Whether it’s your well-dressed neighbour or a new Instagram friend, often other women inspire our style choices more than a runway trend. Laura Antonia Jordan speaks to five fashionable pairs of women to discover how they’ve influenced each other’s wardrobes – and lives.
Georgia Medley, stylist, and Natalie Roar, stylist and costume designer
Georgia Medley and Natalie Roar are used to handling things with care. Not just the couture creations they might help source for a red-carpet appearance, but also their clients, who include Little Simz, Michaela Coel and Golda Rosheuvel.
‘I have to get an understanding of what they like, who they want to be, how they want to be perceived,’ says Medley.
Similarly, ‘Really working with someone to help them find the beauty in themselves [is] something I don’t take for granted,’ says Roar.
Their work inevitably shapes the way the long-term friends, who met in their teens via Medley’s cousin, get dressed themselves. For Medley it’s how she’ll feel when she leaves the house. ‘Comfort is obviously key. I have my uniform: tailoring, something really simple and easy,’ she says, adding that she takes care not to impose her taste too much when working. ‘When I am going to dress a client, I am conscious about not outdoing them in a crazy outfit.’
Helping other people to craft their image has given them both an understanding of the power of clothes as tools of self-expression. ‘It’s one of the ways I feel the freest,’ explains Roar. ‘The way that I use clothing as a means of empowerment has been important to me throughout my life in terms of discovering who I am as a person – it’s ever-changing.’
They might be in similar lines of work, but there is only admiration, rather than competition, between the pair. Roar is endlessly motivated by Medley’s ‘tenacity and drive’. Meanwhile, Medley praises Roar’s style for its authenticity.
A shared love of the possibilities of fashion doesn’t mean a copy-and-paste look. Rather, they celebrate their differences. ‘We both have our own style and are very confident in how we dress. Nat is so much more experimental. My style is a bit more refined – or, you could say, more boring!’ Medley laughs. ‘Obviously we’re quite individualistic in the way we dress; there’s no judgment, adds Roar. ‘That is the beauty of our friendship.’
Christie and Rosanna Wollenberg,co-founders of Otiumberg
Thanks to the four years and four inches between them, Rosanna and Christie Wollenberg, co-founders of cult jewellery brand Otiumberg, largely managed to skip one of the timeless causes of squabbles among sisters: stealing each other’s clothes. But now they’re in their thirties and, conveniently, next-door neighbours, there is ‘a lot of passing things over the fence’, says Christie. ‘Tops and stuff, last minute, when we’re freaking out that we don’t have anything to wear,’ she adds.
‘We’re not very precious when it comes to things like that,’ says Rosanna, the youngest of three (their middle sister is a copywriter and yoga teacher). There are perks to being the baby of the family, especially when you have an older sister who works in luxury fashion, as Christie did during the first part of her career, with stints at Louis Vuitton and Burberry. ‘You got me my first Burberry trench!’ remembers Rosanna. What about buying the same pieces as one another now? Is there any territorialism? They both fell in love with a bag in Berlin but, Christie teases, she made Rosanna buy it in a different colour.
Although they agree that they have ‘distinct styles’, there is a common ground in what the Wollenbergs gravitate towards. When in Paris, they like to make a trip to The Frankie Shop for tailoring, and both are fans of another sibling-run brand, the Australian label Camilla and Marc, with which they have collaborated.
‘What we share is an element of ease – we never want anything to feel too forced or constricted,’ is Rosanna’s take on their wardrobe similarities. ‘We wear quite a lot of tailoring, which is similar, but we have our quirks,’ agrees Christie, joking that she has a ‘mama capsule’ in her wardrobe, which can withstand the challenges of two small children (‘Right? A white waistcoat wouldn’t work for dinner with a four-year-old,’ Rosanna laughs).
The sisters’ influence on each other, and their extended community of women, led them to found Otiumberg in 2016. Living together at the time, they both had multiple piercings but could not find affordable jewellery they wanted to wear that didn’t scrimp on style and quality. So Christie took matters into her own hands and designed some diamond huggies. ‘All my friends were like, “Where are these from?” We started to realise there wasn’t a jewellery brand that spoke to us.’
Otiumberg jewellery is like the perfect white tee: indispensable, reliable and elevated by considered design touches rather than razzmatazz. Indeed, the Wollenbergs seem allergic to fads. Like the clothes they wear, when they create their hoops, rings and necklaces, they are ‘always stripping back and celebrating the beauty of subtlety’, as Christie puts it. ‘Everything we launch is really a personal expression. We’ll never do something just because someone says we should or there’s a trend.’
Alissa Kobeissi, fashion PR, and Song-I-Saba, writer
Like many modern relationships, Alissa Kobeissi and Song-I Saba’s began online. ‘It was one of those classic Instagram friendships, where you really love [someone’s] vibe and energy over the internet and you meet in real life and it all clicks,’ says Saba. The feeling was mutual. ‘I just think you’re so cool,’ says Kobeissi, before breaking into giggles. ‘Sorry, I’m really crushing on you right now!’
Beyond the good vibes, the pair share values, principles – and mixed-Lebanese heritage. Working with the non-profit organisation Creatives for Lebanon – founded in 2020 after a catastrophic explosion ripped through the port of Beirut – Kobeissi recruited Saba to model in a photoshoot publicising a charity auction.
Both women grew up as an only child and as such are drawn to the moments of connection and community that clothes can give. This is expressed in a generous approach to style. ‘I always find it weird when people ask permission to buy what you bought!’ says Kobeissi. Ditto for Saba. ‘My closet is always an open-door policy for all my friends. This whole thing that people used to do, gatekeeping where their clothes were from, is very antithetical to the energy we have right now,’ she says.
‘I think it comes from that very deep loneliness. I’m always so desperate to share things with people.’
You can see this open-heartedness in their approach to dressing up as well. ‘What I’ve really admired recently is inviting someone round for dinner or throwing a birthday party and seeing the effort all your friends make putting themselves together – there’s a generosity [to that]. It’s a gift, their time and their effort, showing up and really making a night of it,’ says Saba. Similarly, Kobeissi loves the getting-ready part of the night, with friends chiming in with suggestions and encouragements, even if they’re not in the same country. ‘The older you get, the less you have those moments getting ready together, because life is chaotic – but being able to do it on WhatsApp, being that personal stylist, even for 10 minutes, knowing you have someone you trust to guide you [is special].’
Although they are aligned in their attitudes towards fashion, their personal styles differ. ‘[Alissa’s] a very fun person, very charming and charismatic. I think those kind of personality traits are reflected in how someone carries and wears things,’ says Saba. ‘She’s always very put together. Her outfits are so well curated, whereas I’m a little more haphazard and chaotic.’ But it is exactly that ‘haphazard and chaotic’ sense of style that Kobeissi loves. ‘There’s such a beauty in that. I wish I could be more free,’ she says. ‘Song-I is cool, she’s effortless… I feel like people nowadays really try to do that, but I genuinely feel like she just picks stuff up and it happens.’ It’s a reminder that we should all try to see ourselves more through the eyes of our friends. As Kobeissi says, people might think fashion is frivolous, ‘but there is so much more to it than just clothes.’
Zezi Ifore, artist and broadcaster, and Cynthia Lawrence-John, stylist and costume designer
If you want to know what someone is really like, just watch how they treat their assistants. When Zezi Ifore, then 18 years old, met the stylist Cynthia Lawrence-John through a friend who was assisting Cynthia on a job at the time, she fell in love with her on the spot.
‘It was powerful to see someone really nurture and mentor someone. Even to witness it, I felt enriched,’ Ifore, now 37, recalls.
Back then, Ifore was in a particularly experimental fashion phase (ski suits in high summer? Why not?). ‘It was about really pushing it. We went for it: popped the lenses out of our glasses and tracked down deadstock and weird vintage. Everything I was wearing was probably something that I cut in half and turned upside down.’ At that time, it wasn’t easy, ‘to be Black and alternative and weird,’ says Ifore, so the encouragement of a ‘cool grown-up’ was crucial. ‘That gentle affirmation of, “Go for it! You look great!” is extremely powerful at that age. At any age, in fact.’ Over the following years, their friendship has deepened. ‘[Cynthia is] this gentle north star,’ Ifore says. ‘Any time that we meet up, it is that warmth, that encouragement, that love.’
Lawrence-John, 53, loved Ifore’s ‘off-centre’ attitude – then as now. ‘I’m slightly like that as well. I’ve always danced to the beat of my own drum. So if I see people who are like-minded and doing the same thing, I’ll give them respect and nurture them as well.’
Neither woman is interested in what is ‘in’. Despite forging a successful career as a stylist and costume designer, Lawrence-John says, ‘I don’t like fashion. It’s style I appreciate. I don’t just want to put a nice dress on somebody because it’s the dress of the season. What’s the point?’ Ifore balks at the idea of wearing one box-fresh designer look, head-to-toe. ‘That just says to me that you either have access or money,’ she says. ‘It’s oppressive. I think that’s a shared value Cynthia and I have: we hate anything that could potentially make someone feel bad.’
Now, their friendship is nearly 20 years old and they have influenced each other’s attitude to style. ‘My main thing in life is freedom,’ says Lawrence-John. ‘I need to know that I can move around where I need to without being hampered by clothes or shoes or anything. I don’t like having boundaries.’
For Ifore, what is most authentically liberating about clothes is that they create a dialogue with the world. ‘It’s about a way of displaying myself and presenting myself that emboldens freedom in other people,’ she says. ‘If you are fluent in the language of clothes and can translate that then amazing. What you want is to be able to show people how they can be free. That is a power that anybody can access.’
Maxim Magnus, model, and Elli Jafari, executive vice president of operations for The Standard Hotels Europe and US
When Maxim Magnus and Elli Jafari meet for drinks at The Connaught hotel in Mayfair, Jafari can guarantee that, ‘if I have a couple of martinis, I’ll end up coming home with a pair of lovers’. It’s not as risqué as it might sound, though no less thrilling: the ‘lovers’ in question are shoes. ‘We enable each other’s shopping addictions,’ admits Magnus, ‘and definitely around shoes!’
Retail habits aside, they also influence one another on a deeper level. Having met at a fashion party, they clicked and made friends fast. ‘Jafari is so unapologetically herself,’ says Magnus. ‘She is a firecracker, a beautiful person inside and out,’ says Jafari, adding that Magnus, ‘definitely has her own way of expressing her sense of fashion, which I love.’
‘I’ve gone through so many stages –I have changed my style so many times,’ says Magnus. ‘I try everything. Every time my hair changes – or my attitude changes – my wardrobe changes. If I’m having an “off” day, I can put on a good outfit and feel much better.’ The mood-boosting quality of a great look works both ways: ‘We can go out and [Jafari will] be wearing a see-through pink tutu with glitter in her hair, and it will always brighten up my day,’ she says.
They share a sense of dressing up as a performance. Magnus says that she chooses outfits, ‘for me and my girls. When we go out, we are just feeling it. It doesn’t matter where we are. I can show up to a coffee at 2pm and be wearing a ballgown for no reason.’ It doesn’t have to mean full glam every day, however. ‘In a way we’re very similar – we can dress up to the nines, and we can also wear sweatpants and cute T-shirts,’ is how Jafari, who has a fondness for Palace as much as Gianvito Rossi heels, puts it.
For both, clothes have become a way to assert themselves. ‘Even though I am much older than Maxim [Jafari is 46, while Magnus is 25] I see a lot of myself in her. We both moved away from home when we were very young,’ says Jafari, who grew up in Iran and moved to the United States on her own as a teen. The move, ‘literally felt like a rebirth’; she was forced to relearn who she was. ‘That has unfolded in many different ways. It’s the way I carry myself, the way I live my life or choose my friends. Also, the way that I dress.’
Magnus, meanwhile, says that her hometown of Antwerp was conservative. ‘Even if you go to the grocery store you can’t go in sweatpants. Now I do; I don’t care. But that’s the mentality of where I’m from.’
Things have changed a lot since then. ‘I’m way more sexually free in the way I use my body and the way I choose silhouettes,’ says Magnus. ‘In 30, 40 years, I want to look back and think, “Oh, she was really hot!” I have this body now, this attitude now of “Why not?”’
