Pep Talk

Hello humans! I am thrilled you are back.

My connection to style and fashion has evolved a lot throughout my life. From a rebellious skinny tomboy living in rural Portugal, to being an independent female working in the financial industry in London, it has been a good ride. Sometimes I struggled, sometimes I enjoyed it, but what I can say for sure is that it has been worth it.

When I was a kid, I knew I wasn’t like the other girls, but without role models to guide me (remember I am pre-historic and I didn’t have the internet back then) I was very lost about my style. I navigated that journey the best I knew, but overall I remembered feeling guilty about liking clothes and fashion “things” and I remember enjoying creating new looks, new things.

I thought that people involved in the fashion industry were vain, superficial, even dumb. In my little world I was told that fashion was a rich people’s thing, not essential for humankind survival and us “the real people” had bigger problems to be concerned with.

Yet, I adventured in creating a personal style and the backlash of that was family and school friends commenting on how strange I looked, or the piercing comment “why can’t you be more like your sister?” that I heard a lot and hurt a lot.

Now that I am almost 38 years old, I see how wrong I was. I now accept that at every stage of my life I do the best I can, with the tools and the knowledge I have.

Now I know that liking colors, patterns, textures is not a useless thing, that it doesn’t make me a vain or a superficial person. Now I can see how I can use these talents of mine, to improve my appearance and how this can improve my self-esteem. Consequently improving my mental state and helping me reach my goals and objectives with more joy.

Fashion, style, clothes, shoes bring me joy and that by itself it is enough for me to pursue it. I believe it was Andy Warhol that once said this when he was asked why he did the work he did? He simply replied, because he liked it. 

One of the reasons I created this blog was to show people that you can  interpret fashion/style your own way. You own it, it shouldn’t own you. Whatever you decide to wear, should make you feel happy and make you feel good. Anything that makes you happy, is valid. 

If you feel good and you feel happy, you are a better person, a better mother, sister, uncle, father, friend, employee, etc. If you are a better person and you make people feel good, this will create a snowball effect. Your self esteem will continue to improve, you will believe in yourself more and you will be more likely to follow your dreams, objectives, etc. 

So this is the reason why I like to dress up, I like the colours, the pattern combinations. I like to surprise myself and others. I like to make myself happy and others too. If a piece of clothing I’m wearing makes someone wake off of their slumber, great. I’ve showed something different to the person that day. If they like it, great. If they find it funny, great, you made someone laugh. 

With this said, you also need to develop a thick skin because people can be mean to you consciously or not. People will make  awkward or negative comments about your look, your appearance and you will learn how to shrug things off, or to say “so what?” a lot. 

Reason why people talk when they have nothing good to say? God knows! There are so many explanations for this, but don’t waste your energy on this.  There are a lot of people that don’t enjoy happiness and if  they are down, they will try to bring you down. You can park these people on the side road. 

Playing with style and fashion makes me happy, brings me joy, consequently improves my mood and self esteem. That in return makes me a more confident person and pushes me to follow my dreams and aspirations. Who would have thought that matching shoes with a dress, could help me achieve my financial objectives 😀 

Dress it up, dress for yourself, look in the mirror before you leave the house, give yourself a pep talk “You look great, you are intelligent, you are a hard worker, you deserve more, you deserve the best. You are going to get it!”. Because one thing is for sure, if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. If you don’t chase your dreams and ambitions, no one will. 

I am Franca and this is personal.