I love the armour my wardrobe provides
When she left the safety of the corporate ladder to chase her fashion dreams, The Style Bob, aka Aoife Dunican, discovered that women have an incredibly deep, complex relationship with clothes
What is your first thought when you get an invitation to an event? Like most of us, it’s probably, what am I going to wear? It is one of the ironies of modern life that while most of us have more clothes than ever before, many feel they have nothing to wear. It is now common for most people to wear 20 per cent of their wardrobes 80 per cent of the time. Aoife Dunican, aka The Style Bob, is a professional style consultant who sees this conundrum all the time.
She says that on average you have only seven seconds to make an impression when you meet someone and that what you wear is central to that impression as ‘fashion is instant language’.
Aoife helps her clients translate their personal style into better fashion choices so they feel confident and can realise their potential. A polished brunette with a sleek bob – hence her business name – Aoife has a background in marketing and PR so appreciates the importance of those first impressions. ‘I walk my talk every day, and love the armour and confidence my wardrobe provides,’ she says.
Aoife grew up in Westmeath, where her dad ran Kilbeggan racecourse. The youngest of seven, her family home was full of creativity. ‘My sisters, who are all now in their 60s, were all exceptionally gifted with their hands,’ she says. These sisters anointed Aoife their mini-muse and made all her clothes.
‘All I ever knew up to the age of 12 was made-to-measure, that’s all I knew,’ she admits. ‘So although I can’t sew, I would have grown up all the time hearing about fabric and cut.’
While she loved style from an early age, Aoife emphasises that it was a ‘buy once, buy well’ culture as ‘when you did buy, it had to last’. She nurtured her love of fashion into her 20s, though never considered a career in the industry, as she felt it would be very hard to make a living. Instead, she worked in marketing across telecommunications and PR for theatre and the arts.
When she returned to work after a career hiatus, it struck her how important clothes were to a person’s sense of confidence and visibility. ‘I didn’t want to give the look that I’d been out of [the workforce] and come back,’ she recalls. Realising that the right clothes make you feel ‘relevant’ was a pivotal moment. ‘My dress gave modernity to my mind,’ she says of that situation, which helped to project a confidence she wasn’t feeling internally.
Her fashion choices helped her carve out poise and a professional presence.
Aoife eventually decided she didn’t want to stay on the corporate ladder and pivoted to apply her passion for fashion to a new role. ‘If you dress for your shape, dress for your personality, dress for your colours and your goals then you are unstoppable,’ she insists. She told a career coach she consulted that she would love to work with women on confidence and impact, but that she didn’t want to start coaching them.
Aoife then trained with the London College of Style in image consultancy and advanced colour. She next launched her business, set up her Instagram and gave free talks to get experience. ‘I was practising, that’s all I was doing,’ she says. ‘Then I got my big break with Davy Stockbrokers, where I got to do a keynote speech on colour and it went really, really well. It was 13 February, 2020, and I had lots of business coming in and then...’ she smiles of the onset of Covid. ‘So you go, ok, that’s all over, that was a lovely hiatus.’
Three weeks later she was asked by an Irish pharmacy group to entertain its employees over Zoom. After that talk, Aoife’s career took off and she began working for a host of corporate clients keen to keep staff
‘IF YOU DRESS FOR YOUR SHAPE, PERSONALITY, COLOURS AND GOALS THEN YOU ARE UNSTOPPABLE’