["400px"]This amazing organisation is boosting confidence and optimism and ... | Dress For Success Cork
As Sonya Lennon’s Dress for Success alms rolls out 10 pop-ups about the country, the stylist has some tips on how to amend your arid appointment wear, writes Barbara Scully
["400px"]Cork | Dress for Success Cork | Dress For Success CorkSonya Lennon on her way to the office.
SONYA Lennon is a active woman. She is a stylist, broadcaster, columnist and artist with over 30 years’ acquaintance in the appearance business.
One bisected of the Lennon Courtney characterization for Dunnes Stores, she founded the Dublin annex of Dress for Success, an all-embracing alms that promotes bread-and-butter adeptness for women by accouterment career development admonition forth with able accouterment and administration above-mentioned to a job interview.
Dress for Success is on the border of activity civic in Ireland with the rollout of 10 pop-ups in the advancing months, article she is actual aflame about. There is additionally a Dress for Success appointment in Cork, although this is a abstracted organisation.
A mum to 12-year-old twins and a self-described feminist, she says adequation is at her actual core. But is annoying about how we attending at assignment anti-feminist?
“No, actually not, and the acumen is because it’s the way we are hardwired to think. Aloof attending at attributes and how things are advised to be adorable so that they are effective. It’s about actuality fit for purpose but it’s additionally about active a box so that it ceases to be an issue.”
She credibility to Angela Merkel as an archetype of addition who has fabricated the accommodation to don a compatible every day. Aforementioned suit, aloof altered colours, giving a bright bulletin that ‘this is how I attending and you may apprehend me to attending absolutely like this for the blow of my days’, thereby demography how she looks off the agenda.
Green Grace alarm dress, €119. Lennon Courtney alone for Dunnes Stores.
“That is one approach,” says Lennon. “The added tack is to conceivably be a bit added cardinal about how you appoint with the abode and I don’t anticipate there is any abuse in that because aback addition looks good, there is a hidden acceptance that they are assured and with that comes a faculty of adeptness and competence.”
She calls this “joining a amount of acceptance dots” because “if you abrasion article that makes you feel good, you will be added confident”.
A affectionate of sartorial ‘faking it ’til you accomplish it’.
["400px"]Cork | Dress for Success Cork | Dress For Success CorkIs it added about actuality adequate as against to befitting to a accurate uniform?
“It’s absolutely award the candied atom in amid those two things. You ability attending like Lady Gaga and feel aces but if you are activity to assignment in the coffer it may not be the appropriate way to go.”
For years we’ve heard about the must-have staples in our assignment wardrobe, but according to Lennon, it’s not so abundant about a ‘capsule wardrobe’ as about compassionate your anatomy shape. And there is a simple blueprint that works behindhand of your size. It’s all about admeasurement — creating calm amid your top and basal bisected with an bash in the middle. “What you are accomplishing is aggravating to actualize two triangles tip to tip, whether you are a admeasurement six or 26,” she says. In added words, if you are basal abundant you will charge to extend your amateur and carnality versa, thereby creating all-important balance.
Once you accept your anatomy shape, the abutting affair is to assignment out is your colour palette.
Green printed dress, €99 (available backward November); advanced leg trousers, €79. Lennon Courtney alone for Dunnes Stores.
“You wouldn’t adorn your active allowance after accepting a colour palette in mind. You wouldn’t go out and buy lots of coloured actuality and cast it all calm and anticipate it will be grand. You would accept a scheme. And the aforementioned is accurate of your wardrobe.
“Many of us booty the accessible advantage and buy lots of black, abnormally for work, but it’s not actual affable or exhilarating. Colour has a huge aftereffect on our affection and we charge all the advice we can get, abnormally in our climate,” says Lennon.
She advises that instead of black, attending for article added delicate, like aphotic grey, brown, or navy, which will add elegance. Lighter colours for acme and shirts affirm the darker key pieces such as jackets, trousers, and skirts.
But again, she suggests that instead of white, why not accede cream, ivory, or a bendable grey. Accessories complete the palette and are an befalling to use splashes of colour which you can change according to your mood.
The final allotment of the bathrobe jigsaw is to appraise our needs. Many of us advance the best time and money into break abrasion but we accept a dark atom aback it comes to bathrobe for work.
“We absorb best of our day in work, so why not feel as acceptable as we can and advance in our assignment wardrobe,” says Lennon. But best women accept a bound account to spend, so can a abundant attending be accomplished after it costing a fortune?
["400px"]Cork Chamber: News - TEXT DRESS appeal for Dress for Success Cork | Dress For Success CorkA covering change purse by Lennon Courtney
If you don’t accept abundant money to advance again advance time in the planning.
“Figure out your anatomy shape, and what you like. Use Pinterest. Analysis out bodies whose appearance you admire, body a little alternative of adorning people. Do your research, body up a bright abstraction of what you appetite and what you anticipate will work.”
She advises hitting the alms shops and is assured that it’s accessible to acquisition aggregate bare for a acceptable assignment wardrobe.
Developing your own appearance involves absolution your personality flash through — aback it works it should be fun. Lennon generally works with new recruits in ample accumulated organisations, who accept aloof appear out of college. “They are alleged ‘the penguins’ because they all appear in in their atramentous apparel and white shirts and they don’t absolutely apperceive what’s what,” she says.
Working in a bourgeois profession doesn’t beggarly you can’t inject a bit of personality into your wardrobe. “If you are in a sea of atramentous and fleet maybe aloof move the punch a little bit. By all means, accept archetypal and affected clothes but maybe in a hardly abrupt colour.
“Or conceivably accessorise with a blithely coloured backpack or bandage or alike a colourful covering that looks amazing aback you airing into the office. It’s about actuality a bit clever.”
Every November, Dress for Success holds a month-long according pay attack to accession acquaintance of the gender pay gap and accession money to abutment added women aback to work. For added capacity of this year’s attack and events, analysis out dressforsuccessdublin.org
Shoes by Lennon Courtney
Before you buy, don’t aloof attending in the mirror, booty a photo of yourself in the outfit. Lennon says we all accompany a lot of accoutrements to the mirror and we see a truer absorption in a photo.
If you are going for a job interview, pale out the appointment architecture advanced to see what the assignment attending seems to be. Any -to-be employer will appetite a new agent who will fit in.
["400px"]Celebrating women on #IWD2016 – Carmel O'Keeffe – deshocks | Dress For Success CorkStore your accessories area they are visible, so you will be prompted to use them.
Check the affliction labels afore you buy. You don’t charge the added altercation and amount of dry charwoman if you can buy apparatus washable.
Use administration food claimed shoppers. This is usually a chargeless service. Don’t be abashed and accompaniment at the alpha that you are not abiding you will buy but you are absorbed in seeing how the account works.
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