Your style is directly proportional to the opportunities you get.
The contrarian case for taking what you wear seriously.
Here’s something nobody in professional culture will say out loud: how you dress is shaping your career, your relationships, and the rooms you get invited into.
Covid loosened the dress codes. Most industries aren’t strict anymore. But the loosening didn’t kill the rules of style, it just made them invisible, which made them sharper. When there’s no uniform, what you wear becomes a real signal: of taste, of self-respect, of the version of yourself you’ve decided to be that day.
Trends don’t matter here. What matters is what your style is saying about you before you’ve said anything. The silhouettes, the textures, the tailoring, the way it all sits against your body and the version of you you’re stepping into that day.
Has it ever happened to you that you walk into a room genuinely feeling good in what you’re wearing, your posture follows, and suddenly the whole interaction changes? There’s a different energy in your voice. People treat you differently. They look up when you speak, they ask for your input, they value what you say. You stand out, and not because you’re trying to. That’s your style doing the work of a first impression before you’ve said anything.
I’ve felt this in different rooms, different contexts. And how people respond shifts depending on what I’m wearing. Most people treat style as something shallow, a way to attract attention or perform. But style is a strategy. A way to boost your confidence, shift your energy, and change how you show up. It opens doors that weren’t there a moment before.
Some people will call this superficial. They’ll say it’s unfair that what you wear affects how seriously you’re taken. They’re not wrong, it is unfair. They’re just wrong that it doesn’t matter.
I look at style as a reflection of interior life. How your brain operates, what you value, how much you care about expressing yourself. Everything you own says something about who you are. And the reality is, people want to do business with, hire, and spend time around people who present themselves in alignment with who they actually are. Industry matters, of course. But the principle holds.
Style isn’t about being seen. It’s about owning who you’ve decided to be, and letting people meet that version of you on arrival.
What's Worth Your Attention
Worth sitting with
I was reading Emma Grede’s new book, Start With Yourself, and one of her reframes stayed with me. She pushes back on the idea of being grateful for what happened to you, because that framing makes it sound like life is something that happens to you. Which is false. We have control over our actions. We don’t have control over other people’s actions or beliefs.
What she’s pointing at, I think, is that gratitude on its own can quietly strip you of your own agency. The reframe she offers, and the one I’m sitting with this week:
Old thought: be grateful for what happened to you. New thought: feel proud of what you achieved.
Does success depend on other people? Of course it does. Nobody gets there alone. The collaborator, the introduction, the right call at the right moment, all of it counts. But here’s what the gratitude framing misses: the introduction only happens because you showed up. You made yourself visible. You took action. The people around you were the door. You walked through it. That’s not borrowed, that’s owned.
Things don’t land in your lap. And when they seem to, that’s the moment you have a choice: wait for it, or take action.
Worth Curating
A blazer chosen on purpose. Not the trending shape because it's trending, not the safe one because it's safe. Whatever cut your personality calls for, structured, relaxed, oversized, nipped, the point is that you chose it and it reads that way.
we’re obsessed with:
A pair of shoes you walk differently in. You know the ones. Whether it’s a flat with structure or a heel you’ve broken in, the right shoe changes your posture before you’ve taken three steps.
we’re obsessed with:
One signature piece you keep returning to. A coat, a watch, a particular shade of lipstick. Style isn’t novelty, it’s recognisability: the thing that makes a room remember you walked through it.
we’re obsessed with:
From the salon,
— Sabina