To Dress like You’re Still Becoming

the myth of ‘finding’ your personal style and viewing style as process, not product.

I have been sitting with myself lately. All of the past iterations of self that have come before; the preteen who cared more about books than anything else, the stroppy sixteen year old who was hellbent on being ‘different’, the coming of age young adult who wanted to embrace herself and her style but ended up masking the essence of her true self, flash forward me as I am now.

Twenty-four and on the brink of a change, a projectile into stasis and a cracking open of the universe as I currently know it.

With this retrospect comes the marvelling of the shells I inhabited in all of these phases. Rag tag mousy hair, rarely brushed, through to the bottle bleach blonde and synthetic hair extensions. Plaid shirts and ‘creepers’ through to slip skirts and ballet flats.

Even recently, I have been looking in the mirror and struggling to recognise the woman before me. Now brunette, my cheekbones are higher, my eyes a little wiser, and my clothes feel... different.

In returning home, I have been confronted by the skeletons in the closet. A floor to ceiling oak wardrobe stuffed full and bursting with garments that don’t quite feel like mine anymore. Modest pieces bought for a career I didn’t really want. Dresses that felt like someone else's idea of sexy. Clothes contorting themselves into an ideal that isn’t mine.

I remember saying to my mum, “I don’t know how to dress anymore.”
She replied, “You’re coming into a new sense of self, darling.”

I’ve thought about that conversation a lot. Especially in moments when I’m scrolling TikTok and I see yet another video telling me how to find my personal style, like it’s something I’ve misplaced. A map to a self I haven't reached yet. But the truth is, just like all the selves we evolve through and experience: personal style isn’t something you unlock. It’s a vehicle, it’s a mode of expression. It’s something you learn and something to live.

Style as a living language.

The disorientation of standing before your clothes, not knowing who you’re dressing for, isn’t a crisis. It’s a signal. It’s a conversation not only with culture and trend cycles, but with the self and the current emotional state you reside.

Take Barthes’ theory of clothing as a semiotic system, a language full of visual codes. As with any mode of communication, it changes over time, reacts to its context, and appears differently in any given culture or community. That is what makes it alive. What felt like you even a few months ago might not fit today, and that’s not failure. It is the one sure sign that you are growing and living and allowing yourself to be carried in the inevitable winds of change.

When we dress for performance, to project control, taste, coolness, success - the language might feel gramatically correct, but it lacks a certain rhythm. It lacks intimacy. It says what it suspects others might want to hear, but not the truth within the wearer.

Sometimes I wear things because I like how they move when I walk. Sometimes I want to feel comforted or protected, opting for an extra layer. Other times I want to feel seen, so I might wear something a little louder. These aren’t quite the rational decisions they appear to be, but acts of expression and intuition.

Style becomes less about signalling status or intelligence, and more about telling the truth of the moment.

Advice Culture and Aesthetic Superiority.

It can feel all too easy to succumb to the style content online that parades itself as empowerment.

‘Stop copying Pinterest’, ‘Stop following trends’, ‘Develop your signature look’.

This kind of aesthetic prescription often disguises itself as confidence, but in reality reduces the joy of the journey in developing and undoing and redoing your sense of style. I suspect people aren’t often sharing this advice out of a want to help; it has become an extension of style superiority. Posing in a particular way to prove that they’ve figured it out. That they’re no longer lost.

As Angela McRobbie puts it: ‘Through fashion, girls and women are invited to become ’aesthetic entrepeneurs’, managing their appearance as a moral project.

To reiterate, it is as if you don’t have a consistent, well-defined ‘style identity’, the implication is you must be behind. Unaware. Messy. Not serious about life.

This assumption is both flawed and classist: developing a highly curated, visually legible personal style requires time, resources, access. Not just in the garments, but the cultural capital that teaches you how to read and use them.

It also is ignorant to the fact that clothing is often not used in a fixed aesthetic, but a relational tool. A way to feel safe, or playful, or powerful. Or just neutral enough to get through the errands of the day. This can fluctuate, constantly.

So when people online give you a list of rules for ‘finding’ personal style (ahem), remember this: often, the advice says more about them than it does about you. It’s about maintaining a sense of superiority, a fantasy of having ‘arrived’ at something. But no one ever really arrives. The people giving that advice are also winging it. Just louder.

And ultimately, that’s okay. Style can be communal. We can learn from each other. But advice should be offered with humility - not as a yardstick for aesthetic virtue, but as an invitation to play, question, and evolve.

The Wardrobe as a proof of existence

Often, a certain sense of liberation can be found when you start dressing intuitively.

I wear a three-tiered skirt on a Monday if it feels right. I may put on lipstick just to go to the post office. Sometimes tracksuit bottoms with tabis is the order for the day. These decisions are made not because they photograph well, or to signal taste, but the simple fact that I wanted to. Because something in me said: this feels right today.

That is intuition. And in a culture obsessed with polish and legibility, intuition is quietly radical.

Joanne Entwistle, in The Fashioned Body, describes getting dressed as ‘a situated bodily practice’ - something we do to negotiate our presence in the world. It’s not a detached performance. It’s intimate. Responsive. Physical. Emotional. Less about proving who we are, more about feeling at home in our own skin.

This is where Rian Phin’s thinking becomes especially resonant. Phin describes dressing as ritual - not in a grand, ceremonial way, but as a quiet daily practice of self-determination. Something done repeatedly, not to construct a coherent aesthetic, but to stay in relationship with yourself. To notice what you need. To care, not because of the outside gaze, but because you’re worth attending to.

To treat dressing as ritual is to take it seriously without making it rigid. It means allowing for softness. Change. Mood. Weather. Nostalgia. Movement. You might not look like someone who ‘has it figured out’, but you’ll look like someone in touch with who they are that day. Which is far more powerful.

You don’t need a capsule wardrobe, or a moodboard, or an ‘essence archetype’ to do that.

You just need a little space. And permission.

When you move through your wardrobe intuitively - when you dress not for who you should be, but for who you actually are that day - your clothes stop performing. They start communicating.

And that’s ritual too.

Style isn’t what you wear, it’s how you got there

Vogue Business journalist Amy Francombe posted an image with text that succinctly encapsulates the fluidity and temporal nature of style:

It suggests that style is not a finished product, but a kind of biography. A personal archive. A lived and evolving method of self-discovery.

This is why advice culture, with its how-to formulas and aesthetic ultimatums, so often misses the point. You could wear the exact same outfit as someone else and still be worlds apart - because what makes it stylistic is not just the clothes themselves, but the journey that brought you to them. What you let go of. What you were trying to feel. Who you were becoming that day.

Style is textured by context. That’s why it can’t be flattened into three aesthetic words or shoppable moodboards. It’s not just about looking good - it’s about wearing something that feels true to your current state of becoming.

This is also what makes personal style immune to duplication. Even when trends cycle fast and everything starts to look the same, the how you got there is what gives an outfit soul. The process matters. The failed experiments, the small joys, the shifts in your body, your city, your mind. That’s what makes your style yours.

So maybe the real question isn’t “What’s your style?”

Maybe it’s: How did you get here?

Dressing as an Ongoing Process

Personal style isn’t something you unlock after ticking off the right boxes: reading enough, travelling enough, cultivating the ‘right’ interests. It isn’t a static aesthetic you land on one day and stick to forever.

Style is a reflection of how you’re living. Your body changes. Your needs change. What makes you feel powerful, safe, or seen will shift as you do. And that’s not something to be embarrassed by but something to pay attention to.

That’s where intuition comes in. Dressing intuitively isn’t about always getting it right, it’s about being honest with yourself. It means choosing clothes based on how you feel, not just how they look. It’s about tuning in, not performing out. And that’s where style becomes a ritual, a daily moment of self-connection.

As Rian Phin puts it, getting dressed is a kind of ritual practice. It’s not just about aesthetics or trends; it’s about showing up for yourself. Style becomes less about impressing others and more about maintaining a relationship with who you are, even as that shifts.

So instead of treating personal style like a final form to reach, maybe it’s better to approach it as a process. A tool for living. A way of communicating that doesn’t require perfect consistency or visual cohesion. Because real style isn’t built on strict rules - it’s built on awareness, intention, and care.

You don’t need to prove that you’ve ‘found yourself’ through your wardrobe.

You just need to stay open to the possibility that your style, like you, is still changing - and that this is exactly how it’s meant to be.

The Olsen Twins: The Last of Boho

I write this as I sit amongst the usual chaos of my room; white linen dresses, turquoise beaded necklaces, beaten up ballet flats and scuffed leather bags adorn every surface and hanging place. Despite the mess, there’s a specific cultivation to my wardrobe that while seeming boho in appearance, actually exists to defy the very notion of what it means to truly be so.

Kind of ‘this isn’t a pipe, but an image of a pipe’ coded...

See, while giving the illusion of bohemia in its eclectic nature and being mostly a little worn, threadbare, and always second hand; my style is carefully considered in direct inspiration by the Olsen Twins. There, I said it. But realistically, what twenty-something style conscious girl doesn’t take inspiration from this duo?

The term bohemian first emerged in 19th-century France, and not as a fashion descriptor but as a cultural term for artists, writers and creatives who lived outside the confinements of bourgeois society.

‘Boho’ as worn by the Olsen Twins, think 2005-2010, wan’t the origin of bohemian style - but perhaps, its most resonant revival in the 21st century and what I believe may be the last true representation of it. No, they weren’t simply layering scarves and slouchy bags for the sake of it; their bohemia was a quiet ode to the true countercultural spirit. Like the free spirits and creatives of the 1960s and 70s, their approach to style suggested and required a certain movement that was both physical and emotional. Oversized silhouettes, layered jewellery, dark sunglasses to shield them from the overexposure of fame. It wasn’t a mere reference to boho, but it was a true feeling of the sense of what this meant. It lay at the intersection of the freedom in mess and living, and a certain privacy and rejection of overtness, a refusal to polish or perform or explain. This is why it worked: it was instinctive and lived in.

To be boho in fashion, in its purest form, isn’t simply about mixing prints or loving tassels. Boho at the core of itself is concerned, or actually very much unconcerned, by emotional texture. There is a certain meta-meaning that tells a story about living and breathing in your style. Garments are loved and worn and lived in, existing as extensions of the self as a cultural and social vehicle.

The ever-on-the-mark Rian Phin (@thatadult) discusses the merciless ‘authenticity wars’ raging online. There is an air of desperation, a distinct scrabbling, that we demonstrate in virtue signalling through vintage finds and distinctly stylised ‘lived in’ looks. We often don’t really care if people believe our style to be authentic, just as long as it is the charade of seeming to be.

Yet the Olsen twins? They weren’t playing our familiar game. Their style was a quiet refusal to stylise themselves in contrived efforts. It was, and continues to be in privacy, a graceful act of symbiosis, co existing and breathing into their clothing. Think wine-stained Balenciaga, over-worn Hermes - not because it was a statement, but simply because it was real. As Rian Phine perfectly summarises: ‘the only way to win authenticity is not to know the game’. Famously elusive, the Olsens didn’t know the game... or maybe they simply refused to play on it’s terms.

And now, I wonder how this kind of effortless undoing of style can ever be achieved in the over polished and saturated realm of social media.

Take Phoebe Philo’s era at Chloe. It didn’t just look bohemian, it also moved like it. Her silhouettes draped, not clung. Her palettes softened rather than popped. Her clothing whispered of sensuality, intellect and effortlessness but were worn to not prove too much. There was a sense of invisibility to her collections, swathing the body instead of exposing it for consumption and judgement. Not to disappear as if out of shame or shyness, but a graceful refusal to perform.

This is an important point: boho style requires a freedom of movement and mind. Philo’s tenure at Chloe is only truly recognised when its fluidity is observed on runway, or its cultural presence in its ability to be worn is noted. Boho style is best understood not in stills or street shots or social media, and instead in the glide of fabric and the quiet command it holds when actually worn and lived in.

The Olsen twins embodied this success of the boho revival: their looks weren’t ‘boho chic’ in today’s sense of manufactured distressed knits or peasant skirts or aged-look leather. They were layered, slouchy, and smudged with real life.

As Rian Phin explains, sincerity in fashion can’t be crafted under pressure. Indeed, the Olsen Twins and Philo’s Chloe felt immune to the stifling social commentary of paparazzi and trying-too-hard. It was the free-flowing nature that allowed their styles to be their most organic and evolved. Their styles weren’t ever supposed to be memes, but moods. Their outfits weren’t aesthetics, but affective.

Despite it’s popularity today, Boho won’t ever be able to be truly revived. We buy the pre-damaged garments and bags with pre-made charms all as calculated efforts to mimic the passage of time and the lived-in nature of boho without having to invest ourselves too much to what is actually a fleeting trend. No, Boho isn’t being revived - it is being appropriated and used as a costume to perform a currently trending ideal. It is a play at being known to ourselves and by others, with none of the emotional wear.

In it’s truest form, Boho is a subversion - a soft rebellion against the glossy and plastic perfection often rewarded in fashion. It is for the wanderer, the outsider, the free thinker, and the creative. Crucially, it has never demanded approval. It doesn’t exist to sell the dream of beauty; it wears it with wrinkles, loose threads, textures and tangled necklaces.

This is where the tension lies: the war of the squeaky-clean instagram grid, the influencer minimalism, and the freedom of bohemia. Social Media demands for identity to fit neatly in the frame. But real boho has always overflowed at the edges. It avoids the photograph, it suffocates in stillness, it happens entirely in motion. It is fabric slipping off the shoulder, fingers adorned in too many rings, scarves and hair as one, scuffed boots and stained handbags.

And Rian Phin, again, brings clarity here as she discusses how ‘authenticity’ is now just another mode of performance. Messiness, softness, even intellectualism have all been weaponised as trends too. And yet, in all that noise, what’s lost is depth.

Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue continue to try and locate this loss, suggesting that boho once stood in opposition to fast fashion’s homogenising grip. They track its historical roots to anti-fashion, to counterculture, to a desire for self-expression over spectacle. Vogue Business notes how the recent runway iterations of boho have attempted to reclaim some of that through craftsmanship, through storytelling. But even then, there’s something missing. A quiet. A depth. A lack of self-consciousness that feels increasingly impossible.

That’s why I keep coming back to boho - not the trend but, the feeling. The layering of stories. The slight dishevelment that says ‘I have other things to do than be perfect’. It’s a way of dressing that refuses to make sense for anyone else, but still makes sense for you.

For me, it’s a quiet protest against the curated self and against the idea that our style should sell something. It’s choosing something emotionally resonant over something photogenic.

The Olsen twins didn’t just wear boho, they seemed to dissolve into it. Phoebe Philo didn’t invent it , she choreographed it. And Rian Phin gives us the language to name the hollow mimicry we’re surrounded by. The rest of us? We’re dressing in the echo of an echo, simply trying to feel something real in the noise. I am left questioning if boho can ever be revived again.

Why you will never be an ‘It Girl’

and why that should set you free …

Take it from another someone who’s also spent an alarming amount of time admiring, or at least finding obscure fascination with, It Girls...

We’re being taught how to become It Girls, and that’s precisely why we never will be one.

The term It Girl was first coined in the 1920s to describe Clara Bow, the silent film starlet who lit up the screen with her sex appeal, sass, and signature chaos. She was the walking embodiment of the Roaring Twenties: she was peppy, sensual, effortlessly magnetic, with a certain aloofness that proved her lack of self-consciousness. Clara didn’t follow trends, she was too busy inventing them. To be an It Girl meant daring to be wildly, unapologetically, unthinkingly yourself - in a way that nobody could do but you.

Fast forward, and It Girl-ism has been boiled down, diluted, packaged and monetised into algorithm-approved ‘aesthetics.’ One mindless scroll on TikTok and suddenly you’re knee-deep in “How To Become That Girl” guides. You know the ones:

“How to romanticise your life by making matcha and walking slowly in beige linen.”

“How to be an off-duty model (without the career, or cheekbones).”

“How to be a Clean Girl™ - just rid your self of personality!”

“How to do this totally unique eyebrow shape that’s, like, so you (and every other 20-something on the internet).”

It’s no longer about being you, and embodying the truest sense of this. It’s about slotting yourself neatly into the algorithm’s latest pre-approved identity kit. And as each wave of micro-trends crashes into the next, we're left clutching at aesthetics like flotation devices. Gone is the originality, the contradiction, the chaos that made the It Girls so… it.

Instead of igniting the self through play, through experimentation, trial, error, and gleeful unpredictability; we’re stuck in a digital echo chamber where everyone is contrived and ‘cool’ in exactly the same self-soothing way.

We busy ourselves so much with the thought of how to be, that we spend far too little time actually being.

But what if being “not it” is actually the most “it” thing you can be?

It’s the formula we know off by heart by now: vinted hauls, digital camera flashes, hair unkept but in that strategic Kate Moss way, matcha lattes * ironically of course *, being attuned to trends but at least three months before everyone else (duh), having depth but also being ditzy! silly! fun!

A perfect dose of this, a dash of that and finally! you’re it! you’re her.

A part from: so is everyone else.

We’re scrolling into the oblivion of Blueprint Culture, where individuality is reverse-engineered through mood boards and copy-cat behaviour. The "It Girl" is no longer a person but, a product. A carousel of outfit inspo slides. A twenty-step morning routine. A disposable identity disguised as self-discovery.

Where once It Girls emerged because they broke the mould, we now chase it, glue it to our vision boards, and spend hundreds trying to replicate it. It's no longer who you are, but how well you can perform a certain ideal. The girl who used to get noticed because she walked into the room radiating something off-centre is now pinned by her wings to the mood boards of our minds from which our every move pivots. She is dissected within an inch of her life.

Unpredictability becomes predictable and authenticity becomes content.

Bardot, Birkin, and Pamela…

There’s something funny about how often we romanticise the women we call It Girls, when most of them didn’t seem even particularly interested in being anyone’s idea of one.

Take Brigitte Bardot, all tousled hair and cigarette smoke with a refusal to play nice. She didn’t chase after approval. If anything, she rejected the notion. She was messy, political, unpredictable. Her image was of course seductive, but what made her striking was that she didn’t package herself for anyone. She had aloofness, and energy, and a distinct uniqueness that only emerges in a commitment to being yourself.

Jane Birkin was chaotic in her timelessly charming way. Her outfits looked like they’d been pulled from the floor, her hair constantly falling into her eyes. She didn’t iron things. She didn’t overthink things. She just was. There’s a story of her cutting up her Hermès bag with a pair of scissors to make it more practical and if there was ever a metaphor for anti-perfection, that’s it.

And then there’s Pamela Anderson, who, after decades of being styled and sexualised and filtered through a very specific male gaze, walked into Paris Fashion Week bare-faced, no makeup, no façade. And when people asked why, she just said:

“I just wanted to look like myself.”

Not to make a point. Not to start a trend. Just... because.

Unfortunately, there’s now something radical in that. We’re all so used to seeing people pre-approved and polished before they enter the room. And yet the women who linger in the cultural memory, who are eternalised in social consciousness, continuing to disrupt the stale and dust even today, are the ones who weren’t trying to be anything other than themselves at all.

They didn’t represent some impossible ideal. They just felt real. Slightly undone. A little contradictory. The kind of people who didn’t need to be the centre of attention, but couldn’t help drawing it anyway.

And that’s the part we can actually learn something from: not the styling, not the haircuts, and not the performance. Just the quiet confidence of showing up as yourself. Even if that self is a bit chaotic or confusing at times. Maybe especially then.

Awaken the self through play, not performance…

‘Reawaken the possibility of possibility. Reawaken it with play’

True It Girl energy isn’t calculated nor curated. It’s something you stumble into by accident when you’re too busy being excited by the possibility of life to obsess about how you look living it.

You have to awaken the self through play - and by play, I mean experimentation, contradiction, joy, boredom, risk, and that little bit of delusion. You go out on a limb. You try things. You mess up. You feel strongly. You stumble into the negative space of yourself. You exist in shadow, you carve out light. You laugh, loudly. And you do it all again despite itself.

As Girls actress Jemima Kirke once so perfectly quipped: “Maybe you’re thinking of yourself too much.”

And that’s kind of it, isn’t it? Maybe the biggest barrier between us and It Girl-hood is that we’re hyper-fixated on how to be one, concerned by how we’re perceived, micromanaging others’ understanding of us, nitpicking every last morsel of self expression, living in the mind and giving less to the embodiment of ourselves…

The original It Girls didn’t sit around, diagnosing their personal brand. They were too busy living; dancing badly, falling in and out of love, being contradictory, and accidentally igniting trends by virtue of just being present in their own chaos.

The irony isn’t lost on me…

Of course, the starkest irony of this blog piece is that it, too, is doing exactly what it claims to critique.

We are, right now, dissecting It Girl culture. Poking at it with tweezers. Citing Jane Birkin and Pamela Anderson in a bid to deconstruct coolness, which, let’s be honest, is just another form of trying to be cool.

Let it be known: this isn’t a manifesto for becoming different or special or cool. It’s actually a note of permission, if any was needed, to stop caring so much about being those things.

Because truthfully? There’s nothing wrong with having your inspirations, enjoying a trend, or being ‘like every other girl’. The phrase is often used in back hand, as I’m sure we all have been slighted by “you’re not like other girls”- but who decided that girls en masse weren’t interesting? Who said that following a guide or being basic in public made you any less worthy of attention?

The real subversive act might not be breaking the mould, it might just be being a part of it or conversely, not a part of it without shame or really, thought. To play, to fail, to conform and rebel, sometimes on the same day. To exist somewhere between irony and sincerity, knowing that nothing matters as much as people on the internet claim it does.

The illusion of the ‘It Girl’.

You will never find joy in shoe horning yourself into the contrived notions of the It Girl, nor will you find yourself.

Joy often emerges in those fleeting, golden moments and lightness. Times when you let go of the self-surviellence. When you let go of contrived notions of what to be, how to be, and when to be it. When you share vulnerability, a feeling, an outfit, a piece of writing, a moment of laughter, a weird little habit, and someone says ‘same’.

That’s not branding. That’s community. That’s what actually matters.

Lets be honest: most of us won’t be remembered as the definitive It Girl of our generation. We won’t be a marble statue or cover on Vogue. But maybe we will be remembered as the girl who committed to her truest sense of self, and gave others the courage to do the same. And really, isn’t that the most flattering superlative of all?

You don’t have to be someone. You just have to be you. And if you do it boldly enough, with enough play, joy, and generosity, maybe that’s all the ‘it’ you’ll ever need.

June Reveries:

What I Loved, Wore, Read & Sipped

If June was a feeling, it would be rose mist and a battered leather bag over shoulder. They say that whatever happens in the thirty days of this month of honeyed sun and syrup, is always in divine alignment; exits, arrivals, and even stillness. For me, June is always the old faithful and whimsical reverie back to summers spent at home in girlhood.

Cancer season, a pink edged lily flower if any, unfurled in the haze of a heatwave and limestone dust. It was a month for femininity and returning to s

low pleasures.

Pocketed satchels. Split pea dips. White linen dress with black beaded necklaces. And colours? Aqua blue and soft pink, always.

Here’s everything I loved this month, in no particular order but all in deep affection.

I’d tuck June moments away in…

• Vintage Chloé Paddington - She’s girl with bohemian coolness, with an urban and earthy appeal. The kind of louche yet polished style that could only come from Phoebe Philo’s era. Think slouch, soft leather, hardware that doesn’t try too hard.

• Balenciaga City Bag - A forever problem child with the Olsen seal of approval. The original It Bag that still knows how to cause a new wave. And don’t get me started on it’s capaciousness! Ideal for a girl who has adopted the Mary Poppins’ mode of packing.

• Firkin — Not quite a Birkin, but not actually trying to be. A tongue in cheek commentary on our relationship to exclusivity and luxury in fashion. Loved to death, humorous and certainly not taking itself too seriously, bootleg but not cosplay. She’s redefining the classics, find her in denim, or camo, or however the brand has decided to knock off the original. Love it.

• Mulberry Roxanne — The utilitarian dreamboat. All those pockets. She’s a working woman with secrets. And really, aren’t we all?

June’s Book: The White Album by Joan Didion

Joan Didion remains the omniscient voice of generations. I introduced myself to The White Album this month and it felt a little close to the bone: the disjointed narrative, the detached recounting of cultural chaos, a necessary mirror to the turbulence of today. Didion doesn’t lead you; she lets you sit next to her while the world unravels. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." and in June, I needed stories more than ever. Hers are a tonic, bone-dry, and oddly comforting.

Album on Repeat: Addison by Addison Rae

Say what you will, Addison Rae's debut EP Addison is the soundtrack of summer. Every moment feels like a dreamscape. A daring to try harder, to allow the possibility of fantasy, to have fun while doing it. This is high-vibrational pop at its most sincere. Personal favourites? Summer Forever and In The Rain. Dare I say she is moving to territories only marked before by the greats of Britney Spears, and even… Madonna?

Rose Oil Rituals

I’ve been wearing rose essential oil this month - not necessarily as perfume, but diluted into water as a face mist, gifted by my mum one evening that required a relief from heat. Rose is Cancer-coded: nostalgic and romantic with an air of meloncholic comfort. It’s also the ultimate scent of divine femininity. I spray it on post-skincare and its cooling benefits are instant.

Chanel Is Having A (Quiet) Moment Again

I go through phases, oscillating between the grunge and dystopia from the likes of Balenciaga and Rick Owens, to the classics of Isabel Marant, Marc Jacobs, Chloe. But for now, Chanel is back in my heart. My vintage gold bangle makes every outfit feel more expensive than it is, and I’ve been living in my white quilted Chanel pumps as sourced in a gleeful frenzy from some unsuspecting on Vinted. They’re the kind of shoes that appeal to the prim and proper, and the fashion girls that can note the subtle irony and respect the juxtaposition.

Accessory of the Month: Black Beaded Necklaces

These feel bold and are able to elevate any minimalist outfit. I’ve been layering mine over doubled ivory and sheer tank tops with linen trousers and Haviainas. Think 1990s Italian widow meets Olsen twin. Understated and maybe a little unsettling.

Taste of the Month: Split Pea Dip & Sparkling Wine at Flawd

Not to be too frivelous now, but I could write poetry about the split pea dip from Flawd. It’s earthy, creamy, vaguely lemony, and the more grounding counterpart when paired with their flirtatious Quarticello Despina, a lightly sparking natural Malvasia. This is food that romances you quietly. The kind of plate that makes you believe that life is worth living again - especially when shared with your sister on Ancoats Marina. Also, the kind of plate that makes you think three bottles of the sparkling is totally doable (it is, but at what cost?).

Soft Colour Crushes: Aqua & Pink

This month, my mind is adorned with a contrasting combination in colour: Aqua and soft pink. A far cry from the usual monochromatic black, whites, and ivories that I gravitate towards. Aqua feels fun and dreamy and soft pink feels like my long awaited return to femininity.

I’m here for it and am keen to get my hands on the token aqua dress as designed by At First Studio, both casual and playful at once.

Favourite Video: "Put Love at the Centre of Your Life, Not Discipline" by Josephine

June brought me to Josephine’s beautiful video essay, Put Love at the Centre of Your Life, Not Discipline. It’s a gentle but fierce reminder to soften our approach to ambition and to let feeling lead. To achieve your wildest ambitions and to characterise your life by joy requires a more sensual approach to living. We won’t get nearly as far by travelling with a crucifix on our back. It feels like an antidote to grind culture and a warm invitation back to self.

To avoid short-changing this insightful video any further, watch it here.

Final Thought:

I don’t believe in how-to guides, but I certainly hope that these recommendations enrich your summer - or at least encourage you to romanticise the mundane. If there’s one thing to take as gospel, let it be Flawd’s split pea dip…

Until next month x