Given that the average woman only tends to wear around 20% of what’s in her wardrobe and buys the same pieces over and over, I thought it would be a great idea to unpack sustainable style on the blog and podcast this week.
And the perfect stylist to help you discover your sustainable style is the gorgeous Alma Barrero.
Alma Barrero is a style coach, personal power advocate, family girl and your right hand when it comes to helping you make the impact you were born to make.
Her goal is to provide you with the tools to open the door to dressing with confidence and projecting the best version of yourself.
And she prides herself on her ability to help busy women wake up in the morning knowing what to wear to boost their success.
Sounds too good to be true? Well it isn’t because Alma is real and she’s with me today to share her sustainable style secrets with you!
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What does sustainable style mean to you?
Sustainable style for me is completely related with you feeling identified with the way you dress. It’s for you to have the chance to honour yourself by the way you dress every single day. That means being about to set boundaries with pieces and clothes that do not represent or complement you.
It’s about only allowing the best in your closet. That means getting rid of ‘stuff’ that doesn’t serve you anymore (or has never served you from a starting point).
It’s all about saying goodbye to all the pieces that don’t make you feel great and saying hello to those pieces you deserve having.
When you make the decision of focusing on building a Sustainable closet you automatically stop wasting money on pieces that aren’t good enough for you.
Where do you see us women getting it so wrong with our wardrobes?
It has a lot to do with our emotions and what part emotional shopping plays in our lives. Having clear standards and a plan of how you want your closet to look helps to curb the buying of a lot of that ‘stuff’. You may find a beautiful pair of shoes that are incredibly cheap and that’s ok but all these pieces that we kept purchasing just because they’re cheap, start adding up. In fact when combined, that money could have been better used towards buying one or two quality items that you really love. I think this is something that has happened to us all.
We are so emotionally driven that we tend to get attached to our previous shapes or pieces that remember us to somebody or some place that we tend to just keep all of it in our closet, “just in case”.
We end up waking up in the morning to a closet that doesn’t reflect us at all. We’re constantly evolving and evolving (i.e. changing body shapes, gaining/losing weight) and we tend to get stuck in those soul-less wardrobes, instead of embracing and loving who we are right now and making the most of who we are.
My mantra is ‘if it doesn’t fit right now, don’t buy it’ because every time you see it you will be reminded that you haven’t met your goal yet. That is not a feeling that you need to be confronted with every time you open your wardrobe.
Honour who you are and that feeling of being proud of where you are right now in your life and embracing that. This is key for you to feel good in whatever you’re wearing.
I always encourage women to dress for the ideal version of themselves, because if you can see it in your mind, it’s definitely there, somewhere. It’s about giving us permission to feel good about ourselves, and choosing the right pieces to honour that feeling.
What steps would you recommend for those who are keen to create a functional, sustainable wardrobe?
First of all, decluttering is mandatory! You can declutter to both make space, and with a purpose. If you have a big vision of how you want your wardrobe to look, then that’s amazing.
To help you start to declutter your wardrobe; get rid of all the ‘stuff’: i.e. torn pieces and all those in “below optimal” condition, then pieces you haven’t worn in ONE year (unless you’re pregnant or bouncing back…), and then saying goodbye to all those pieces you don’t love. These are the pieces that aren’t ticking all the boxes and you don’t see yourself excited to wear them.
Chances are if you don’t love it, it’s because it’s not a colour that suits you, or not a style that reflects your personality, or it’s just not created for your beautiful shape.
We need to have the strength and wisdom to say NO to those pieces that aren’t enhancing us.
The second part is to welcome new pieces that make you feel good. Always invest in quality over quantity. This is key to a sustainable wardrobe.
For inspiration think of you and your natural colouring. Choose pieces that are inspired by your hair colour, eyes colour, skin colour, or even teeth… Black, brown, camel, light blue, white… Also, invest more in pieces with neutral or basic colours. These are all safe investments. Then you can add jewellery, scarves etc
You can also use a basic capsule wardrobe template: One jacket, two bottoms and three tops… This would give you for about 2 weeks worth of mix and match outfits.
Then it’s time to start experimenting. Try to fill in the gaps with the pieces you have remaining from your decluttering and then add new pieces that excite you! You will be surprised with how many different things you can do with your wardrobe.
What are some of the benefits you see when women take the time to learn more about style?
I notice that it’s a magic shift! I can’t tell you how rewarding it is when I have women in my program that just find out what their magic palette is (what I call the group of colours that enhance you). They begin discovering new things about themselves and their personality that they hadn’t noticed before.
it’s like a sudden awakening of their self-power: They suddenly feel like they’ve finally found their voice and you see their confidence and pride growing!
They can step out the door and show the world who they really are without hesitation of the outfit that they’ve chosen that day, because they just feel good in their own skin. It doesn’t matter to me what clothes you choose, it’s that light from within that attracts other people and makes you magnetizing.
It’s also a huge relief; because they feel like a heavy weight has been taken out of their shoulders. Finally, they have all the “style stuff” sorted and it becomes effortless, even fun!
Where can we go to learn more?
My website is www.almabarrero.com. If you subscribe to my emails you will get my ‘Take your Style to the Next Level in 5 Easy Steps’ which will give you some great steps to start your style transformation.
I also have a thriving Facebook community called Effortless Style Hub which I’m super excited about it and I’m hanging out in there all the time offering tips and encouraging conversation. It’s a private group so anything you share will stay within the community.
I have also created an exclusive Promotion especially for your followers. I have a coupon code for the first 10 people to save $300 on my Style Power School. It’s a 6-week program where I show you my Signature System that has helped many women to take their style to the next level. If you would like to take action and create a sustainable wardrobe that reflects who you truly are and makes you excited to wake up in the morning and put pieces together in less than 2 minutes (I have clients that say 30 seconds…), click here and enter Coupon Code: ECOSTYLE
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Laura Trotta is one of Australia’s leading home sustainability experts. She has a Bachelor of Environmental Engineering, a Masters of Science (in Environmental Chemistry) and spent 11 years working as an environmental professional before creating her first online eco business, Sustainababy, in 2009. She has won numerous regional and national awards for her fresh and inspiring take on living an ‘ecoceptional’ life (including most recently winning the Brand South Australia Flinders University Education Award (2015) for the north-west region in SA and silver in the Eco-friendly category of the 2015 Ausmumpreneur Awards). With a regular segment on ABC Radio and with her work featured in publications like Nurture Parenting and My Child Magazine, Laura is an eco thought leader who’s not afraid to challenge the status quo. A passionate believer in addressing the small things to achieve big change, and protecting the planet in practical ways, Laura lives with her husband and two sons in outback South Australia. 
