Episode 198: Feeling Frumpy? How to Dress For Hybrid Work With Angela Foster
Do you ever walk into your closet and think “Oh my gosh…I have no clothes.” Today we’re going to talk about how to dress for your brand and what to do when you’re feeling frumpy.
After 20 years as an executive in the fashion and beauty space, Angela Foster helps high-achieving petite women feel more confident by creating a closet they love.
“There is something magical about helping women feel great. … A woman goes from ‘My body is changing. I don’t know what to wear. My clothes don’t fit well.’ They go from that spot to sending me selfies,” says Angela.
She began her business organically, by helping another mom who didn’t like how she looked anymore, and wasn’t feeling confident in her body. Before she knew it, she had a roster of clients and a full-time job.
Dressing for hybrid work
The hybrid work environment poses a challenge. Before the pandemic, many of us had a section of the closet that was for work clothes. A clear division where the garments were for work. Now, there are different buckets – virtual and in-person. For virtual calls, no one cares what you’re wearing on your bottom half, as most people don’t see that. But then sometimes we have to leave the house and go into the office.
It's like having two work wardrobes – and that’s how we need to look at it, says Angela. Figure out which tops look great on virtual calls. (She suggests giving people one thing to focus on a Zoom call. During our call, she was wearing amazing earrings.)
Weight fluctuation and fashion
It's so powerful when a woman knows how to dress for her body shape, not only the body shape that she has today, but if something changes, it doesn't throw her for a loop. She'll know how to adjust, like, “Oh, have a little bit more around the middle than I used to have. Okay, I know how to deal with that.”
That's really where the confidence of dressing for your brand and all of that comes in when it doesn't throw you for a tizzy, says Angela.
“One of the things about being women … our bodies are always changing. We get pregnant, we have the baby, we lose the weight, we don’t lose the weight. We go through menopause. … Everything about our lives changes our body a little bit,” says Angela.
Watch: Stress and How to Dress
Five-step system for body confidence
If we don’t feel good, we’re not doing our best work. Angela has a five-step system called “Spark” that she and her clients go through.
The first step is body shape.
And no – she isn’t talking fruit salad. She said many clients would identify as an apple, pear, or an orange and then discuss what was “wrong” with them.
My hips are too wide..
My butt’s too big…
My thighs aren’t svelte enough…
For Angela, it was a nightmare.
“You cannot sit there in your closet in the morning and be like, ‘Well, no, that doesn't look good because my hips are too big, or I can't wear that because whatever.’ ” says Angela, who has an easy fashion dos and don’ts list to share.
Angela flips the switch on that and asks women to think about what their favorite feature is. The first thing is to accentuate what they love first. It’s empowering.
“If we could just focus on what we love about our bodies and then pay attention to how that feels when we leave the house instead of like all the negative mind chatter that we have about this, that or the other thing. If we could just make that one small step, it would make such a huge difference in how we feel. It's a game changer.”
How to dress for your brand
It’s all about planning ahead. It’s not that you can’t find something quickly, but planning ahead takes all the stress and all the pressure off.
And once you know the stores that carry the sizes that fit your body shape and you know the brands that fit you well, you’ll have a mental list. You’ll find default brands that you can go back to because you know they will fit well, and it can take the pressure off as well.
Angela and her clients work together at the beginning of each quarter to check on the upcoming events in the calendar. Knowing the styles that flatter their body shape, and which season they’re going into, they can create a list of what clothes are already in the closet they can use.
“We don’t have a lack of clothes problem. We have a not knowing how to shop problem. And panic shopping absolutely leads to bad decisions,” says Angela. “We just need to be discerning and to say ‘ let's plan ahead, let's make good decisions. Let's make sure it looks great on us.’ And then it alleviates a lot of that wasting money and donating stuff that we don't need.”
