How to Create Your Signature Style in 1 Month

I give advice to a friend who wants to transform their style in just a few weeks

Apr 04, 2025

If one of my friends came to me, and they said “I want to be the most stylish, confident, beautiful, at-peace with my style, striking I have ever been in one month, what do I do”, this is the advice I would give

1. Body matrix

I would suggest learning your body matrix type - so I would ask “do you feel more broad, narrow, or somewhere in the middle?”, “do you feel tall, short or neither particularly” “do you feel curvy like hourglass-y, more straight and sharp, or again you don’t really connect with either?”. Sometimes, this is literally enough to help someone find their body matrix - you know your own experience of getting dressed.

Once they had settled on their type, I would say “okay, from now on, stop buying any pieces which don’t align with your body matrix type” starting with necklines - I think necklines are HUGELY important and can honestly be the make or break of a whole outfit. I would say “let’s see your wardrobe”, go through and highlight any pieces which didn’t align with their matrix type, any pieces which don’t make them feel good in their body, assess what’s left and then write down any gaps. So, if in this process they didn’t have any plain tops left which made them look and feel good, that needs to go on the list with adjustments for body matrix type.

The body matrix is a really good place to start because I believe it deals with a lot of inner confidence issues. Almost every woman has a hang up about her body shape and feels she would be more confident if she had a different body type, so having your own body type validated and knowing that there are loads of other beautiful women out there with a body type just like you can feel amazing. It also explains why so many of those clothes we hate don’t make us feel good - it’s not your fault, its just not designed for you!

2. Style Roots

When doing any sort of makeover, creating your own sense of style and wearing pieces that make you happy is one of the most important things. So, why not start with style roots? I actually think many women don’t care about their “style” per se - as in, their unique expression of self via clothing - it’s an art form and not everybody cares. Some women just want to feel the clothes they are wearing enhance their best features, and so if a friend asked me I would probably start there.

Once they had tried on a couple of outfits which made them feel confident, I would introduce “okay, but what do you actually like?”. I would ask them things like “do you like to feel more sexy or modest”, “minimalist or creative”, “relaxed or done up”, “ posh or casual”, “edgy or sweet”, “beach-y casual or more sporty casual”. I would ask my classic “imagine you are having your dream outing”. They’d then describe it, and I would follow up with “what are you wearing'“, and then “a guy you fancy is there, your friends are there, your parents are there, your boss is there, what are you wearing now?” - this really gets you in the mindset of “what do I actually like?” because you can’t tailor it to any one specific type of person. The answers to these questions would probably be enough for me to suggest their 3 style roots.

I would ask them to make a Pinterest board to find the things they like and are drawn to, to show me some of their favourite pieces in their wardrobe. I would suggest that they analyse my pinterest boards for their style roots that we had settled on, their own pinterest board, and choose on 5 patterns, 5 textures, 5 colours, 5 silhouettes, that they want to focus on for the next month and to ignore everything else which isn’t on their list.

3. Colours

Colours I think are the thing which make the biggest impact externally. If you want a “wow” moment, colour is everything. You can wear the brightest red and look completely boring and generic if it’s not in your season. Rather than trying to get my friend to settle on a colour season, and open them up to this very strange and sometimes contradictory world, I would just ask them three questions:

Do you look worse in an orangey lipstick or a purple-y lipstick, or something in the middle? (they could be wrong but its a good start - often people have no idea what warm neutral or cool actually means, where they do know what lipstick feels weird).
is your natural hair really light, dark, slightly light, slightly dark or literally in the middle? What about your eyes - okay, you’re really light, then try to wear really light colours! (Obviously, I want them to be looking at all their features, but I’m doing the quick, easy version here.)
Do you think there is a lot of difference between your hair, eyes and skin colour, or are they all pretty similar in how dark they are? If they’re really different to each other, you probably will suit brighter colours, if they are quite similar, you probably will suit softer colours better
Do you think of your skin as being quite bright? If yes, you probably suit bright colours, if you don’t really then you probably suit more muted colours. (People often don’t notice if they don’t have bright skin, but those who do are usually aware of it)

4. Essence

Essence I would probably do last, not because I think it’s unimportant - for celebrities I think it’s the most important thing - but because I think it’s the cherry on top which gives you full cohesion. Your essence blend is something you might consider for a first date, a job interview, being a guest to a wedding - anything where you want to make a really wow impression. The best method I think for incorporating your essence is to find those points where they overlap with your style roots. So, in my case, my style roots are flower, mushroom, mountain and my essences are ingenue, classic, ethereal, so my overlapping things include; metallic, sheer or light fabrics, floaty skirts, elongated floral prints, low contrast, minimal patterns, shawls, wavy but neat hair, soft makeup - and so on. But, it’s fairly easy for me, lets pick really alternate ones like moon x mushroom x stone and ingenue, romantic, classic, that might look like

rich, royal colours
minimal detail
dark lace
thin, light, floppy leather textures
velvet tees
thick waist belts
large hoop earrings
smoky makeup

It’s not your traditional look for either combination, but actually it wouldn’t go against any of your lines.

Shopping

Lastly, I would go shopping. At every stage I would encourage my friend to review the new information that we had learned and narrow down the wardrobe until every piece was perfect. We would create some outfit ideas and take pictures so that they were stored on their phone, try some looks on. Then, we could create a list of gaps based on the things they actually do every week-month and the outfits they would need for those events, and go shopping!

To avoid overwhelm, I would probably suggest searching for some of these items on Pinterest, Vinted, ASOS etc before actually going into the city to try things on in shops - it really depends on preference (I’m an in-store girly) but if they get overwhelmed by shopping and don’t always find it fun, then definitely go online first to get into the practice of looking for new things.

Signature makeup

I also would suggest finding a signature makeup look based on what we now know about their colours. Then, if they’re feeling overwhelmed by picking an outfit, they can always just fall back on putting on their best makeup

What’s new:

💭 YouTube

The feedback on this week’s video has actually been really touching. We have a community of mum’s in the comments sharing what this video meant to them, and it really impacted me this week so thank you for anyone who shared ❤️

✨ Ethereal x casual pinterest Every so often I ask my paid members to suggest what pinterest board they would like me to create next. This week at their request I created a pinterest board full of outfits which would work for ethereal essence and are also super cosy, comfy and casual. If you would like your suggestion to be heard, join our members chat!