I’ve always focused mainly on colour because I love it, and the client loves it because it’s fun to play with the drapes. Colour is non-confrontational, you don’t have to touch your client, and she learns to trust you when you laugh together.
But I am eternally grateful that I learned style, shape, scale, and style personality…
… because simply being able to drop a single style tip here and there about how to, say, disguise a figure issue could be life changing for my client.
One snowy evening, thousands of years ago, I was running a colour workshop for a group of ladies who worked together.
Grunwalde organised the whole shebang and hosted in her own home.
She was 6 feet tall and had rounded shoulders from a life-time of stooping, trying to look less tall than she really was.
The previous week, her partner of 20+ years had died from cancer and yet she still went ahead with this ‘party’ because she knew how much all her friends needed it.
- All sorts of ‘stuff’ came up that night, and everyone went away with renewed self-esteem and the promise of an improved life – all because this selfless lady had put them first, before her own grief
Grunwalde had been asked to give the eulogy at her partner’s funeral, which was just days away, and she was terrified.
You have to understand who Grunwalde was/is. This was a real lady. A gentle, Blue, Romantic Summer with a heart as big as Mount Everest.
Blues are driven by duty so Grunwalde was determined to honour her partner and his family and friends by giving the eulogy, but was on the verge of pulling out because she reckoned she would ‘go and ruin it all by breaking down halfway through’.
At that workshop, it took ONE simple style tip to solve the entire problem
I had to get onto my tippy toes to reach high enough… and managed to pop in a pair of shoulder pads.
Grunwalde turned to look in the mirror and immediately her shoulders went back, all of their own accord.
Grunwalde smiled. We all burst into applause.
And, from that moment, realising how beautiful and confident she looked with her shoulders back, she took ownership of her height and never stooped again.
One simple style tip had immediately changed Grunwalde’s posture and how she would present herself from that moment on, so that she was able to give that eulogy with all the confidence of a Shakespearian actress.
Colour alone would never have achieved that result
I am eternally grateful that, because I had already invested in learning style, shape, scale, and style personality, I had in my colour & style toolbox one simple style tip that would completely and utterly change Grunwalde’s life forever.
