Improvability Blog

Stories from the changing room
When was your last fashion buying mistake?

Mine was just last week!

I don’t believe how misguided my own clothes’ choices can sometimes be! I had literally just run a training course for Ladies’ Style, using a photo of Faye Dunaway some years ago wearing a black and white vertical stripe blouse in an effort to explain to my lovely trainees that stripes over a curvy figure just do not work, so you’d have thought that I would have known better, but what do I go and do? I order a black and white vertical stripe beach cover-up for my own curvy figure. You should have seen me when I tried it on – helplessly hysterical with disbelief at my own stupidity and at the balloon-like image staring back at me from the mirror. I should be taken out and beaten severely! And yes, it went straight back to the shop.

I know what you’re thinking, “Kim, you have all this experience as an image consultant and, yet, you still manage to get it wrong!” One of the main things I’ve learnt in this business is that you can never be totally objective about yourself and, consequently, we all muck up from time to time. We’re all just human beings, after all!

I had been looking for a beach cover-up that would double up as an evening wrap – ever practical, that’s me – and I just focused on the black and white, flimsy, gauze-like material with the buttons that I’d been craving, and totally missed the zebra-like stripes that I should have known better about. I guess this often happens when we go out to the shops, looking for that one item in particular. When we’ve got the bit between our teeth, it’s almost like we cannot return home without it, so any old thing that vaguely resembles our original vision will suffice. And throw into this adorable melting pot the fact that I hate shopping in real shops too… No wonder I goofed!

Perhaps I should have booked myself a shopping trip with a good image consultant? Now, there’s a thought!

Maybe I’ll just stick with catalogues and internet shopping instead. At least that way I can have the screaming ab-dabs in the sanctity of my own home when I inadvertently make myself look like a blob from another planet!

Train to be an image consultant

Thinking of a new career for yourself, or perhaps you want to add to your current skills set? We can now offer two ways for you to do this:

COLOUR ANALYSIS
Personal courses in Chesterfield, UK
Colour analysis training details and availability

COLOUR ANALYSIS
Multimedia DVD-based self-study course
Colour analysis training wherever you are in the world

We know that you just love loads of information about who and what sashayed down the catwalks and about what’s going to be in the shops, so we put together eBooks for you which are ready to print and / or download straight to your computer; one for women’s wear and one for the gentlemen.

These publications feature twice as many themes (or more) than those featured in our fashion trends pages, plus we’ve added loads of photos from the catwalks, plus extra notes about some of the fabrics and terms used.

We work with a very knowledgeable and well-respected trend spotter who has written the trend reports. She is also a qualifed image consultant and trainer, so she understands colour, body shape, abd scale, which makes her contribution so much more useful! And we have added photos from key designers to the text plus extra notes about some of the fabrics and terms used.

We have a varied collection of eBooks which contain:

• A trend report covering the key themes supplemented with photos and extra notes
• Photos from the catwalks, sorted into the leading trends, plus mood boards

If you are really into fashion, then this is for you!

Browse the fashion trends eBooks catalogue.