Head of CVM & Retention – Telecoms Industry
The investment has been worth it already
Beckie came to me at a strange, in-between moment. She’d just been through a restructure at work, one of those periods where roles disappear and everyone’s waiting to see where they land, and she’d come out of it with a bigger job and a wider remit. On paper, that’s a win. In practice, she was stepping into more visibility and more responsibility at exactly the point she felt least like herself.
She’d also been through a difficult personal chapter that had changed her body and, with it, her relationship to her wardrobe. Clothes she used to love no longer felt right, and rather than deal with that, she’d simply stopped shopping. She told me she didn’t really enjoy it any more, and that shopping usually ended the same way: nothing fitting, frustration setting in, and her giving up and going home in whatever she already owned.
So we didn’t start with a rail of clothes. We started with who she was becoming. Beckie is known at work as the safe pair of hands, the person people go to because she’s organised, dependable and quietly brilliant at getting things done. That reputation is real and it’s earned. But it had also become a kind of invisibility. My work with her began with identity, not styling: understanding how she wanted to be seen now that her role had expanded, and building a style strategy from that outward, rather than starting with trends or “what suits you” and hoping the confidence would follow.
Challenges
Beckie described herself as someone who defaults to jeans, avoids blazers, and doesn’t feel confident about what the alternatives even are. But underneath that was something much more personal: a genuine disconnect between how capable she felt in her work and how she felt in her own skin.
She rated her confidence walking into a high-stakes meeting or networking events at 5 out of 10, and was honest that her wardrobe didn’t reflect her seniority or the weight of what she was now responsible for. She had 2 events coming up that she was quietly dreading, not because she didn’t know her subject, but because she didn’t know what to wear and had a habit of avoiding those situations rather than face the decision. That’s the real tension: a woman who has never struggled to be taken seriously for her work being held back from putting herself forward, simply because she didn’t feel dressed for the room she was now in.
There was also the body confidence piece sitting quietly underneath all of it. After a hard personal year, Beckie no longer felt at home in styles she used to love, and shopping had become something to get through rather than enjoy. She wanted to feel confident, fun, bold and knowledgeable, which is exactly who she is in a work context, she just hadn’t found a way to let that show up in how she dressed.
Results & wins
Beckie came into her sessions expecting to learn some styling basics. What she left with was a completely different relationship with getting dressed, and with herself.
- Stopped fixating on the number on the label and started shopping for fit instead, which alone unlocked pieces she’d have walked past before
- Understood the “why” behind each recommendation, so she can now build looks herself rather than relying on someone else’s eye
- Learned to trust her own instincts on style, rather than defaulting to what felt “safe”
- Discovered accessorising, belts especially, as an easy way to elevate an outfit without needing a whole new wardrobe
- Started receiving regular compliments and, by her own account, has started being kinder to herself
- Felt the benefit before the shopping even happened, noticing a shift in how she felt about herself earlier than she expected