How to get dressed using the 3 C's

My process....The clothes, Accessories, Hair & Makeup

I was asking in the subscriber chat recently what you as subscribers would like to see, and Liesl had a brilliant question:

‘What’s your process for pulling together a look, like what habits do you have that keep the process smooth and fun? How do women who leave the house looking more or less the way they want to look and feel do it? Practically speaking? Including hair, makeup, accessories?’

I loved this question because I think without realizing, it’s something I sometimes take for granted, the fact that getting dressed 99% of the time for me is a relatively smooth process and fun!

Surely we just put on clothes and go on about our day? Maybe for some people this is true, but it isn’t for me and i’m not ashamed of that. I’m not embarrassed to say I care about what I wear, and neither should you if it brings you joy. Getting dressed for me is way to flex my creative muscles, it’s a part of how I express myself and it helps me feel at home in my body.

Sure there are days when I can’t be arsed (don’t we all?) but I value what getting dressed for myself gives me. I had to sit with this question to really ponder, what is my process? Is it something that I can put into a step by step how to? I’m going to do my best to try.

The 3 C’s

When it comes to getting dressed, I think the most important considerations are

• CLIMATE - The weather/climate/environment where you live/where you are going

• COMFORT - Physical & emotional

• CHARACTER - How you want to feel/who you want to be on any given day

I call them the 3C’s - because my branding/marketing brain cannot unlearn certain things lol, especially a framework with alliteration!

Climate

The climate you live in impacts everything when it comes to getting dressed and getting ready for the day. From the clothes you wear, how you wear your hair, do your makeup and everything in between. For example, in LA most of the year is sunny and warm (don’t hate me) and because there’s little rain and low humidity, my hair is way less frizzy than it used to be when I lived in London. However, my skin now needs more hydration from my skincare. When I lived in London I probably owned one pair of sunglasses, but moving to LA made sense to own a few different pairs to add a different vibe to outfits I like to repeat. In London wearing flip flops or sandals was reserved to a few months of the year and I had more boots, vs now the opposite is true. I have one ‘fancy’ coat and the rest are highstreet pieces because I only need them when I travel. In London, my coats were often the main event for much of the year. Dressing for the climate you live in naturally dictates the clothes you wear, and the choices you make when it comes to leaving the house.

Comfort

When I speak of comfort I mean both physical comfort (in the practical sense), and the emotional comfort (safety, grounded, empowered etc). Both are equally important. What constitutes comfort in both the physical and the emotional sense is unique to each of us, and if you have yet to identify what creates that for you within your closet, it’s time to experiment. Try something different every day until you can confidently say this feels good to me, or actually this doesn’t make me feel comfortable. Lean into things that contribute to comfort. Maybe you’ve always wanted to try wearing a shorter dress but you have thoughts about it, the only way to create comfort is to try things out and give yourself the time and space to acclimatize. Use the bridge concept to help you. Comfort isn’t always instant. Sometimes we have to break in a pair of shoes before they feel like slippers, the same is true with identity.

Character

I have

Kelly Williams

to thank for this, as I saw her talk about how when she’s on vacation she packs for the persona, the character she wants to be on vacation. I think this is something we can all apply to our daily lives any time we want to. We each have our own baseline of what constitutes emotional comfort, and then there’s space to explore around that when it comes to character. A spectrum of what constitutes ‘character’ without it feeling like fancy dress. That’s the sweet spot, a sliding scale that allows you to play, to try things on (yes even a character) and see how it fits? To be clear when I say character, it gets to be both imagined and something you already feel is within you.

My Process