Beauty & Fashion
Fashion as a personal brand building tool
Tips from a brand builder on how to create and express your own personal brand through your look
As a marketing executive, I tend to think of a lot of things in terms of brand building. I also believe brands are like people and people are like brands. Brands like people means having a human purpose, personality and values. People like brands means being known for something that is distinct. And that is key to establishing your presence in a certain environment like work or social circles.
Photo by Patrik Michalicka on Unsplash
Start by developing your Brand Framework
When you build a brand, you start by creating the so called “Brand Framework” which establishes the brand positioning – everything the brand stands for. To build a solid personal brand, we should think of ourselves in the same way and develop our own Brand Framework. So here is the exercise I am proposing, using my own answers to better illustrate how to do it:
- Brand Mission (what drives you): Enable gender equality through marketing
- Brand Promise (what will you achieve): Build brands, products and campaigns to empower women
- Product Features (facts – your experience, skills): marketing executive with 18+ years of experience, managed top global brands, diplomas in Political Science, Sociology, Innovation & Design Thinking, speak 5 languages, researcher and activist for gender equality.
- Product Benefits (what can you offer due to your experience): identify deep female consumer insights and needs, develop purposeful brand building strategies and products to serve women’s unanswered needs, create empowering communication campaigns
- Brand Values: freedom, authenticity, feminism, confidence
- Brand Personality: courageous, curious, innovative, creative, challenging the status quo
- USP (Unique Selling Proposition): Creative brand builder with an innovative mindset and a challenger attitude.
This is who I am as a professional and also as a person. So how does that look like?
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By mixing simple yet strong pieces with strong cuts and bold colours, unconventional accessories, creative combinations, often standing out from a sea of corporate grey. This is me and this is what feels normal and natural to me.
Align your look to your values
I came to realize through a personal experience how important it is to align who we are with how we present ourselves to the world. It is all part of living our values. The way we look is an expression of those values. I’ve tried fitting in at some point, when I moved from a marketing management position in a market to a global marketing management position in HQ, having to also make up for 2 “weaknesses”: being younger than everybody else and being a woman in an office lead by men. So I tried to look corporate and even older, to be taken seriously. And it made me feel miserable. I felt I was losing myself by looking like what the corporate world expected a marketing executive to be. And, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I freed myself from that packaging that didn’t represent who I was. And everything got so much better: as I felt like myself, I better expressed myself, I unleashed my creativity and innovative spirit and developed brave new ideas. I left my mark.
Think of your look as packaging and carefully develop its design
If you want to leave your mark, I encourage you to see yourself as a brand. Than, your look would be the packaging. Think of how packaging attracts your eye and says something about the product, something that makes you want to learn more, to discover its story, benefits, etc, to buy it again and again and to ultimately recommend it to a friend. This is pretty much what we all want as professionals and personalities in a certain area. So, use fashion as a tool to express who you are. Here is how:
- Do the exercise to define your “Brand Framework”
- For each life value and key personality trait you identified, create a list of descriptive words that come to your mind when you think of that. Try to get to design related descriptions. Example: courage – bold colours & shapes; creative – unexpected materials, asymmetric cuts, strong – black, clean cuts.
- Pick the elements that you feel more comfortable from the list above and do some online search to find looks that express that, then go out to stores and try to find/ compose those looks
- Experiment, experiment, experiment – get out of your comfort zone and try things out – you may be surprised to see that there are many things you rejected that actually work out
- In the end, chose those looks that not only express your brand framework, but that you are comfortable wearing.
Equally important tips to get to your final look:
- Find the cuts, shapes and colours that complement your body type and facial features
- Think style not fashion trends and go for base items that will be in style for a long time
- Go for quality of fabrics and tailoring and avoid the items that are displayed in shop windows, that everybody knows
- Accessorize, mix and match different items to create different looks
- Pick some personal staple pieces and always mix them in your look – statement necklaces, colourful belts, flowers, statement scarfs or ties, hair accessories, statement shoes, asymmetric cuts, etc… This is a way to create your signature look
- Do not let clothes wear you or wear you out. Everything should make your stand out and everything should be comfortable (not sweatpants comfortable though 😊 )
- Ensure you are well groomed and in line with the style your clothes reflect – your entire look must tell one story
- Go for the looks that make you feel empowered and ready to conquer the world.
If you need any help, I’d be happy to give you some directions. I’m not a stylist, nor a coach, but an experienced brand builder and mentor, with a love for fashion and secret desire to develop my own clothing brand that would empower women. How else? This is my purpose… So while I’m on a mission to build purposeful brands that empower women, I want to also empower women to build their brands.
About the author:
Letitia Petrache is an experienced marketing strategist working with start-ups and established businesses to develop meaningful brands that empower women. Romanian born but with a global mindset, she moved to Lausanne 6 years ago on an international assignment and enjoyed the Swiss life-style so much that she decided to stay. Letitia studied originally Political Science and Sociology and worked in political communication before making the switch to marketing. She also studied Innovation & Design Thinking and Digital Marketing, to further develop the skills needed to challenge the status quo and invent the new. She’ll always have a passion for politics and the heart of an activist for human rights, diversity and gender equality.
You can contact her by email at letitia@womenworks.co
