Life in Colour - 30: You Don't Have to Be "Stylish" to Dress Well

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

There's a theme that keeps coming up with my Style Reset clients lately: the belief that you're not "stylish enough" to dress well. I hear it all the time, and I totally get it — but it's so far from the truth. In this episode I'm dispelling that myth for good. We talk about the real difference between being stylish and just feeling good in what you wear, why outfit formulas are simpler than you'd think, and why dressing well is a skill set, not something you're born with. I also share the three things to do if you're ready to move out of this mindset: stop comparing, get curious about your style personality, and understand your colours. If "stylish" has ever made you feel like you don't belong in the conversation about clothes, I hope this helps you let that go. In this episode: Why "I'm not stylish enough" is a myth I want to bust Stylish vs. just feeling good in your clothes How outfit formulas actually work Why dressing well is a skill set, not something innate Taking inspiration without falling into comparison Finding your own style personality Why colour is foundational to loving what you wear I'd love to know if this one resonates with you — send me a DM or email [e-mail], and if you're ready to go deeper, let's chat about a Virtual Colour Analysis, The Colour Collective, or The Style Reset.www.lovingcolour.au Ashley 💕

Welcome to Life in Color, the podcast where we dive into the real, raw and wonderfully colorful aspects of life. I'm your host, Ashley, and I'm here to explore the ins and outs of seasonal color analysis, navigating motherhood, thriving in your 40s and beyond, and embracing health and wellness with a healthy dose of humor. Join me as we uncover the secrets behind finding your perfect palette, share stories of the joys and challenges of being a mum. And from practical tips to heartfelt conversations, life in color is your space to laugh, learn and live life. unapologetically in all of its colorful hues. So grab your favorite drink, settle in and let's add some color to this adventure that we call Life in Color.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode. This week we're going to be chatting about something that keeps coming up. It's a recurring theme, especially with my style reset clients. So for those of you that aren't aware, my style reset is my deep dive five week program where we go in and we talk about everything. We do reflecting and resetting on where you've come from. and where you want to be and how you've got to where you are. And then we talk about style personalities, body shape analysis.

There's a full virtual color analysis included. And then we talk about outfit formulas, shopping online together. We do all of the things. And there just seems to be a recurring theme that comes up either in conversations I have with women who are looking at investing in themselves to join the Star Reset or just in general or with my clients and my Star Reset clients in particular. and it's along the lines of that you don't think that you're stylish enough to want to dress well. So I'm going to say that again.

You don't think that you're stylish enough to be able or to want to dress well. When I hear that, I find it really, really interesting and I totally understand where they're coming from. Because especially in today's society, when you are bombarded and flooded, with wear this, try that, here's this outfit, go buy this, try this color, this looks great on this body shape, I can wear this, I look great, all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I fit into that too. Obviously, I have an Instagram page and I do. I give style tips all the time and what I'm wearing and things like this in order to try and help you as best as I possibly can because obviously this is what I do for work and this is my like area of knowledge and genius and all that kind of thing.

but I can also understand from the other side how overwhelming that can be and when you look at it and you think, well, that's easy for them. Yes, admittedly, it is much easier for a stylist because we know what we're talking about. We know what we're doing. Do we still have days where we look at our wardrobe and think, I have nothing to wear or I'm not comfortable in that or I feel like my own style has changed because style evolves over time. You are not locked in. There is no one out there saying to you, you are decided. to be a classic style personality, so therefore that is it. You are locked in forever. No, it's not about that at all. But I can understand how you see that the thing that I hear is, oh, well, you look so put

together, you make it look so easy. It's not easy for me. I think I'm not stylish, chic enough, fashiony enough, all of that kind of thing. Therefore, it won't work for me. And I totally understand that, but I really want to dispel this myth for you because that is so far from the truth. When you think that fashion and style isn't for you and that you think it's for other people or fashiony people who know what they're talking about or people who care about clothes, that's totally different. It's a completely separate thing. There can be people out there like me who love fashion and they love star and they love looking

at clothes and wandering around a mole is like their idea of heaven. You know, think of Rachel on Friends. Like, you know, they used to call Bloomingdale's like the mothership for her because she would go in and she could just spend a whole day there looking around and she just loved it. It was part of who she is. And I would say that that's a part of who I am. I've always enjoyed it.

I've always loved it. And like now that I get to do this for work and help other women, it is just the best. But there is a difference between being. Being stylish or thinking about being stylish or I'm not stylish enough compared to just wanting to feel good in your clothes and what you wear. They are two totally separate different things. You do not have to feel like you're stylish in order to feel good in what you're wearing. So there's a very big difference to do with that.

Stylish for a lot of women can feel completely unattainable and completely unachievable because you're looking like I said at it used to be magazines, you're looking at Instagram, you're looking at TikTok, you're looking at Pinterest and you're like, well, my body doesn't look like that. I don't know how to wear that. Might look good on her, but that's not going to look good on me. Oh, I don't know how to wear that color. There are so many things that creep into your mind and then it becomes like this self-doubt

thing and then it becomes a more, you know, your self-conscious or if you're trying something new and then it could even then translate to your standing and the changing. room and you're wanting to try these new things on and oh but what if the sales assistant laughs at me what if they think look at that woman in her 50s trying to dress like she's in her 20s there are so many things that come into your mind when you're shopping because you're aiming for something that doesn't actually exist if you're looking at the word stylish you're probably thinking if this is the mindset that you are in that it feels exclusive like a club that you weren't invited to. It's not about that. Dressing well and dressing well for you and knowing what clothes

look good on you, it isn't about the trends or fashion. It's about knowing what works for you and then repeating it. And this is something that I've been delving into so much recently with my Star Reset clients about it is not being complicated. You do not need a thousand different outfit formulas. And when I'm talking about outfit formulas, I'm talking about you have a pair of jeans that you love wearing. You can mix and match a number of different tops. You've got a jacket that goes over the top. You have a favorite belt that you like to wear. And then you've got a couple of pairs of shoes that you interchange. Then you might put on a couple of, say, dainty gold bracelets. You might put on some hoop earrings, a swipe of lipstick, a swife of mascara, grab your handbag. That is you for the day.

There are so many things in that outfit formula that can be interchanged. And the things are you change out the top. So then that changes up the outfit. You change the shoes. That changes up the outfit. You change the accessories. So you go for different accessories. You might go for more chunky ones or you might go for a colored one or like a big dangly earring.

You might wear more layered necklaces. You may change the jacket that you're wearing into a blazer, into a cardigan, into a coat. You might add a scarf into it. It's still the base outfit, the same outfit, the same outfit formula that you're using. It's like pieces of a puzzle. You're just interchanging pieces of a puzzle. That is not about being stylish. That is about dressing well for you and your body shape and your colors and what you like to wear for this season of life.

It's not about the fact that you don't care about clothes. You actually do care about clothes, but you feel like, as I mentioned before, that perhaps this is part of a club that you're not invited to because you don't quite know how to do it. I have talked about this so many times on here before that when you don't know what to wear, there is that assumption of, oh, you don't care about what you wear. You're just picking up the same old thing and wearing it again and again. No. Knowing what to wear, if this doesn't come naturally to you, that is a skill set. And I've talked about that quite a few times on here, that knowing how to dress your body,

knowing what colors to wear, knowing how to apply your makeup, they are skill sets. you're not born with it. There are people like me, yes, who it comes more naturally to. Do I understand chemistry and physics? No. That is not my skill set. Could I take a car apart like a mechanic and put it back together? No.

And yet there are some people out there, like obviously this is a very extreme example, like Lewis Hamilton, when he was little, and you'd put him with a go car with his dad, and he would just know. He would take it apart and he would fill it and he would put it back together and some things would work and some things wouldn't work. and he would just keep at it because he had a passion for it. I have a passion for fashion and for styling and helping other women. So it is a very, very different thing.

Do I have off days? 100%. And if you watch me and you follow me on Instagram, you'll know that I have off days, especially like with my bloating stomach and my endometriosis and my pelvic floor and all that kind of stuff. 100% I have days. Does that mean that I don't care about what I'm wearing? No.

Probably on those days I feel like I care about more about what. I'm wearing because I'm not feeling myself in it. You do not need to love fashion to deserve to feel good in getting dressed every single day. You do not need to feel like you have to be stylish in order to fit in the office. It is not about that. If you need someone to give you permission to let go of that whole thing about wanting to be stylish but still feel good in what you wear every day, that's me. I'm here. I am giving you that permission. And I'm saying to you, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you actually want to make the effort so that you feel good in what you wear every single day. So how do you move out of this mindset?

There's a few things that you can do. One is to stop comparing yourself and I know that that is really hard, like really, really hard. But say you follow me and you're like, well, I don't look anything like you. My body shape's completely different. I know that I have different colors. Say, for example, you're a warm autumn. I've got totally different colors from her.

you can take inspiration from things that I'm giving to you. I show you the outfit that I've got on. You might be like, oh, okay, she's got a pair of barrel leg pants on today from Uniclo. I actually really like those. I might go try those on. She's got a knit on. Yep, I've got some knits in my wardrobe. She wears silver. I know silver's not for me. I like to wear gold. She's wearing ballet flats. Okay, she's mentioned that that's what she likes to wear because it's personal preference. So I like wearing sneakers. I'm going to put a sneaker with it because that's just how I roll. I'm going to wear a coat because I live in a cooler climate than what she does. She's just got a knit on and she's leaving it like that. And then I'm actually going to pop on a beanie too and grab my big tote bag. And I'm

off out the door. And like she's like, I'm going to put a swipe of lip gloss because makeup is not my jam. Whereas Ashley likes to wear makeup most days or she likes to wear a bolder like pink lipstick. That is not her thing. You take inspiration. You stop comparing. It is not about replicating what I wear every day. It is not about replicating what other stylists do or other color analysis experts tell you to do. It is about taking inspiration from where you can so that you can then understand your body a bit better and what you like a bit better. You may look at some of my outfits and go, I would never wear that. That is not my thing.

I like wearing boho things. I like floaty and bohemian and I like prints and patterns. Ashley's not that. Ashley is quite classic in what she likes. to wear. Occasionally she might add in a little bit of romantic, but generally, no, she's straight down the line classic. She doesn't wear a huge amount of prints and patterns. And I know this might be weird that I'm talking about in my third, my third person, but anyway, go with me. She likes to wear block colours. She doesn't really wear many prints and patterns. She likes to

wear block colours. I like wearing chunky jewelry. She wears quite simplistic jewelry, because again, that fits into her style personality. Just take inspiration. You're not here to copy. You're not here to replicate, you're just here to go, actually, I like what she did today. I like that. So I might look into that or you send me a message and you say, I really like the outfit you wore today, but I'm a warm autumn. So what kind of pants would I wear instead of that? I'm always here to help. Just send me a DM and I'll give you some tips on what you can do. So number one, that is the thing that I want you to do is to stop comparing. Number two, if you don't know what your style personality is, do research on it. Have a look at it. Go to.

to Pinterest, go to Instagram. And again, you're not comparing about what they're doing to what you're doing. You can type in mature classic outfits with a hint of romantic. You can type in romantic blouse with jeans. You can type in bold, dramatic coat outfits. You can type in soft, delicate and muted outfits. You can type in natural casual jeans outfits. You can type in knit skirt outfits. there are so many different things that you can do. But if you don't have an idea of what your style personality actually is, that's where you need to start. Because if you're just putting things on, I get putting things on because they're comfortable. But if you're putting them on because they're comfortable, but you don't actually like the reflection in the mirror,

then you've got to work on that. You need to change something about it. And there are so many things, obviously, you know with me, there are so many different touch points of what you can change to make yourself feel better in what you're wearing. But at the moment, we're talking about style personality. So you need to have a look and think, okay, natural casual, do I like to be really dressed down in jeans most of the time, like with a t-shirt, with a cardigan, with all that kind of thing? No, that's not me. Okay, next. Classic.

Think of celebrities when it comes to this. And you can type in celebrities. I've even got a post on my Instagram. Go have a look at it. You can talk about these kinds of things about, well, actually, maybe classic Catherine, you know, the Princess of Wales, a Catherine Middleton. you can have a look at her and be like, I really like what she wears, but I don't like all of it. But for work, I actually really like how she wears the very structured pantsuits. That's my kind of jam.

Okay, great. You've taken some inspiration from that. Then you can have a look at, say, romantic. You can look at the floatiness. You can look at the fabrics that are used. You can look at the patterns that are used. You can look at bold and dramatic. And there are so many different versions of bolder and dramatic.

And like I've said before, every single color palette, even the softs and the lights. can be dramatic. It's all about how you put the colors together and the prints and patterns together in those color palettes more than the actual boldness of the color itself. You might think that Bohemian is more your thing. You might want to be a bit more retro, dressed like from the 50s or 60s or 70s. That's where you need to have a look at because if you have no idea what your style personality is, you're kind of just either a mismatch of everything or you're literally just wearing the same thing all the time. And no one wants to wear the same thing all the time. So make sure you're having a look at that. So we've talked about comparison.

We've talked about style personalities. The third thing that I'm going to say is obviously color. You need to have a think about colors and how you respond to the colors because color plays such a huge, huge role. And you know with me that's technically where I start. Color analysis is my jam. It is my thing. And that is where I start my process pretty much with all of my clients. And we expand out from there. Like in the style reset, it's included. We do it in week four. I actually start it from week one, week one where I start looking at your colors and figuring it out to work our way through. So, colours really important. Again, you've heard me talk about this so many times. What you can do is the warm versus cool test and you can do that with a white versus a cream.

You can do that looking at your jewelry. You can then look at bright versus soft colors or deep versus light colors, all those different things in natural light in front of a window. There are all the kinds of things that you can do. Start to know. notice how you feel in the color that you're wearing, but also how it responds to you. Pop your hair up if your hair's long enough. Put on a shower cap if you need to. In my in-person color analysis, that's exactly what I do. I get my clients to put on a shower cap because it knocks out their hair. I'm not even looking at it. I'm literally looking at what the color does to their skin, their eyes, their under eyes. Does it show imperfections? Does it hide imperfections? Does it make

you look fresh and vibrant? All of these kinds of things. These are the things that will help you figure out loving what you wear and figuring out what you don't want to wear. But being stylish, it's a word, obviously, I use style quite a bit because it is a word that is used to describe what people wear every single day. But you know what? In the simplicity of it, it comes down to loving what you wear every day. It comes down to dressing well for you and how you want to show up for the world every day. And that, you know, I've done other podcast episodes on that. There is a huge psychology behind that of showing up. and dressing for the day on the days where I am primarily working and I even if I'm working

from home and I've started working from a cafe and a library a lot more recently to get out of the house because for me mentally that's just so much better for me. I dress for the day. I do. If I know that I'm going to be doing a huge amount of housework and I don't want to get my nice clothes or my nice er clothes dirty, then obviously I'm not going to wear it. And I know that. But again, I'm dressing for the day. I'm dressing for what I'm doing and then I will choose what I want to wear based on that. And so showing up is not just about getting dressed. Like there is a very big difference between putting on clothes and getting dressed for the day.

Huge amount of difference. Anyone can get up and put clothes on. Anybody. If you dress for the day, you are like Michelle Obama would sometimes say putting on a suit of armor depending on what you're doing that day or you're so excited because you're going on a date. you can meticulously think about what you wear for that day because you want to feel the best in what you're wearing. So yes, there is a big difference between, you know, stylish and wanting to

wear clothes that you just feel good in. I don't want that word stylish to be holding you back. Fashiony, fashion, style, all that kind of thing. Don't let it hold you back. It's just a word. That's all it is. But if you feel that you put meaning behind it and that's what's holding you back, then I need you to take it out of your vocabulary and start think. It is not about being stylish. It is about feeling like yourself in whatever you wear. Now, if you would like my help with any of that or you'd like to have a chat about it, you know me, I am always up for a chat about anything to do with clothes,

fashion, makeup, you know, everything. If that is what you'd like to do, then send me a DM. We can always have a chat about things. Send me an email to Ashley atlovingcolor.com. And if you feel that working with me would really help you on your journey to loving what you wear every single day, then I would absolutely be honored to help you. And there are so many different ways that you can work with me. You can have a virtual color analysis with me.

You can join the color collective and be in the group where there's so many like-minded women on a color and style journey and discovering what colors and clothes that they love to wear every day and I help in there. Or if you feel like you need something a little bit deeper like Star-R reset, then just let me know. Send me a DM and we can have a chat about it. Otherwise, take care. Let me know what you've thought of this episode. And if you try anything, I'd really like to know if you've sort of tried to figure out your

colors at home or if you are trying to figure out your style personality or most importantly, if you've stopped comparing to everyone else on the internet. It is so easy to do, even I can do it in so many different ways. Like it doesn't show up necessarily for me and this, but it will show up in my life in other ways where I compare. And you have to try really hard to put that line in the sand and be like, no, I can take inspiration. I'm not going to compare.

Anyway, take care. And I will chat to you on the next episode. See ya. Bye.