The tagline of the book Design Your Life by Rachel Roy is “Creating success through personal style”, which caught my attention.
Fashion designer Rachel Roy tells her history and tactics for creating her successful and stylish life. A few things she writes about are growing up owning a single pair of sneakers, the monumental moment she found out Michelle Obama wore one of her dresses, buying her first Manolo Blahnik shoes “in a Carrie Bradshaw moment” which she wore in her first meeting with Anna Wintour. I’m still a sucker for any SATC reference and always love Vogue stories.
I enjoyed her real life success story about the importance of dressing for the job you want. Rachel worked in the mailroom to start her fashion career but dressed with style like an CEO, which made her feel confident. This strategy got her noticed for wearing her designs in a lifestyle photo in WWD, which a buyer at Bergdorf Goodman saw and called to place Rachel’s first dress order. It only took Rachel seven years to move from mailroom up to creative director, which is very inspirational!
A few great quotes and tips from the book:
“Clothing and personal style can affect how you feel about yourself and therefore how you treat yourself, so for me, fashion plays a major role in self-esteem and the type of energy I give out.”
“As a designer, it is my continual objective to create stylish outfits for women that promote confidence and self esteem.”
“Conveying strength through style.”
“What most bloggers and influencers have in common is that they are constantly reminding us what they are attracted to, and that attracts us to them.”
“How we dress affects the way we believe in ourselves and hold ourselves, and, as a result, this profoundly impacts how others believe in us as well.”
“When invited to someone’s home or party, I consider dressing respectfully to be just as important as bringing the host a gift.”
On creating a vision board: “Surround yourself with what you love in order to build the life you wish for.” Rachel spoke about cutting up magazines from an early age, which sounded familiar because my parents called it “nesting”, when I was cutting things I liked (design, photography, fashion and more) from magazines and organizing them into binders or folders for future reference, which I now do on Pinterest. Rachel created her own magazines as a kid, which also struck a cord with me as a magazine designer.
A few other things I liked:
- Great illustrations!
- Her love of blazers
- Her classic movie inspiration
- Dressing her daughter in mismatched shoes and earrings to prove a point about personal stye…which started a trend at her school
- She considers the trench dress to be the equivalent of a man’s suit
- And of course, like many fashion and style books, there are lists and tips for shopping and wardrobe essentials.
Reserve at the San Diego Library