Senior HR Advisor – Law Firm
" I would make this investment again in a heartbeat"
When “Jane” first came to me, her world was shifting underneath her. As Senior HR Advisor at her law firm, she was the person others turned to for steadiness, and the firm had just been acquired by a larger, private equity-backed group. Suddenly she was more visible than she’d ever been, at exactly the moment she felt least ready for it.
She’d been thinking about working with me for around 3 years. It took a pay rise this spring to finally make it feel possible, though I suspect the truth is she’d been ready for a while and just needed the right moment. What she wanted wasn’t a wardrobe overhaul or a totally new look. She wanted to feel like herself, only more so; which meant we had to start with who she actually was, not with a rail of new clothes.
That mattered to her more than I initially realised. She’d looked at styling from the outside and worried it might turn her into someone louder or glossier than she recognised. So we began simply, by listening: to how she felt in her clothes, in her body, and in the rooms she was walking into with a bigger profile than before.
Challenges
On paper, this looked like a styling brief: smarter separates, a wardrobe that worked for the office and for life outside it too. But underneath, the real work was something else entirely. Jane described her starting point honestly: she rarely felt good or confident, she compared herself to others constantly, and her inner voice could turn sharply critical, sometimes enough to colour an entire day.
Here’s the tension she was living with: as an HR Advisor, she was the one holding steady for everyone else through real organisational upheaval, right when her own self-belief felt thinnest. It was never about a lack of experience or standing, she has plenty of both. What she needed was permission to trust her own instincts again, whether that showed up in a work outfit, an opinion in a meeting, or simply how much space she let herself take up.
There was a quieter thread running through this too. Asking for help, saying what she liked or didn’t, admitting when something felt like too much, none of that came naturally to her. So the work had to earn her trust first. Style came second.
Results & wins
This wasn’t a single moment of transformation. It’s built steadily over nine months, and it shows up now in ordinary days, not just the big ones.
- Confidence is her new normal — she feels sure of herself most days, rather than having to reach for it
- Getting dressed feels exciting again — she describes the buzz of wearing something she loves, not just something that’ll do
- The comparing has quietened right down — she spends far less time measuring herself against others
- Others have noticed, not just her — colleagues have picked up on a real lift in her presence, what she calls “the spring in my step”
- She actually wears what she tries on — no more admiring something in the mirror and reaching for the safe option instead
- She’s found her voice — she can say what she likes, what she doesn’t, and what she needs, far more easily than when we started