From Fashion Fangirl to Finding Purpose: My Unlikely Path to Personal Styling

Let's talk about shopping, shall we? That delightful experience where you wade through seventeen slightly-different-but-actually-identical white t-shirts while fluorescent lighting highlights every pore on your face. Magical.

Shopping was tedious, took too much time, offered too many choices. I desperately wanted to make that process easier and more accessible for customers. I was drowning in the sludge of interviews and past work with styling companies and retailers who promised the moon with their "faster, easier approach to shopping!" and "personal stylist on demand!" marketing spiels.

Spoiler alert: it was never delivered. When the curtain gets pulled back on these organizations, what you find isn't a wizard but a mess. An algorithmic-recommendation mess built by people who wouldn't know fashion if it slapped them with a Birkin bag. At Stitch Fix, we literally had to sign off every style card with "Just add a swipe of lipgloss and head out the door!" (Because nothing says "we understand your unique personal style" quite like generic lipgloss advice for literally everyone.)

The Accidental Fashion Education

My fashion journey began as a broke young actor in London. While my bank account screamed "ramen noodles for dinner again," my soul whispered "but what if we just... looked at expensive clothes instead?"

Between rehearsals, I'd wander through Knightsbridge like a fashion pilgrim. Harrods was my cathedral. Harvey Nichols and Selfridges were where I went for slightly less holy, but equally reverent worship. When time was tight, I'd duck into boutiques, creating my own little fashion fantasy world.

These beautiful clothes weren't just fabric to me—they were promises. They represented the future me, the person I aspired to become. (Cue dramatic music and distant gazing.)

I'd waltz into boutiques playing the part of someone who could actually afford to shop there, creating outfits in corners, offering unsolicited advice to actual customers, and occasionally trying things on if I could successfully pose as a wealthy kid. Method acting at its finest!

The Plot Twist

One day during my usual routine—playing imaginary stylist in a boutique corner—an intimidatingly tall, impeccably dressed woman approached me.

"Are you a professional stylist?" she demanded.

"Um, no," I confessed, mentally calculating the fastest escape route. "I'm an actress. I just... really love your clothes."

She stared at me for what felt like seventeen years. "Would you like a job?"

And just like that—plot twist!—my accidental fashion career began.