Client Name: Kelly

Before & Process:

After:

It’s not money that makes you well-dressed, it’s understanding.

— Christian Dior

What a great quote from that fabulous designer, Dior! And, it was exactly this sentiment that Kelly, my client, and I took with us to “Marshalls”… that great shopping Mecca for high fashion at affordable prices.

Here is Kelly’s story: Kelly is an entrepreneur of a successful secretarial services company. She needs clothing that is more along the lines of casual to business casual. And, she most recently has had a significant weight loss, at least 2 pant sizes! Congrats, Kelly! Her immediate issue is to get something that fits because nothing does right now. Her pants were literally falling off!

Our assignment, in three hours, was to find at least 3 outfits, one bathing suit, and keep it under $150.00!! “No way,” you say! Just watch us!

Kelly’s body type is an “inverted triangle”: in other words, the largest and broadest area of Kelly’s body is her top half and her bottom half is more tapered-in (thus the upside down triangle!) With her body type we want to:

We tried on about 60 pieces of clothing, the majority of which came from the clearance rack. I first started with bottoms and made certain we had at least 3 keepers. Then it was back out on the floor to add tops and jackets.

To make certain that we balance out Kelly’s proportions, I choose short jackets to minimize the bust, create a waist and allow her pants to create as long a silhouette as possible. I think you can see from the photos of her jackets that we were able to do just that! And, ladies, if you are shorter than 5’4”, you need to be shopping the “petite” sections. Kelly fits into this category. Buying “petite,” if you are, can help you eliminate alterations and save you time in the dressing room.

One of the big issues that we worked on together was getting Kelly to believe that she can now fit down a few sizes into a size 10. Once we removed the size 12, plus, prejudice from her mind, the possibilities and her attitude blossomed. I took a picture of the size tag to memorialize the moment.

Finally, I got Kelly into more form- fitting clothing. Doing this helped her see her new shape and demonstrated to her that, now that she has shed those pounds, she needs to shed her ideas about wearing big, flowing, cover up clothing. Kelly does not need to “over dress,” as I call it. You can see by the “sweater girl” picture I took, she has great shape!

At the end of the 3 hours, Kelly had:

The total was $162.00! And we had about 16 different outfits!

We had a great day and I know that Kelly was thrilled. We honored Dior’s sentiment by jump-starting Kelly’s Summer wardrobe for pennies on the dollar. We could do this because we understood and honored her body type, knew her goals and, at the same time, helped her reframe how she sees herself. Dior would be proud!