I dressed windows for nine years before I dressed people.

I started in windows. Nine years of them, first in Paris and then on Fifth Avenue, which is a trade that teaches you exactly one thing very well: how a person reads an outfit in two seconds from across a street.

What it does not teach you is people. A window never tells you it went up two sizes last year. It never says it is going back to work after a long time away, or that it has one good hour on a Saturday and three children, or that it has not bought anything for itself since a divorce.

I left in 2017 because a friend asked me to go through her closet before she started a new job, and the two hours we spent doing it were more useful than anything I had installed that month.

How I work

I come to you. Styling someone in a showroom tells you how they look in a showroom. Your closet, your light, your mirror, your actual mornings. That is where the useful information is.

Everything gets tried on. People make terrible decisions from the hanger and good ones from the body. This is the single thing that makes the edit work, and it is also why it takes four hours.

Nothing is bought in the first session. You cannot choose well from inside a mess, and most people already own more than they remember. Shopping comes after the gap list, never before.

Five appointments a week. The sixth one is always the one I do badly, so I stopped taking it. It means I am sometimes three weeks out, and I would rather tell you that than rush you.

What I don’t do

I don’t take commission from stores. Not a percentage, not a gift card, not a discount I keep. If a shop offers, I say no, and it has cost me access to two of them.

I don’t do colour analysis seasons. I have nothing against them, I just find they give people a rule to hide behind instead of a wardrobe that works.

I don’t tell anyone to dress their age, and I don’t tell anyone to dress for the job they want. Both of those are ways of saying be someone else, and nobody has ever looked good doing that.

I don’t work with people who want to be made over for somebody else. If the brief comes from a partner rather than from you, I will say so and we will stop there.