recognise ourselves.  It can be difficult to understand how to dress our changing body shape, and even worse wading through pages of unsuitable Fast Fashion only to make expensive or even cheap mistakes.  

"embrace your curves and laughter lines, they are after all, simply evidence of someone who has lived"

And it isn’t hard to see the irony, the less attention we pay to our appearance and how we present ourselves, the less positive we feel about ourselves, and the less confident we are.  This can quickly spin out of control, so that we don't even want to be noticed, we wear drab, unflattering clothes, feel ashamed when someone actually looks our way, we become a shadow of our former self. 

Embracing our years of experience, and celebrating our maturing age demands clothes that are comfortable, yet elegant, sophisticated and less revealing, clothes that make us feel confident, joyful and ready to take on the world.

So how do we reconnect our confident, beautiful selves, and how do we style our new body shape? 

No matter what our size, height or age we all deserve to look our best and feel comfortable in our body. Paying attention to your own personal style, is in itself an act of self-respect and self-worth.  

The better you look, the more people will react with positivity to you.  With this positivity we enter a self-affirming circuit, where we can begin to focus on other important qualities, who we are inside, our motivations and achievements.

We feel more relaxed and look more beautiful because we smile more, ignoring those things that have dragged our confidence down. We embrace our curves and laughter lines, they are after all, simply evidence of someone who has lived.

First impressions do count, people will size you up within seconds, so how you look and feel will send a message to others.  What will they think?  … “Wow, this beautiful, confident, complex person has self-respect, has experience, has something important to contribute...”

So lets get started -

• Make time for yourself. By looking after yourself you will better look after everything else in your life – your partner, your kids and your work.

• Identify your body type: Body Type Calculator - When we understand our body type we can choose clothes that downplay areas we don't want to highlight, or make us appear taller, shorter or slimmer.

• Comfort and fit - When our clothes feel comfortable and fit, they better express who we are and lift our spirits. Studies also show well-fitted clothing makes others perceive us as being more successful.   https://nypost.com/2018/08/31/this-is-the-woman-most-likely-to-get-promoted-according-to-science/

• Colour - discover what colours suit your changing hair colour and complexion. Experiment with prints, colour blocking or a single colour silhouette.

• Remember, you don't need the latest designer clothes, just be smarter about buying fashion choices, buying what suits your body shape and items you can mix and match, for different combinations.  Add an element that is on trend, like a pair of snakeskin print ankle boots to add a little sass to what would otherwise be an average pair of jeans.  

• Dress agelessly, and you will find dressing at 70 needn’t be any different to dressing at 40.

Next time some more detail about how to wear colour.

Until then I hope these thoughts and tips encourage you to step out and find your gorgeous!

Karen