10 Steps to Fashion Freedom: Discover Your Personal Style from the Inside Out (Hardcover)

by Malcolm Levene (Author), Kate Mayfiedl (Author) "Early one evening we were in our former London shop practically buried beneath a new season's arrival of clothing..." (more)
Key Phrases: personal style statement, inner style, existing wardrobe, Aesthetic Field Trip, Personal Body Map, Darth Vader (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"This is an EXCELLENT resource . . . lots of good info." -- The Charlotte Observer

An excellent book specifically designed to help women develop their personal style … I highly recommend reading it. -- Sherry Maysonave, founder and president of Empowerment Enterprises

You can't tune into your personal style until you first tune into yourself. It's a fashion meets Freud thing... -- Chicago Tribune

Product Description
Would you like to make a better first impression? Would you like to feel more comfortable in your clothes? Though your closet is full, do you still have trouble finding something to wear? Renowned image
development consultants Malcolm Levene and Kate Mayfield are here to help in 10 Steps to Fashion
Freedom, a groundbreaking guide based on their exclusive ten-step image therapy program.

Malcolm, dubbed the “Freud of Fashion” by The New Yorker, and his partner, Kate, have written a practical, engaging book that breaks through trends, hot looks, and instant makeovers to get to the heart of how you can develop your own style. Instead of trying to figure out the must-have items of the season or where you fall on the color chart, you will get help from Kate and Malcolm in facing your worst image fears and uncovering and developing a style that is totally your own.

As they do for the top executives who go through their personal style development program, Malcolm and Kate teach you how to discover your own individual style and become comfortable with your image from the inside out. This book will show you how to:
* Identify your passions
* Create a personal style statement
* Confront image challenges from the past
* Take a field trip to discover your aesthetic tastes
* Banish color myths
* Undergo a complete closet analysis
* Celebrate with an informed shopping trip

Malcolm and Kate also share inspiring stories of clients who have completed the program and achieved a more sophisticated image and an empowered sense of personal style. You no longer have to buy someone else’s taste, hire someone to pick out your clothes, or drape yourself in designer labels to feel secure. Take it from the experts—fashion independence is only ten creative steps away!


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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (April 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 060960645X
• ISBN-13: 978-0609606452
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #365,714 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not a typical fashion book -- all the better for it, June 1, 2001

By	Emme (upstate NY) - See all my reviews

If you are looking for color charts, pictures, or hints to disguise figure problems, you'd better look elsewhere. There's not a single picture to be found. In fact, I'd file this book under "psychology" and not "fashion." Here's why:

This is not a formulaic approach to style, as are most books of this type. People are not pigeonholed into a "winter" color shade, or labeled as "pear-shaped," and then given recommendations accordingly. Instead, this book tackles what might be the most difficult, yet heroic task of all: identifying a person's true, inner style, or "statement," and then finding ways to make the outside covering of that person match the inside, and in the most flattering way. Making this match allows a person to live more freely in their true style, thereby tremendously boosting self-esteem.

Yes, it sounds pretty new-age and the exercises presented could be at home in a counseling or therapy setting. But it's no secret that a person's identity, and the way that identity is presented to the world -- and furthermore, the way that identity is *received* by the the world, all have a profound impact on that person. After all, at its most basic level, fashion and style are all about communicating a message -- that the person is wealthy, rebellious, sexy, young, whatever. This book just helps people to discover what message they want to send out, and how to transmit an accurate message.

This is not to say that this is the *only* book you'd need on fashion. I'd use this book as a starting point to discover what statement you want to make. Then, all the other fashion books with pictures are most helpful in getting creative ideas on how to get that statement across.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for high fashion's devotees, May 29, 2001

By A Customer

I'm pleased to say that although (or because) I resist being told how I "ought" to dress, resent the fact that image is as important as it is, doubt that fashion and style have much relation to each other, and consider "practical" to be the best thing that can be said about a piece of clothing, this was still a really nice book.

However, I anticipate its getting some bad reviews because it does ask you to do the work yourself; if you're looking for a quick fix, or an outfit that'll change the way you deal with people without your having to address how you generally do deal with them, forget it. It doesn't tell you "your" colors or what silhouette is "right" for your shape, it doesn't show photos of the looks in question, and it offers no real shortcuts. It asks you to decide who YOU are, what's important to you, and make your fashion choices based on what you decide. And anyone who thinks that's easy hasn't spent enough time thinking about who he or she is. The book, in short, is for people who do want to know who they are; for people who are trying to be something they aren't (glamorous? socially glittering? powerful?) it hasn't much to offer. But if you do think you want to know, or have done the work already, and if you're sure you can deal with what you find, it's a pleasure to read.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review from Europe, August 31, 2001

By	anneliese derrick (London) - See all my reviews

Malcolm's and Kate's 10 Steps to Fashion Freedom is not a fashion manual. It is a subtly philosophical and, at the same, highly practical self-help book and, as such, it is more rewarding, but also more demanding, than it appears at first glance. But even if you cannot muster the self-discipline, self-knowledge and commitment and, perhaps, honesty required to complete all 10 steps - even if you read the book as some might read the Bible - you will still draw great benefit from it. Most chapters are an entity in themselves, every paragraph in parts the sort of knowledge and wisdom based on a wealth of experience which most of us are unable to acquire on our own. These are lessons for life. My favourite part of the book is "closet analysis". This is an ongoing purge, cathartic and liberating.

A final word. I gave the book to a French friend, who, like many of her compatriots, has this innate and seemingly unfailing sense of style. I half expected her to telephone to tell me that there is nothing in the book she didn't know already. She didn't. She phoned me to tell me how fascinated she is by Malcolm's and Kate's analysis of what is "current, fashionable or trendy" and - guess what? - that she's clearing out her closet. The best of us can learn ...