Shape Strategy: Dressing Your Evolving Self_EDIT
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Style and Strategy Podcast, where personal brand meets leadership and style. I'm Sonya, a personal brand and style coach who's been exactly where you are juggling career and business success. Personal growth and finding a style that truly fits. After decades in corporate leadership, I've learned that showing up isn't just about what you do, it's about how you align who you are and how the world sees you.
This season, I'm bringing you practical strategies, bold insights, and honest conversations to help you amplify your presence, unlock your next level, and lead with clarity and confidence. Let's dive in.
After having my first two kids, I was about,~ uh,~ 20 kilos heavier,~ uh,~ than I had been before. And it wasn't just that the clothes didn't fit, [00:01:00] it was that I looked at them and saw someone that I wasn't anymore. I didn't even know what suited my shape anymore.
And. To be honest, I couldn't even see myself clearly outside of being mom. And even though I had worked in leadership ~and ~and transformation for years, this, I couldn't quite put my finger on it because the way I started to feel was not the woman that I was before. It doesn't matter how capable or accomplished you are when you are hit with, I don't even know how to dress myself anymore with this shape, you actually start to second guess everything.
There was actually one particular moment that stood up. I was getting dressed,~ uh,~ for the work that I did [00:02:00] at the time, and I had piles around me. What I now like to call the piles of potential,~ uh, Uh. ~One jacket too tight around the back, ~you know, ~the feeling,~ uh,~ pants, let's not even go there.
~Uh, ~I couldn't even button them up properly. And my go-to dress, honestly, it felt like it was someone else's from a lifetime ago. And looking at the mirror already late, I just felt off and I felt. Out of my skin. And at that moment I knew it wasn't just about the clothes, it was about my identity. So if you've ever had children moved through perimenopause, menopause shifted into your 30 forties or fifties, or even spent time, more time behind a desk than you had in a previous season, your body [00:03:00] is likely changed and yet.
We are dressing and trying to understand why
the pieces in the wardrobe are making us feel off. Most style advice that I say doesn't necessarily account for this evolution, right? It assumes that we have time to figure it out and we'll just know what really suits us. But what if you don't? What if you've never learned? Or what if what used to work doesn't anymore?
I work with so many amazing, high achieving capable women who tells me all the time, I am not sure what even suits me anymore. My body's change, but my wardrobe hasn't quite yet caught up because I don't even know what I'm looking for. I have the [00:04:00] pieces that I used to love, but I don't even know how to wear them anymore.
These are not style problems. These are strategy problems. And when you don't understand how your current shape, your identity, your proportions, all of those things work together, you really dressing through a filter that imagine like it's blurry, right? And what it can do is create decision fatigue. So overthinking.
Outfits that constantly feel like a compromise. Instead of making you and supporting you. Feel confident. A study in the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management found that, ~you know, ~women who wore clothing that really allowed them to feel like them really increased their self-confidence [00:05:00] and their communication and their impact therefore increased significantly.
But guess what? Most women are navigating their day to day without any of this clarified. So in the work that I do with clients and what I teach, I teach something that I like to call shape strategy, and it really starts with a few simple questions. When we think about body shape, many of us go, oh, I hate looking at my body, right?
And I really want you to reframe that and think about. This body has been through years and years of evolution, of change, of impact, and so now it's about looking at it through a different lens. What are some of those attributes? What is that body shape you have now and really look at it because when [00:06:00] you understand this, you actually stop fighting your clothes and you can start using them.
Think about,~ well,~ what are your proportions? What really works around them? This is probably one of the most misunderstood elements. It's not just about the , ~you know, ~bust waist, hips, and things like that. It's about how you visually balance the frame. But most importantly, how do you wanna be experienced?
What is the goal of knowing your body shape? For you? Is it that you're trying to look more elevated? Maybe it's more relaxed, more approachable, more powerful? Is it that you want to maybe create the illusion of height, maybe create more curves, maybe just soften the edges? And this is what I like to call strategy.
This forms a bit of a foundation. So that way [00:07:00] each one of you has a strategy that is right for you. For me, it's never about trying to give someone a cookie cutter approach. It's tailored. It's so you can take a framework and apply it to you, your leadership, your life, and most importantly, your identity.
So that day in the mirror. It wasn't about finding the right outfit for me, it was recognizing that I felt disorientated in my own skin. And what I really needed was that reset, a roadmap, a strategy of ~how, ~how do I actually figure all of that out? And now that's why I help other women through this.
Because once we've done the brand work, once we've done the identity work, the inside work, it's then [00:08:00] working through to understand things like shape strategy so we can start to make DRE getting dressed easier and impactful again for you. Because when you stop second guessing your outfit, then you actually start showing up more differently.
Perhaps it's clearly, it's there's a level of confidence that comes through and there's this level of unshakeable clarity. So if you've ever felt like your body's changed, but your style hasn't caught up,
remember that you've never been taught. So learning those skills actually becomes something to take you. Through life's journey, and it always starts with knowing how to style the version of you today and where you are going.
