Commercial Director – B2B Distributors and Wholesalers
"I didn't expect to be able to be unique and stylish"
I met Emma through a referral from her best friend, one of those brilliant, word-of-mouth connections that carry real weight, because Mel(her friend) had already told her how much my Style Transformation programme had changed things for her. Even so, Emma came to our first session feeling wary. As a Commercial Director, she is used to being sharp, decisive and firmly in control, and handing that control over to someone else, even across a full programme, was not entirely comfortable. She trusted the referral more than she trusted the process, and that is a perfectly natural place to start from.
What she did not expect was how far the work would go beyond the clothes themselves. We began, as I always do, with who Emma actually is underneath the job title: a Commercial Director by day and an artist by nature, with a real passion for art alongside her career. From there, the programme became less about telling her what suited her and more about giving her permission to be visibly, unmistakably herself, in the boardroom and in her creative work.
One moment from that first consultation has stayed with me. The word “classic” came up, and I watched Emma’s face change. She did not want to be put in anything classic, as though the word itself might swallow the parts of her personality she loved most.
Challenges
For Emma, this was never really about clothes. It was about vulnerability. She knew that getting the most from our time together meant being properly open and honest with me, and that is not easy for a woman who has spent her career being the one with the answers. There is a particular kind of exposure in admitting you no longer know what works for you, when you are used to being the person others look to for decisions.
The real tension was in balancing two very different worlds. As a Commercial Director in a male-dominated industry, Emma needed a wardrobe that conveyed authority and credibility, the kind of presence that gets her taken seriously in rooms where she is often the only woman. But Emma is also an artist, with a natural pull towards colour, creativity and expression, and she worried that dressing for authority meant dressing down that part of herself entirely. She had learned to dial down her creative side without ever quite deciding to. My job was not just to find her a wardrobe, it was to help her see that authority and creativity are not in competition with each other, and that the two, worn well, actually reinforce one another.
Results & wins
Emma noticed the shift almost immediately, and so did everyone around her. She is back in the bright colours she had been avoiding, bouncing out of the dressing room with what she calls a bit of sass, and, this is the part I love most, when someone offers an unsolicited opinion, she now has the confidence to shrug it off rather than shrink from it. That is the real marker of change: not the compliments, but her ability to hold her ground when she is not universally validated.
One of the most freeing moments came on our style strategy day, when we mapped out her style personality formula and classic turned out to be one of three traits already sitting at the heart of it, alongside creative and natural. Classic was not the flattening, faceless label she had feared, it was already part of who she is, and knowing that gave her outfits a polish to sit alongside the boldness she was reclaiming.
She has also come away with a genuinely practical toolkit, the small styling details that make an outfit read as intentional rather than simply nice, such as how to cuff a sleeve or tuck a shirt for the sharpest line, plus a curated black book of independent boutiques chosen because I know she values individuality over anything mass-produced.
- “Everybody is commenting on my clothes and my outfits. People are loving it. I love wearing my bright colours again and bounce out of the dressing room with a bit of sass.”
- “That results in confidence, which means that people don’t think I look odd, but that I look good. I didn’t expect to be able to be unique and stylish.”
- “It was worth every penny. I only wish I’d done it sooner, because I cannot believe the difference it has made.”
If the idea of working with a stylist makes you worry you’ll lose your edge, your colour, your creativity, that fear is exactly why this work matters.