Where It All Started: The Suit That Changed How I Dressed.

Cue Chadstone with my style guru.

About eighteen months ago, right at the beginning of my weight loss journey, I walked into CUE at Myer Chadstone and met Anthea.

I was a size 18 at the time, and the first suits I bought were size 18.

Over the next eighteen months, as I lost weight, I moved down through the sizes until I reached a size 8.

So when I say I own a lot of CUE suits, there is a bit more to the story.

They were not all bought at the same size.

I have suits in sizes from 18 down to 8 because I bought them at different points along the way. A lot of the earlier ones have also been altered because I loved them too much to stop wearing them.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, my style started changing too.

I have always loved tailoring. I like structure, a strong jacket, a good trouser, beautiful fabric and clothes with a bit of presence.

What Anthea did was encourage me to try pieces and combinations I might previously have walked past.

She gave me the confidence to experiment more.

That might have been a suit with white runners, a T-shirt under tailoring, pearls, layered jewellery, or a bolder fabric I might once have thought was too much.

My paisley tailoring is a good example. It is now one of the looks that features regularly in my Instagram Reels, but earlier on I am not sure I would have had the confidence to buy it.

That encouragement helped me become more open to trying something different, then making it my own.

From there, I started taking my style in a direction that felt increasingly personal.

The menswear-inspired pieces came from me.

The ties.

The braces.

The collar details.

The more masculine accessories.

I started mixing those with sharper tailoring, jewellery and more feminine details, and that became the part I loved most.

That contrast feels very me.

Since May 2025, I have bought 28 CUE suits.

Yes, I know how that sounds.

But when you are dropping through multiple clothing sizes over eighteen months, your wardrobe changes with you.

Some suits were bought when I was bigger.

Some were bought later.

Some have been altered.

Some fit exactly as they were designed to.

When I look at them now, I do not just see a lot of suits.

I see different stages of the last eighteen months.

I also see how much more confident I became in the way I dressed.

At some point, I stopped looking at a suit as one complete outfit.

I started pulling it apart.

The jacket.

The trousers.

The shirt.

The shoes.

The tie.

The brooch.

The belt.

The jewellery.

One suit might be worn one way for work, then completely differently another time.

That is where the fun started.

I stopped thinking about how a suit was supposed to be worn and started asking what else I could do with it.

Could I wear it with sneakers?

Could I add a scarf?

Could I wear pearls with a T-shirt?

Could I put a brooch somewhere unexpected?

Could I add a tie?

Could I make it feel more masculine one day and more feminine the next?

Most of the time, the answer was yes.

And that is really where The Tailored COO came from.

Not from one outfit.

Not from one rule.

It came from experimenting.

It came from becoming more confident.

It came from working out what felt like me and then pushing it a little further.

I still love classic tailoring.

That part has not changed.

What has changed is the way I wear it.

I like a bit of shine.

I like a brooch.

I like a tie.

I like vintage details.

I like a strong shoe.

I like the unexpected piece that makes someone look twice.

And I do not believe good clothes should sit in the wardrobe waiting for a special occasion.

If I love it, I want to wear it.

At 8 o’clock in the morning.

To work.

For coffee.

With runners.

With pearls.

With something that perhaps was never meant to go with it.

That is the part I enjoy now.

Looking back, that first visit to CUE as a size 18 feels like the right place to start this story.

I was at the beginning of my weight loss journey.

I was also at the beginning of becoming much more confident with my style.

The suits changed size with me.

The styling changed too.

And somewhere along the way, The Tailored COO started to become what it is now.