Sasha

I was contacted back in September by a friend of mine in the music industry who was looking for us to work together on a project. 

For me it was a very exciting project and an opportunity I couldn’t turn down, but with our busy schedules it took until last weekend for us to finally get together and start working on it.  Here’s what it was all about….

Sasha is a singer and musician, originally from the North East, currently residing and gigging in Manchester.  In recent months she’s been contacted by record companies and now, as her big break is approaching she wants to define her onstage style and image as an artist.

I arrive in Manchester late Saturday afternoon and we get to work straight away starting with a Style Consultation to find out about the ‘artist image’ that Sasha wants and her current onstage style.

Described by her friends as a style chameleon, Sasha tells me she has never loved one style but loves elements of them all.  She describes to me her outfits and her joy for mixing and matching trends, colours and patterns. 

Overall Sasha has quite a relaxed look, wearing a mix of flats and heels, maxi skirts, cropped tops, hoodies, tees and miniskirts.  She is never over the top in her outfits but never boring either.  Her style is very much unique to her because of her colour and pattern choices and her preference for outfits with a little bit of sex appeal (we’re not talking Gaga in thongs, more Beyonce’s lady like tact for leaving it all to the imagination).

The one very unique twist to Sasha’s style is her passion for embracing her Indian roots.  She stresses that she realises she isn’t an Indian goddess and she doesn’t want to pretend to be an African queen, she simply wants to embrace her roots and not shy away from it or be embarrassed by it as is often done in the mainstream music industry.  We talk mhendi, bindis and her giant collection of ethnic, handmade jewellery she has built up over the years and insists on wearing for her everyday and onstage outfits. 

I note down everything we discuss as we go along and by the end I’m able to start creating a mood board of ideas.  The next step is to identify a colour palette for Sasha’s onstage wardrobe and also look at the most flattering types of clothes for Sasha, so I conduct a Body Shape Dressing and Colour Analysis on her.  These done, I know exactly the colours she should be wearing and the best styles of tops, skirts, dresses, trousers, etc. for her.  A few hours in and already her image as an artist is starting to take form.

Although Sasha is getting plenty of work gigging around the city, her budget for clothes isn’t going to stretch enough for her to purchase an entire new wardrobe of clothes, and because I’m keen to simply polish and perfect her style not overhaul it, I know there are plenty of pieces in Sasha’s wardrobe that we can use to start building up numerous onstage outfits.  So our next step is to do a little wardrobe styling.

As we rummage through Sasha’s wardrobe she starts to pull out the outfits she’s worn for gigs in the past, always a fan of dress-up Sasha pulls them on.  The outfits are stylish and practical but I know we can do better.  I want to see Sasha in a less relaxed tone and something more sophisticated, womanly and definitely something bolder with an ever-so-slight high fashion twist.

With the outfits on we start to swap and change pieces, a different skirt, add a new top or belt, put on heels instead of flats, add more of the ethnic jewellery and slowly but surely Sasha’s image starts to develop further. 

Sasha then shows me dresses that she’s bought, with the hope of wearing them onstage, but not yet found the shoes or accessories to wear with them.  My favourite piece is a cerise pink floor length chiffon dress, completely sheer with a high neck and low back.  We start to play around with a few ideas and in the end I have Sasha wearing a nude-coloured body con dress underneath the cerise floaty number with her multi-coloured feather earrings as necklaces.  A phrase I’m more than used to hearing now springs up, “I never would have thought of putting those together”, and as Sasha starts to dance around and sing along to the music in the background I know this is a style she is comfortable and confident in and will be practical enough for when she’s performing onstage. We manage to create a number of outfits from Sasha’s existing clothes and with our wardrobe styling complete we begin to plan our shopping day for the Sunday over a few glasses of wine.

After a chilled out morning we head to the shops in the afternoon with my list of ‘must-buys’ from the night before.  As I spend so much time shopping with clients I knew exactly which stores to go to in order the find the items on my list, so luckily we didn’t spend as much time trawling the shops as you’d expect.  We experiment with the fits, cuts and the colours I recommend from the Colour Analysis and Body Shape Dressing session the day before.  With a few no-no’s and some surprising must-haves we work our way through our selections, which take up three fitting rooms and by the end of the day we’ve picked up the key pieces that are going to pull the entire look together.  It’s a very successful shopping trip.

With a few gigs lined up for the coming weeks I leave Sasha with a list of outfits to wear for each one which include some of her existing pieces and new purchases.  Project complete!

As always, I took a few photos while we worked through our project and I’ve added them below.  If you’re interested in finding out more about Sasha and her music, and I seriously recommend you do, this is her YouTube page where she uploads new videos and recordings http://www.youtube.com/user/sashapannu

Noreen xx