Making your wardrobe more sustainable begins with getting more creative with your clothes.

The quest for comfortable shoes

Simplification and downsizing. There’s a new trend happening around colour analysis, and it’s looking promising for the environment! Read about the genesis for my book, COLOUR: the secret to creating a Sustainable Wardrobe.

True confession time. Though it’ll hardly come as a surprise…

The art and science of dressing for hospital (let’s not take me too seriously here - lol - but read on regardless for some useful tips!)

I’m often asked what I do so I’ve set out some info. I like to call myself a Personal Style Specialist. I could also describe myself as a fashion advisor, image consultant or image professional. But I’m not a stylist. A Personal Style Specialist is different; read on for how…

Conditions for women in the developed world have come a long, long way in the last hundred years, however…

When I delve into a woman’s wardrobe I usually see one of two things… either there’s a conglomeration of disparate but potentially exciting items or there’s a sparse, neatly ordered system with few pieces but in co-ordinating colours.

Our Fashion by Foot initiative is a walking tour that showcases micro businesses designing and producing clothing or accessories locally and independently. Come along to have your eyes opened to the amazing talent we have right here in Melbourne – highly skilled and innovative people who create beautiful, quality pieces.

Picture this: a glass of bubbly, meeting some of our finest independent fashion and accessories designers in their studios, a guided tour through Melbourne’s hippest fashion precinct, uncovering hidden gems and finding fabulous fashion – and of course free style advice all the way!

The exceptional fashion exhibition, The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture, is well worth seeing, particularly for those who ever doubted fashion is art. Following are some notes I took listening to a talk by Katie Somerville, senior curator at NGV (National Gallery of Victoria).

The Design Museum, London – notes for other hardcore colour enthusiasts from Hella Jongerius’s exhibition and research. An object’s colour only becomes tangible through its material. Objects absorb, reflect and resonate colour and are influenced by the colours of surrounding objects.

Confounded by colour? Confused when co-ordinating? Then come along to my Captivating Colour workshop. This fun, informal and education workshop introduces you to how colour can enhance your look and easily coordinate with your wardrobe.

Putting together an outfit is like any other creative process - only you're designing it to fit on your own body. It's highly personal, but how well do you know your own body? Have you analysed its shapes and lines - and do you know how its shapes and lines relate to different styles of clothing? This workshop will teach you how.

Advanced Style has done more for celebrating older women and men than any other single contemporary work I can think of. Ari Seth Cohen’s work, Advanced Style, has manifested into a blog, several books and a film. So he photographs stylish people over 60 – but what’s so revolutionary about this? Find out here.

It’s been a while between posts, but people – I’ve been in Europe! And yes, I went to this exhibition. Ok, so I’m not actually a royalist but I do have respect for Queen Elizabeth as, unlike our current crop of self (serving!) made ‘celebrities’, she did not seek this role but it has completely dominated her life. So now we have that sorted, I want to share with you my experience of visiting Buck Pal recently to see the new exhibition, Fashioning a Reign: 90 Years of Style from the Queen’s Wardrobe.

Out walking recently, I came across one of those things I’ve always loved – a large market full of home baked goodies and secondhand and vintage fashion in a pretty, sunny garden. Sadly, I have to say I only found 4-5 things even worth considering. The rest of it was junk. Pure junk. The designs were bad, the fabrics had pilled or faded and the seams looked dodgy. In a word: cheap. Cheap, disposable, fast fashion.

You may have heard that for the first time since Pantone begun releasing their Colour of the Year (in 2000) that they have declared a pairing of two colours to be ‘Colour’ of The Year. And, they’re pastels… Take a look here.

I thoroughly enjoy Iris Apfel’s refusal to fade away, as sadly so many women past a certain age do. Those who read my last blog post: Iris, part 1 will know this. It was reinforced when I recently saw ‘Iris‘ – the documentary by the late Albert Maysles. She succeeds in making a confident and colourful statement because she is not concerned with being ‘pretty’ or obsessed with trying to appear young, which often results in looking sad and dissatisfied with life.

The photo is actually a shot of all the clothes I quickly threw together for a 10-day road trip up the east coast of Australia. Despite having plenty of space in the car for my stuff, I still wanted to ensure every item could be worn together so I didn’t have to think about what became dirty and what was still clean – anything I picked up to wear any day co-ordinated. Find out how to use the colour wheel and other colour facts to help you pack a capsule wardrobe that coordinates.