Hi, I am Shelby Carmichael Ausband Camp…
and apparently dropping a name is as hard as purging my closet.
Speaking of closest, step into mine for a sec for girl talk.
Believe it or not, dressing myself, fashion, and style hasn’t always come easy.
I cannot recall one time in my life where I was not (one of) the biggest ones in the room.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt set apart in a room. The least fashionable, most insecure, the poorest, lease put together, least successful, least trendy, etc.
Challenging, set-apart, hard, emotional, frustrating, life-altering, loud, brutal, painful, different, helpless, exposed, talked-about, never-ending are some words I would describe how it feels to be the biggest one in the room.
I have a memory from middle school being in a dressing room with my mom and sister at Southlake Mall. We pulled the largest size of everything we could find. We got to the end and all we had found were more insecurities. My mom is a superhero who can always find a way. I remember looking at her thinking “This feels terrible. What do I do? Why me?” Without words, her look spoke so clearly to me. She looked helpless. Out of options. Sad for me. Sad she couldn’t fix it.
But before I go further, don’t feel sorry for me.
Yes, there was a health component (or lack thereof) here but that’s for another type of Camp.
No matter where you are in your health journey, you still have to get dressed every day and deserve to look and feel good!
That shopping day caused a shift. No matter how much my mom and others modeled confidence, I had to find confidence for myself in something bigger than my size.
What I wore started to become like a math equation to me. One of those y= mx + b equations. All I knew was that y= confidence, as my goal was to be confident in who I was. I wanted my confidence to be bigger than my size. It took me working with, watching and learning from my role model and incredible stylist, Kam, years to figure out what mx and b were. Once I did, I became one of the most CONFIDENT in the room vs. the biggest in the room.
Now LISTEN! True confidence is not found from earthly things but I feel strongly that what you wear greatly affects your confidence. Your outfit affect how you feel. Your outfit is the first opportunity to be judged. Like love, confidence is both a feeling AND a choice. When you love and feel good in your clothes, you will find that you have the ability to literally "PUT ON” confidence everyday!
Being the middle child that I am, the rule breaker in me has learned that rules are actually a vital part of life, helpful and necessary, but not commandments. The more I knew and understood the rules for my shape and my true style, the better I became at knowing when and how to break them.
MX= Your Shape
B= Your Style
Confidence = Your Shape + Your Style
Notice size is NOWHERE in the equation. The equation was built for every size. Every one. Every body. Every shape. Every style. Every season. Every age. YOU!
In fact, over the last few years, my size has drastically changed (because of a choice/desire/need to work on my health). But my shape remains the same. It always will.
A mentor once told me, your greatest pain has the potential to be your greatest purpose. I’m Shelby Camp of StyleCamp and it is my great honor and purpose to help you put on confidence every day by teaching you to be your own stylist and proving to yourself that you are fashion-able!
