GETTING DRESSED AFTER DIVORCE: WHEN YOUR WARDROBE BELONGS TO YOUR OLD LIFE

My marriage ended after 16 years together and six years married.

There had been an indiscretion. At the time, understandably, it felt enormous. Looking back now, I can see it was probably the thing that forced us to acknowledge something neither of us had been particularly willing to say out loud. We had grown apart.

I still loved him. I just think I'd started to love him more like my best friend than my husband.

About a year later, I turned 40 and looked at my life. I realised I didn't particularly want to keep living it the way I was. I was drinking too much. I was deeply sad. And while nothing looked completely disastrous from the outside, although some of my closest friends may tell you otherwise, I had this growing feeling that the person I'd become wasn't necessarily the person I wanted to be.

So I stopped drinking.

And then I left.

There was no dramatic movie montage where I threw a suitcase into the back of a convertible and drove into my new life wearing oversized sunglasses. Instead, we had a house to sell.

A gorgeously remodelled house, I should add, because the indiscretion had also happened to coincide with us being halfway through a full renovation. We spent an obscene amount of money making the place beautiful, finished it, put it on the market and then watched the property market fall over.

So my ex-husband and I continued living together for nearly another year while our marriage was over and strangers wandered through our home deciding whether they liked the kitchen.

Our very expensive kitchen.

Divorce can be deeply glamorous like that.

It was during this strange in-between period that I started a TikTok account. I was 40. A middle-aged man in makeup wearing increasingly outrageous outfits to work. Who the hell was going to watch that?

As it turns out, quite a few people.

At the beginning, it was simply a creative outlet. I started showcasing the outfits I wore to work. I didn't have a grand content strategy, which, considering I've spent most of my career in marketing, is slightly embarrassing. I just enjoyed it.

Gradually, I talked more about fashion and beauty, shared the things I loved and the things I absolutely did not, and let more of my personality into it. Then I started talking about my life.

I talked about drinking and getting sober. About my marriage ending. About rebuilding your life at 40 and wondering whether you've left it all slightly too late. And I documented it as it happened.

For years, drinking had come with shame. You behave badly. You say things you wish you hadn't. You wake up and try to piece together a night while quietly hoping nobody else remembers the parts you don't.

And then you hide.

I didn't want to live like that anymore. If I was going to rebuild my life, I wanted to do it as openly and honestly as I could. Not a perfectly polished version of honesty where you share the difficult thing once you've wrapped it in a bow and worked out the lesson.

I wanted to be open. I wanted to be honest. I wanted to be myself.

There was something incredibly freeing about saying the things I'd previously been embarrassed about. Bad behaviour. Mistakes. Versions of myself I wasn't particularly proud of. Once I'd said them out loud, they didn't feel like things anyone else could hold over me anymore.

I'd already told the story.

In a strange way, TikTok became almost therapeutic. Not because thousands of strangers on the internet should replace an actual therapist. They absolutely should not. But because I was taking ownership of my own life. The good bits, the bad bits and the parts I'd previously have preferred nobody mentioned.

And people connected with it.

My TikTok grew in a way I hadn't planned for. Looking back, I think part of the reason was that I wasn't presenting a perfectly curated reinvention.

I was rebuilding myself in public.

Rebuilding your life isn't only about what you gain. It can also reveal things about the people around you that you weren't prepared to see.

There were friendships I genuinely thought I'd have forever that didn't survive the changes in my life. I was deeply sad about that. Some people you believe are firmly in your corner turn out to be less comfortable when you begin doing well, becoming more confident or making choices they can no longer influence.

Not everyone is happy when you change. I certainly wasn't quieter when I drank. Quite the opposite. I could be very loud. But being loud isn't the same as being secure in yourself. Sometimes people are more comfortable with you when you're carrying shame, when you doubt yourself or when you're easier to influence and make feel small.

Changing my life also made room for new friendships. People who genuinely celebrate the highs with me, who are open and honest, who tell me the truth and who I can do the same for. Some have been in my life for a relatively short time but somehow feel as though they've always been there.

That doesn't make losing old friendships less sad. It has taught me that the people in your corner should actually want to see you win.

Eventually, the house sold.

By then, stopping drinking had already changed me physically. I'd lost around 10 kilos. At my heaviest, I was carrying considerably more weight than I am now, and I hid it well.

Or at least I thought I did.

I knew how to dress my body. Jackets that slightly nipped in at exactly the right place became my best friend. I'd wear them in summer, sweating away, because they disguised the alcohol tyre I was desperately trying to pretend wasn't there.

I dressed well.

I was also dressing to hide.

When the house finally sold, I went to Korea and had plastic surgery. It was something I'd wanted to do for years but had always been too scared to actually go through with. I had a tipoplasty to give my nose more of a point after a lifetime with a button nose, a neck lift and an upper blepharoplasty.

A few nips and tucks. Nothing particularly scary, although my mother may tell you otherwise.

I wasn't trying to become someone completely different. I wanted to look more like the person I thought I should be. Looking back, Korea was probably the first of the big physical transformations in my life. I'd thought about it. I'd researched it. And then I actually did it.

For me.

Once I was home and fully healed, I got a personal trainer and joined a gym. I started eating differently, I trained and I looked after myself in a way I simply hadn't for years.

All up, I lost 27 kilos.

That is a huge physical change. And I want to be clear, I'm not suggesting everyone needs to lose 27 kilos, fly to Korea for surgery and join a gym to reinvent themselves. That would be a fairly alarming business model for a personal stylist.

But my body had changed. Completely. And suddenly, the clothes I'd spent years using to hide myself were dressing a body I no longer had.

I didn't throw everything away. The pieces I loved, I had tailored. Jackets were taken in. Trousers were altered. Clothes that had been part of my life for years were made to work for the body I had now.

Because a changing body doesn't automatically mean you need an entirely new wardrobe. Sometimes the thing you already own just needs to be looked at differently.

Fashion became part of the transformation too.

Not because a new jacket can fix a divorce. It can't. And a pair of shoes, however fabulous, will not resolve an existential crisis.

I've tried.

I've always cared about my appearance. I've always been vain, always worn makeup and always loved clothes. That didn't suddenly arrive after my divorce.

What changed was that I completely stopped giving a fuck what other people thought about it.

Was it too much? Was I too old? Too feminine? Would people stare?

I stopped asking.

I became less interested in dressing appropriately and considerably more interested in dressing like myself.

The funny thing is, I don't think I had bad style before my divorce. I think I was very good at dressing the person I was then.

But my body had changed. My life had changed. My relationships had changed.

I had changed.

And my wardrobe needed to catch up.

That's something I've noticed when talking to other people going through major life changes. Divorce. A new relationship. A new career. Weight loss. Weight gain. Turning 40, 50 or 60.

Sometimes you open your wardrobe and everything is technically fine. The clothes fit. They're in good condition. Some of them were bloody expensive.

But they don't feel like you anymore.

Or perhaps more accurately, they don't reflect the person you want to show the world.

My instinct isn't to tell someone to throw everything away and start again. Firstly, that's expensive. Secondly, it's often completely unnecessary.

Sometimes you need someone to look at what you already have with fresh eyes. Sometimes you need permission to try the thing you've convinced yourself isn't “you”. And sometimes you need someone to tell you that the jacket you've been hanging onto for eight years because it cost a fortune still doesn't look right.

That's where personal style becomes much more interesting to me than simply following fashion.

Clothes are one of the ways we introduce ourselves to the world before we've said anything.

After my marriage ended, I think I was working out how I wanted to introduce myself again.

I'm 43 now. I'm sober. I'm in a wonderful relationship. I have a career I love, a slightly ridiculous wardrobe and an online audience I never expected to have.

My life looks very different from the one I had at 40.

So do I.

And I'm quite happy about that.

If you're going through a period of change and your wardrobe suddenly feels as though it belongs to your old life, you don't necessarily need to know what your new style is yet.

You might just need somewhere to start.

And trust me.

I've been there.