The "Heart Flutter" Formula for Your Wardrobe - Wear What Excites you

The Style Stories Podcast

Lisa Gilbey introduces her "Heart Flutter" wardrobe formula, arguing that restrictive fashion advice like the popular "wear with three items" rule stifles personal

Key takeaways

Lisa Gilbey critiques the popular "wear with three things" shopping rule, calling it a buzzkill that leads to mediocre, uninspired wardrobes.
She advocates for buying items that trigger an immediate emotional response or "heart flutter," regardless of current wardrobe compatibility.

Main topics

wardrobe satisfaction
fashion rules critique

Notable quotes

"The ultimate wardrobe isn't a capsule wardrobe with 10 pieces in it that everyone else has got... it's a wardrobe that makes you feel joyful."

Conclusion

The episode empowers listeners to reclaim the joy of dressing by prior

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hello and welcome to the Style Stories. It's your host here, Lisa Gilbey. I'm a personal stylist here in London with 16 years experience helping people to get dressed with confidence. Let me ask you something. When did you last put on something and feel a little flutter, that tiny lift in your chest where you catch yourself in the mirror and think, yes, that's me? Most of us have wardrobes full of clothes that are sensible or just in case. or bought randomly at the last minute, or bought for a version of ourselves that doesn't quite exist, like a fantasy self that doesn't fit our actual life that we live. Somewhere along the way, the joy of pulling together your wardrobe and getting dressed gets lost. Today, we're getting it back. I'm sharing what I call the Heart Flutter Wardrobe Formula, a simple way to tap back in to what you genuinely love. Grab a cup of tea or whatever drink you want, open your wardrobe door while you listen and let's find your flutter. This is the Style Stories podcast. Welcome to today's episode. Speaker 1 (1:08) So have you heard that advice that's been banded around quite a lot lately? I've noticed this. It's if you buy something when you go to the shops or online and you think you really like it, you must first, before you actually buy it, you must make sure that that item goes with three pieces that you already have in your wardrobe. Okay, now I have got a massive problem with this. This is one of the... buzzkill pieces of style advice that people are putting around at the moment. It's supposed to be helpful. This kind of advice is meant to help you to stop you in your tracks and build a wardrobe that is intentional and thoughtful and all those sorts of things. But actually, if you think about it, if you are only buying things that are sensible, and practical, you're going to end up with a mediocre wardrobe that ultimately makes you feel bored. What has happened is all the advice that we get has stopped people from tapping into their heart to actually really realize what it is you truly love to wear. We're all individuals. We're all complicated. We all have different kinds of lives. We feel different at different times of the week, never mind different times of our lives. Building a wardrobe that speaks to every single person, full of the sensible things to buy, the things that you should buy, isn't going to feel satisfying. And I really think that's where a huge part of wardrobe dissatisfaction comes from, because it's outward looking and it's dressing for others' approval, really. You know, what you're told is cool, what you need to feel chic. This kind of advice... is often quite shame-based. And I talk a lot about this on the podcast as well. So, you know, across Instagram, TikTok, whatever, whatever you read, magazines, etc. You know, we're given all this advice about getting the ultimate capsule wardrobe, but also things now I'm noticing, how to dress cooler, how to dress younger, how to look slimmer, how to dress richer, cooler, younger, slimmer, richer. This is something that I touched on. in a bit of depth actually, in last week's podcast with the amazing Callie O'Donnell, it's cowbell over on Instagram. This kind of advice, it's mass advice that makes you feel like you're not enough because you're not dressing in a certain way that is deemed to be right in inverted commas. So I want to bring back the heart flutter. And I think the way to do that is to If you find something in a shop, okay, and you think you absolutely love it. So an example for me would be this amazing Rixo. Rixo is a brand, by the way, for those who don't know that I am quite obsessed with because it really is my vibe. It's got sort of vintage vibes. It's very feminine. They've got this amazing opera coat this season. It's sort of silk. It's got a faux fur collar and it's just stunning and it's super, super glamorous.