As spring is welcomed here in the UK, the colours are bright and abundant. This is usually the time when people yearn to add colours to their outfits. If this feels alien to you, and you are wondering where to start with colours, then I am here to help.

If you are just beginning to dip your toe into adding colours to your outfits, or haven’t yet tried to do so and are feeling overwhelmed, then here are my tips for adding colours to your wardrobe.

Play with colours that match your neutrals

If you want to make your colours feel appropriate for a look, investigate the colours that work with your neutrals. As a part of a colour clinic with us, we provide the base neutrals and complementary colours to work with them in your very own colour palette. This can be taken with you in your handbag so you can quickly pick and choose colours that go together.

If you don’t yet have one of these, here are a few of my favourite complementary colours that go with specific neutrals:

Colours that work with black:

Considered one of the most versatile neutrals, black is in fact one of the hardest colours to wear. Breaking up this basic colour with an additional colour within your colour wheel will make a huge difference to your look.

Some of my favourite colours to put with black are:

• ●Dusty rose
• ●Fuchsia
• ●Green
• ●Metals (copper, gold, silver, platinum)
• ●Lilac
• ●Red

   

  Colours that go with navy:

  Navy is a great base colour in particular for professional outfits as it isn’t as harsh as black.

  Some of my favourite colours to put with navy are:

• ●Pink
• ●Red
• ●Orange
• ●Lime green
• ●Mustard yellow
• ●Gold

  Colours that go with beige:

  Perfect for the warmer months, beige is a light, airy colour that can be an excellent neutral in your wardrobe.

  Some of my favourite colours to put put with beige are:

• ●Rust
• ●Aqua green
• ●Burgundy
• ●Olive green
• ●Mauve / lilac
• ●Pastel pinks

Start with the extremities

There is nothing more daunting than an entire outfit full of colours. This is why for those of you who want to dip your toe into adding colours to your looks may be stepping back.

The first way to approach colours can be starting with your extremities – such as your hands, feet or head.

These smaller areas of your body can take on a little dash of colour, while the rest of your body remains neutral, permitting for that colourful flash to be more approachable.

Shoes & bags are often the best place to start as they come in so many different colourways and patterns. Shoes can be covered gently with wide leg trousers or boot cut jeans meaning the colour peaks out.

Bags can be swapped out easily between outfits (as long as you remember to swap out your essentials!) so you can play with whatever look you feel like. Take a bold bright bag one day, and more composed look with a colourful handle the next.

Another option is to add a colourful headband or earrings, which can also quickly and easily be swapped depending on the occasion.

Break up the colours with your layers

Now you have your neutrals and your accessories set, you can look to adding additional pieces to your outfit. You can break up the colours in your outfit by wearing layers such as a blazer, a jacket, or even hosiery.

For example, if you want to bring a dash of colour to a summer dress, you can pair a neutral dress with a colourful blazer. You could also add an underlayer to your dress such as a thin long sleeved mesh top in one of your colours.

For your two-piece, why not add a colour through a slogan tee under your neutral suit? Pick out the colours from the tee and pop on a pair of shoes or a bag which has a colour that is in it.

Monochromatic looks

Just like your neutral suit feels less daunting than a bright one-off dress, you may find that monochromatic looks can be an excellent solution for adding colour to your outfits.

Picking one colour and seamlessly utilising it across your outfit can be a beautiful way to make an outfit feel approachable yet bright and inviting.

Consider a green suit, or match a pink dress with pink shoes and accessories. Picking out different levels of the colour can make it more dimensional as a look, too.

If you are looking for someone who can help you discover the perfect colours for you to add to your looks so you can shine, our colour clinics can be an excellent solution.

And if you can't meet us in person, we could help through our Online Colour & Style Clinic.

Forgive the sensationalist headline – far more tabloid than you might expect of me, but I’ve been asked this question quite a lot recently along with “have you tried…?”, “what do you think about….?”, plus a host of other questions along similar lines.

Since the release of ChatGPT in November last year, everyone seems to be wondering if machines are soon going to be replacing humans. Of course, we’ve been wondering that in various forms for a long time – HG Wells touched on it in The Time Machine in 1895 – and it hasn’t happened yet, so I suspect the end of the world isn’t quite nigh.

I’ve been looking into it recently, so here is my take on the current rise in AI content creation and whether you should use it.

AI has a place

I suppose a good place to start is for me to say that I find technology fascinating (little known fact: my degree includes a minor in computing), so the research to create a ‘thinking machine’ is one I can appreciate. While AI content writers might not yet pass a Turing Test (developed to assess whether a machine can display intelligence) they certainly seem to be getting more and more sophisticated. The capability of the developers who have brought it to this point should be applauded – from a purely academic standpoint.

ChatGPT is still a developmental tool of course and one developed from the world of R&D so it isn’t yet considered to be a ‘product’ for commercial exploitation. Every time I go to try it out, it is ‘at capacity’.  I was mildly amused that the first thing it did was verify I was a human…. There are others, however, which claim to offer the same, or similar, services – Jasper, Grammarly and Creaitor to name a few.

And, if you are short on time and on budget, using AI to generate content for you seems a useful solution, especially when it can give you 500 possible blog topics that might work for you. Fantastic!

I know that web developers are very keen on the AI code development features that are available too – great for solving knotty coding problems and for debugging.

Can AI replace a writer?

This, of course, is the knub of the issue. ChatGPT can write poetry and has written a sonnet in the style of Shakespeare. It’s very creative and interesting but ‘in the style of…’ isn’t Shakespeare. Part of the glory of Shakespeare is the style and meter and the way it scans. But surely part of it is the sheer glory that a person created those wonderful words. He sweated over them, to get them just right. He didn’t go though 100,000 word combinations at a million operations per second until he found a match.

I think it all comes down to what you, as the business owner, want from your content.

Pages of fast copy?

Or something authentically you?

Science? Or Art?

If you are looking for ideas or a first draft that you can then edit to match your own tone of voice and generate the ides you can then rework, then it seems a reasonable thing to do. Mind you, Google is already saying it will down-rank content created by AI, so if you want to optimise your website for search engines, it could well work against you. I’d be interested to find out it’s capability for differentiation too – if four people ask an AI for an article on the same topic, will they get the same article?

A question of ethics

We now come to the knotty problem of attribution.

When you publish an article, blog, book or web page, you are implying that the content is your own. If everything has been written by a clever robot, do you need to declare that?

You don’t if it is written by a copywriter – although any good writer would have spent time with you to understand your values and perspective, so anything published under your name reflects your opinion. If you review and edit a computer-generated article, is that any different?

To my mind, though, using a professional writer to create something for you feels less ‘transactional’ than using AI. It lacks the human touch (literally) and it feels like a deceit for your audience.

What about copyright and intellectual property?

I don’t imagine this is an issue that is yet to be fully addressed but consider this:

You use AI to write you an e-book and prospects can download it free of charge from your website. It creates a relationship which, later, leads to you making a sale. Who is entitled to that revenue? You – most would argue.

Okay – seems fair. What about this one:

You use AI to generate an eBook which prospects download for a small fee. Who owns that revenue?

And what if it isn’t an eBook, but a business book? Or an online course?

Who is entitled to the revenue? Who owns the copyright? And who owns the intellectual property?

A quick chat with a solicitor friend of mine confirmed that this particular ‘copyright time-bomb’ hasn’t been explored but that someone, somewhere is likely to light the fuse.

AI is still a machine

Whichever tool is used, artificially created content is still a creation of technology and not of heart and mind. The developers of ChatGPT admit that it ‘lacks critical analysis’ which means it can draw information from the internet and come up with a wrong answer. And, more worryingly, it lacks moral and ethical judgement. It can be asked to comply with local laws, for example, but won’t necessarily reflect your own values or a current sway in public opinion. The site itself warns you that information may be inaccurate, harmful or biased.

The implications of that worry me a little. I was chatting to someone last week who is using ChatGPT to write the management reports on his team performance. He makes notes each day on what they have done and at the end of the month says “Hey, ChatGPT can you summarise these into a report using a professional business style?”

But he wasn’t checking them….

Which means, if he had a bad day and one of his team did something stupid, that prompted him to write a thoughtless note about them, ChatGPT would simply include that in the report. It wouldn’t think, “That’s a bit harsh” or leave it out because performance on other days was fine and reason that this poor performance was an isolated incident. Nor would it know that that was a ‘bad day’ and not a fair reflection on the manager’s feelings.

Outcome: Grievance, or someone quitting because they felt undermined, to name but a few consequences.

I pointed this out and the possibility hadn’t occurred to him. He will now check the reports before submitting them.

This is one example but, for those who put faith into technology we could be seeing a rise in mis-information and hurtful content.

So, am I for it or against it? And would I use it?

AI is a tool like any other. Tools are useful if used correctly.

If used incorrectly, they can be downright dangerous. If you choose to use AI to generate content, do so with an enquiring mind and with your eyes wide open. Check it, add your own tone of voice and values to anything it creates and check the facts it presents. And be aware that, some time in the future, you might need to declare or credit AI content (just as you might for a guest blog), so make a note of what content is your own work and what is the work of a machine.

As to where I’d use it, I have, finally, managed to create a ChatGPT account and I will play with it to find out its capabilities – after all I love technology and it is really clever. I have tested its ability to come up with a list of blog titles for a specific industry and target market and I can see myself using it for that.

For actual content though? No – I see writing as an art form and content gold comes from the glory that is human. So, our clients can expect only actual intelligence creating content alchemy for the foreseeable future.

Want to join the discussion about AI content? Add a comment below. And if you want to see how Creative Words can give you real, authentic, bespoke content, contact us for a chat. 

**Image credit Depositphoto & Canva March 2023**

Let’s be honest, shopping for clothes can either make or break our day. When you have a plan, find what you need, the temperature is just right, and you feel confident within the pieces you have selected, a clothes shopping experience can be amazing.

For many of my clients, they have less of a fabulous result when they go shopping. They don’t have time for it so rush through the shopping, ending up with clothes they don’t love, don’t work with their current wardrobe, and ultimately waste money on garments they won’t wear.

For some, the feeling of overwhelm from the multitude of options can consume them. They can either rush around the stores and feel there’s “nothing for them”, or they spend hours trying to find the right pieces, but just don’t know where to go.

Finally, the most often feeling is that they just don’t know what will suit them from the shops, and feel they don’t know what to buy.

A personal shopping experience brings a specialist by your side to help you transform these downward spirals when shopping, and make them enjoyable and cost effective. Gone will be the countless pieces in your wardrobe that you never wear, but don’t have time to return!

That’s why we love helping people who feel this way with our online or face to face shopping experiences.

When you come to One of a Style for a personal shopping experience, what can you expect? Great question, here’s what we do here.

Personal Shopping – what you can expect from face to face shopping experiences

A personal shopping experience is one that we go through together, in person. The experience gives you the opportunity to have a full day or half day with one of our style experts to discover the shops, styles, and pieces that work for you.

It starts with a consultation, we get together online or in person, to find out what your wardrobe delivers, and what you may need to complement the outfits you already have and love.

Our experts will create a list of inspirational styles and will browse brands and collections beforehand, so when we get together for the shopping experience, we have clear ideas of what you need and what to look for.

We use our insights, knowledge, and experience to recommend stores that align with your personal style, your wardrobe requirements, and your shape. Because we already understand and know what is on offer across a variety of stores and budgets, we don’t have to try out loads of options, we have them in place already, and can take you to them for a new and welcome experience.

We may guide you to try a few new things, so you can step out of your comfort zone, while remaining true to your personality. We will also enable you to try on pieces, play with outfits, and have a style expert to hand to give you feedback on looks as well as how to style those garments for future looks.

You will walk away knowing that the pieces you have purchased will not only feel and look great, but they will work for you within the wardrobe you already have.

A personal shopping experience will feel like you have an expert there to hold your hand, give you new discoveries, and make shopping a more pleasurable experience. You will also be given advice and feedback for future shopping when you go out on your own, so you won’t fall back into the overwhelming and costly experience it may have been before.

Online Personal Shopping – What to Expect from an online shopping experience with One of a Style

You may think that online personal shopping would mean you miss out on that personal aspect, but we make sure that our online and face to face experiences feel as personal and engaged as one another. There are some differences, of course, as we are not there with you in person during the experience, but we are able to give a guiding hand throughout your experience.

With our Curated Online Shopping Experience, you will still get a real, accountable stylist (and no AI) working for you! We are here to make sure your shopping experience will be enjoyable, so having someone there to help you makes it all the more easier.

After an initial briefing call to discuss your goal, budget and needs, we create a bespoke lookbook just for you!

You will see different outfit ideas with links to the places to buy those exact items, so you can quickly and easily get what you see and like, with an approachable example of how to style them. No longer will an online shopping experience of urgency for one garment mean it only works for one event or outfit!

If you perhaps don’t love an exact piece, we have multiple options within your lookbook to try out, such as different colours, and patterns that still align with your outfit preferences and personal style, based on the briefing we have together.

You can go out, with the informed decisions and items that work for you thanks to these elements, and to add on that personal experience, we can organise a Zoom Fit Call, to show off your pieces once you get them, and see how they fall, and get an expert insight into the looks.

While the one-off experience can be so beneficial for you moving forwards, we understand that the trends that come into play, and the seasons come around, which may mean you need further support. This is why we offer our curated online shopping sessions in a one-off, bi-annual, or quarterly option.

Shopping should ultimately be a joyful, useful experience that makes your wardrobe more fun and useable. If shopping for clothes feels like an overwhelming experience for you, and holds you back from enjoying your wardrobe, we can help.

Whether you choose to have someone by your side in person, or via an online experience, each option provides a personal and bespoke solution to your clothes shopping experiences. 

Two very different things…

Being in a groove = Performing or operating very well.

You're in your flow, living your best life and everything comes easily and simply because you know where you’re going and how to get there!

Stuck in a rut = Too fixed in one particular type of job, activity, or method and needing to change.

You're bored, not motivated and life feels difficult.Defining your Personal Brand and building Self Awareness around who you are, your purpose and your why, can change that Rut into a Groove!

Which one are you in?

Sometimes you have a question or a query about your life, business, a friendship that keeps recurring and you're not sure how to get to your answer.

It may be...

• 'How shall I grow my business?''
• How should I be balancing my time differently?''
• Am I doing the right thing?''
• Should I change career/business?''
• Should I carry on with this?''
• Should I stop doing this?'

How many voices do you have in your head? - quite a few if you're like me.

• Fearful voice
• Impatient/fun-loving/risk takerLazy
• Mother/teacher
• Rule breaker
• Want to be liked voice

Sometimes you get the feeling of being stuck because one of those inner voices is too loud and not letting any of the others speak or all of them are speaking at once.

Here is a task that will help 

1. Make a list of all your voices.
2. Write each you on a piece of paper and place them on different chairs.
3. Articulate your question and then spend 5 - 10 mins in each chair, giving yourself advice from only the perspective of the person on that particular chair.
4. Journal around the answer or say it our loud.
5. By the end you will have sat in all the chairs, opened your perspective and heard from the whole advisory board that is the makeup of you.

You will find momentum too, as you will clearly hear the advice you had to offer yourself all along!

So, a question...

Is it time to up your game in 2023?

I ask in all seriousness, hoping that you think about this in some depth before you answer.

The easy response is ‘yes’. After all, that’s what you are supposed to say. You may even add some stretching goals… maybe like you did last year?

But if you are honest, you may admit that you’ve done this before… set some goals, a year has whizzed by and you know that this year you MUST try harder.

If that is you, it’s OK.

You can take all of this year to figure it out, or you can have an almighty push and get where you need to be sooner rather than later.

If you are ready to smash 2023, all you need to do is click the link below and we’ll talk, I’ll assess whether you are in the right place to make it your year and if you are, I will tell you how I can help… no obligation, no hard sell.

https://www.sallyinkster.com/contact

Love Sally x

Finding Brand YOU!

When you're considering having a Bear made from your sentimental items of clothing it can be difficult to understand which type of bear to ask for, whether it be a Keepsake Bear or a Memory Bear.

In this post you'll find out what is meant by both Keepsake and Memory Bears. When it comes to preserving precious memories, keepsake bears and memory bears are two popular options for those who want to commemorate a special person or event in their lives. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, and ultimately mean the same thing, there is a distinct difference between the two. Continue reading to find out more or if you're short on time watch the video for a quick explanation.

What is a Keepsake Bear?

A Keepsake Bear is generally a bear made from items of clothing that hold sentimental memories, such as those old baby clothes. You won't be alone in having a boxes of those cute baby outfits months or even years after your children have grown out of them. For some reason, they have a tie to our hearts and the idea of parting with them is difficult.

Therefore, you may decide to have a selection of special baby items made into a Keepsake Bear to allow you to part with the rest. And if not then maybe a Keepsake Blanket is your answer. A Keepsake Bear doesn't have to be made from old baby clothes, you may choose to use your work uniform instead. A keepsake Bear is a way of marking a significant event of yours or your families lives.

So what is a Memory Bear?

A Memory Bear is when you choose to use clothes that belonged to a relative or friend who has sadly passed away, they also may be referred to as Memorial Bears. The idea behind Memory Bears is to preserve the memories that are triggered when you see your loved ones favourite items of clothing. Whether it be their favourite shirt, jumper or dress you can choose whatever item of clothing that makes you think of them when they were still here. But they also act as a way to provide comfort and give you a connection to the them.

By having the clothes made into a Memory Bear it brings the clothes out of a cupboard and out on display for everyone to see. Whether you have it sat on your bed or on the sofa, it makes them a great conversation piece when people come to visit. Memorial bears become great companions on those lonely days. They can be made from just 1 item of clothing, but you could include more if you wanted. "I really love my memory bear and it has brought 'Mum' back into the room rather then laying in a drawer if that makes sense!

Ultimately, Keepsake Bears and Memory Bears are the same...

In conclusion, both Keepsake Bears and Memory Bears serve as a way to commemorate loved ones AND special memories. However, the difference lies in the type of clothing used to make the bears. Keepsake Bears are made from baby clothes and are typically created for parents or grandparents. On the other hand, memory bears are made from cherished clothing items of a loved one who has passed away.

Both keepsake bears and memory bears are special, sentimental, and meaningful items that will bring comfort and bring back memories for many years to come. Whether you choose to have a keepsake bear or a memory bear made, the end result will be a unique, one-of-a-kind treasure that you will cherish forever.

Hopefully you now have more of an understanding in the difference, why not go and check out our Keepsake Bear and memory Bear and book your place on our waiting list. If you still have some questions around this leave a comment and we'd be happy to help.