THE BRAND OF YOU
VETERAN FASHION INFLUENCER KAITLYN HAM (@KAITY_MODERN) HAS MORE THAN 300,000 INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS AND A WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BUILDING A PERSONAL BRAND
THESE DAYS, apparently, we all need a personal brand – even those of us who get squirmy at the idea. In fact, as Kaitlyn Ham, who created her style blog
Modern Legacy way back in 2011, has discovered, the squirm can even become your signature.
“I’ve never been that comfortable photographing my face,” says Ham. “It’s not like I had some grave insecurity about how I look, but I used to find it distracting trying to get a good shot of my face along with everything else. So I moved towards flipping my hair around so I didn’t have to worry, shooting from the neck down, or doing zoomed-in detail shots. And now people say they can recognise one of my photos just from that element. I found that so interesting – what I thought was a limitation became a strong part of my personal brand.”
And it’s that authenticity, says Ham, that’s the key to a strong personal brand. “I probably say it too much, but you need to be genuine. It’s not only what you owe to yourself, but also what you owe to other people. Within a workplace, I think that means letting people know your bottom line. I have to be clear about the way I work and what my dealbreakers are. It’s really important to map that out for yourself. And obviously you’ll use your strengths, but recognising your limitations can also be valuable in forming your personal brand.”
Ham was studying law in her home town of Brisbane when she started blogging about her style as a creative outlet. Once she graduated, she sought out work at online fashion companies, before deciding to make the leap and devote her time to Modern Legacy. “I’d been looking at fashion blogs, and I realised there wasn’t anyone who had my style, or who I could relate to, so I thought maybe I could fill that gap and create content I found interesting – and hopefully others would, too. And then Who What
Wear and Refinery 29 featured me, and it grew organically from there.”
Her minimal, classic style stood out against the more typically Australian beachy aesthetic, and she draws a lesson from that experience of discovering a point of difference: “Is there something you’re looking at in the world and thinking – like I did years ago – there’s really nothing you can relate to? Ask yourself what gap that is, and fill it. And figure out why it’s necessary for you to get your brand and message out there,” she says.
As her business has grown, however, she’s had to put in a more conscious effort to retain her authenticity. “There was a period where I wore a lot of black and white, and if I wore anything else, people would comment saying, ‘You’re wearing a green blazer? You don’t wear green!’ I felt a bit trapped and started to second-guess myself, thinking, ‘What is my brand really? Is it what other people think it is? Or is it my natural style evolution?’ I decided to say, ‘No, my brand is me, it’s not anything except what I create.’ I’ve become more confident and my brand has become more genuine. When creating content, I think first and foremost, ‘Do I like this?’ There are things you can’t control – sometimes I think an image will go off the charts and it goes nowhere, and sometimes I think an image is just okay, then it goes gangbusters. But you do control your own taste.”
The second part of that authenticity puzzle is avoiding the comparison trap. “One of the hardest lessons I had to learn was cutting out the noise,” says Ham. “You can’t look too much at what other people are doing. Early on I knew I needed to have tunnel vision with what I was doing, because once you start distracting yourself with other people’s perceived success (because you never know what’s going on in the background), you get sidetracked. You’ve just got to map out what you want for yourself and what success looks like for you.”
“Don’t LOOK too MUCH at what OTHER PEOPLE are DOING… have TUNNEL VISION”