This is 34: Launching my next era in style.

Hit me up, Lauren Conrad!

London Fashion Week has just packed up. I’m planning my outfits for my 34th birthday party and a go-go dancing gig at a new club tonight. And here I am writing my first blog about launching my personal styling business on my birthday…in my “birthday suit.”

There are probably more conventional ways to launch a business. But considering style has been interwoven with identity for most of my life, starting like this (baring it all) feels mighty appropriate.

I never thought I would start a business. Especially not one built around something I once felt so insecure about: my looks. For most of my life, I didn’t feel confident in how I looked or particularly comfortable being in the spotlight. Wild for a dancer and cabaret performer, right?

Before I had the vocabulary for gender or identity, clothes gave me something I could own. They helped the outside get a little closer to who I felt I was inside. Sometimes style was creativity. Sometimes escape. Sometimes armour. Sometimes it gave me courage when I couldn’t summon much of it myself.

And yes, a significant part of my fashion education came from America’s Next Top Model.

I started watching ANTM Cycle 7 in 2006, just as I began high school in Toronto, Canada. I’d just got my first Motorola Razr flip phone, wanted to grow up to be like Lauren Conrad from The Hills, and wanted to move to LA. My sister and I watched religiously. Occasionally my mum would poke her head into the room, glance at the screen, then at me, and quietly disappear again. Make of that what you will. P.S. I wasn’t “out” yet.

Regrettably, I did not get an ‘I ♡ LA’ tee at the LAX duty free.

Cycle 7’s AJ Stewart was one of my favourites: effortlessly cool, outspoken, with badass personal style and a confidence I couldn’t imagine possessing at 20. The same age at the time as my older sister Joanna, someone who I looked up to immensely (and still do). And yes, if you’ve ever wondered where AJ came from, there’s a big part of your answer.

Certain Top Model words of wisdom will always live in my mind rent-free: “This is my signature walk and this is the walk that’s going to make me famous.” And, to keep me grounded, “Some people have war in their countries.”

So high brow, eh?

But beneath all the camp was something I genuinely needed. Fashion celebrated oddity. Different became an asset. The thing that made someone odd in one room could make them extraordinary in another.

I loved that idea. I needed that idea.

Growing up, I often felt physically frail and weak. I was bullied. Later came manipulative relationships and people who exploited my kindness, money, access and vulnerability. I was told I was too much, and then not enough, including by the same person I loved. Others somehow decided I had “no personality.” Impressively, I had managed to be both excessive and insufficient.

Years of verbal, emotional and physical abuse distort the way you see yourself. You learn to read the room before entering it and work out which parts of yourself might be safer turned down.

Style became somewhere I could stop editing. It made me visible when I felt invisible, powerful when I felt weak, and gave me space to blur the lines of gender expression before I fully understood my own gender.

Ultimately, it gave me access. I could shape-shift to fit the room I wanted to be in, without watering down who I fundamentally was.

My mum was probably my first unofficial styling client. Growing up around strong women, particularly her and my older sister, shaped my eye enormously. Mum’s style had grace, polish and authority - an iron fist in a velvet glove. That duality still sits at the centre of my personal style: masculine and feminine, polished and rebellious, elegant with something slightly wild.

California beamin’ from ear to ear!

London grit meets LA glitz.

When I was 31, my life seemingly changed overnight. When it rains, it pours, eh?

I left a long-term relationship with the man I thought I was going to marry. I lost the future I thought I was building and, somewhere along the way, quite a lot of myself too. I was also faced with my mum’s worsening health. At the same time, I quit my demanding job, faced living alone again (in very expensive London) and confronted the matter of “twink death.” I had become, as my peers sometimes affectionately describe it, a “twas” (twink that was).

So I rebuilt my life. Brick by brick.

I leaned on friends, family, chosen family and therapy. I found a personal trainer, changed my relationship with my body, started on antidepressants again, and worked on my mental health. Gradually, life started feeling like mine again.

Oops, what were the lyrics again?

Through London nightlife, drag and cabaret, I explored and embraced my trans non-binary identity. I changed my name. Instead of simply continuing with the life I had fallen into, I started asking what kind of life I actually wanted.

For the first time, at 32, I genuinely liked the person looking back in the mirror.

That period crystallised something I’ve always been fascinated by: reinvention. The eras we move through. The way Madonna, Lady Gaga or David Bowie can make a haircut, silhouette or colour palette signal an entirely new chapter.

Oftentimes, reinvention means becoming more recognisably yourself.

Top piece of advice: Don’t forget sunscreen!

My first trip to LA came soon after (Coachella 2025, woo!). I finally fulfilled my childhood dream of going to Los Angeles and taking a dance class at MDC (Millennium Dance Complex). London had already shown me somewhere difference could feel exciting rather than embarrassing; LA felt like somebody had turned the dial even further. Ridiculous, glamorous, creative, contradictory. Very me.

Dance, drag and nightlife taught me how powerful image can be. Formal training at the London College of Style later gave technical language to those instincts. And then there’s the other half of my brain: nearly 15 years in PR, branding and strategic communications, thinking about visibility, reputation and how people want to be understood.

Eventually the connection became obvious. Before somebody hears you, they see you. Image is communication.

That became the foundation of my approach to Strategic Styling: Myself + Moment + Message.

Because sometimes your life moves faster than your wardrobe does. You can outgrow your wardrobe without having physical changes. You get promoted. You come out. You fall in love. You fall out of it. You become more visible. You start again. Or you realise the clothes that once protected you are now holding you inside an older version of yourself. These transitions can be very difficult to work through.

For me, and my beautiful trans friends, we have to think about how to dress in a way that feels affirming rather than like a costume. What works for a changing relationship with our bodies. How to navigate gendered spaces, including retail stores.

If any of the things I mentioned in the post resonate at all with you, I’d love to have a chat. I would love to help you find some of the confidence and affirmation that personal style helped me find. Whilst style can’t fix our lives, I know first-hand that sometimes getting dressed can give us enough courage to go and change it ourselves.

So alas, perhaps I needed that lil’ breakup shake-up. Today, I own a home in central London, a city I once dreamed about living in. I’ve built a career I’m proud of. I’ve made friends who love the full-volume version of me. And after spending so much of my life questioning whether I was good enough, at 34, I’m finally willing to bet on myself and am so sure of myself.

This launch feels bigger than setting a website live. It feels affirming. Like Tinashe today, I’m in my POPSTAR era, ya’ll! ★

There’s so much more to come - events, exclusive access, insider tips, and even a podcast on the way.

So while I go fetch my heels for tonight, tell me: Does your wardrobe reflect who you are today?