The Psychology of Personal Style w/ Kimberly Parry | Ep 445

**Kimberly Parry** (0:00)
When image is done right, when fashion is done right, it becomes your three-second resume. You walk in the room and people have an idea of who you are, what you're about before you even open your mouth.
My name is Kimberly Parry and you are listening to The Futur.

**Chris Do** (0:19)
There's a recent fascination of mine, which is fashion and what it says about you or what your presence, your energy, and people might describe it as your vibe or your aura, how it transmits to other people non-verbal cues as to how to look at you and how to perceive you. And there's a moment in my story here where I'm walking through one billion followers summit, but there's a lady and she's doing something seems kind of interesting. She seems to be pulling people in and she starts talking to me immediately. And she goes, I think I need to talk to you. I'm like, how come you just look like a kind of person that I need to talk to. And then she steps back and she gives me a whole like it's your aura.
And it really crystallizes something that I've been playing around with. And the reason why we're having our guest on today, which is personal style in terms of your fashion choices, what you're putting together. So Kimberly Parry is a stylist known for helping clients refine their look with style that feels polished, personal and easy to wear. Her approach blends creativity and attention to detail, making fashion feel both elevated and accessible. Kimberly, welcome to the show.

**Kimberly Parry** (1:23)
Hello, thank you. I am so excited for this episode.

**Chris Do** (1:27)
Let's start here. What is fashion? What is personal style? Can you give us your take on this?

**Kimberly Parry** (1:31)
Yes. And I think it's very important to clarify what those mean, because just like with what you do with personal branding, I think you and I define personal branding very similarly, but the rest of the world tends to focus on social media presence and strategy and image. And that's why I think it's so important, especially my approach to fashion, is to clarify the difference between fashion, image, and style.
So fashion is the artistry, the design, the construction of clothing. It's about what we wear, but it's also that creative industry. When you think about fashion runways, high fashion, it's the artistry of clothing and construction of clothing.
Image is about how we use clothing to present ourselves to the world. And a lot of times when we talk about image, it's related to how other people view us and how other people perceive us. And in the world, especially in the world of business, we know that you have seconds. And in the world of social media, I mean, the attention span is maybe a millisecond at this point, but you have seconds to make a first impression. And so your image and what you wear, the fashion you wear, plays into that. But where I define style differently, and this is where your kind of take on personal branding and my take on style are really aligned, style goes beyond image. It goes beyond fashion. And your personal style is about knowing who you are and how you communicate that to the world. So you have a leadership style, a communication style, a relationship style, and yes, a fashion style, that when it is grounded in who you are and how you want to show up for life, becomes a powerful tool. That's just part of the whole package. And so that's why I think it's important to differentiate, because a lot of people want clothing to do something for them that they need to bring for themselves to life. If you're not bringing yourself authentically, clothing can only do so much for you.

**Chris Do** (3:52)
Are you using fashion to describe like an industry?

**Kimberly Parry** (3:55)
Fashion is the industry. It's what trickles down to what we get in ready wear.
The clothing that we wear starts at this creation of fashion that is cutting edge, it's creative, it's expressive, it's dynamic, and then from the runways, people take those ideas and those concepts and then they imitate them, recreate them and standardize them so that they are more ready to wear for the regular human who's not rocking a runway in everyday life.

**Chris Do** (4:31)
And draw the distinction between image and style one more time, because I understand the concepts individually, but why are we separating these two things?

**Kimberly Parry** (4:40)
It's really important to separate, because it affects the way that we approach them. If you think about image consulting for celebrities and high profile people, their image, what the news is saying, the way that they're represented online, the way people perceive them can affect their business and affect their brand.