I go to a lot of networking meetings, some are useful and some are not (No, I won’t say which are which in print, you’ll have to email me) When I started doing this I found the meetings were mostly full of men, not a problem really as men are generally quite keen to talk about lingerie, especially if they get to look at pictures!

A couple of days ago I went to a meeting full of women. The usual mix, some who looked as though they had spent several years in front of the mirror preparing, others that looked as though they’d thrown their outfit together without benefit of electric light. Invariably their appearance was at odds with the short business presentation they gave, but it’s true that humans make really quick decisions, with the result that some of these women had lost the audience before they even began to speak. I often wonder if they know.

There are rules on how to dress for what. I’ve even included some on this site, but to be honest I’m not really big on rules, just their existence tends to make me want to break them, so I was delighted to see a lady who was clearly aware of the fashion rules, but had broken them with fabulous results. She didn’t just look good, she looked stunning. It reminded me that nothing looks better, nothing has more presence, than a person, man or woman, who is at ease with themselves.

Some years ago I did a short course in graphic design. After we’d been taught some of the basics of creating pages which looked good, our instructor asked us to bring in examples we found in print that showed off the rules we had learned. Without exception we found that the really outstanding designs broke the rules we had been given. So, we asked, what was the point of the rules? Our instructor gave us the chance to find out. For a week we each strove to produce a peice of stunning design without following any of the rules we’d been given, and for a week we failed. In the next week the task was to produce a peice of design that followed the rules, and in each case we succeeded. In the last week we returned to the first task. A peice of design that wasn’t merely good, but stood out. Only a handful of us succeeded. In each case the starting point was the design which followed the rules to the letter, but then……. Just a small twist, an additional color, a forbidden font, and the result, where it worked, was outstanding. Competence came from the rules, flair, or even brilliance, came from applying the rules and then breaking them. Our instructor left us with a simple instruction. To keep to the rules until we had learned every rule and good apply them without thinking, only then could we start to break them.

Finding your own individual style is just like striving for excellence in design. First you need to learn the rules and apply them without exception. Then, once you’ve educated yourself through following the rules, you break them and in the breaking you find the individual ‘flare’ that expresses the individual ‘you’.