Your image is your flow. Dressing to empower yourself reflects on the inside and out. Color, material and overall style allows people to express their identity and be confident in their own skin.

On Monday July 6, the Palazzi Community Center hosted Rebecca Pacetti, an image consultant based in Florence. Pacetti gave a presentation on her career, sharing the importance of creating an image of yourself you can love.

“I specifically guide women in creating and building their image through authentic, personal style that reflects their true values,” Pacetti said to open up her presentation.

From the start, Pacetti wanted to make it clear exactly what an image consultant does and why this job is so important. It's more than helping people find the clothes they want, as she said, it's about their personal style and how it can represent their true values.

Pacetti shared how this practice originated in 1940s Hollywood when costume designers at the time began to curate looks for their actresses and actors. When color was introduced into Hollywood, costume designers' jobs had a new angle: Which colors make these movie stars pop on screen? Then in the 1980s, color on costume design took off outside the realm of film and television. But it wasn’t until post-COVID that it began to bloom in Italy.

“Fashion changes every season. Trends and stores for marketing reasons offer us things every year. Image consulting, on the other hand, is an ally that lasts. Once we become aware of what's right for us, we carry them with us as benefits, as things that will benefit us for our entire lives,” Pacetti said  of the lasting power of this field.

She brings forth the point that people always go to the same stores, buy what's comfortable, follow the right trends but her role in this field is to get people to go beyond that.

The next step is what she has created through her career. She has strategies to help others reach out and her sharing this at the Palazzi Community Center shows how it's more than just wearing comfortable clothes. Image consulting is about connecting with others, doing an act of service.

“I started as a client. I saw how it changed me in terms of self-confidence. It boosted my confidence. That's my main goal I need to achieve with my clients, it's what I look for.”

Taking inspiration from being a client herself, as a consultant Pacetti is able to assist people with this knowledge in mind. She understands what it feels like to be unsure in your own skin or wanting to gain more confidence in your image. One of the keys to achieve this improved self image is color. Pacetti describes color enhancing her image and others was her first love.

The science behind color has been a prominent topic for discussion for decades. Certain blues change the mood of painting, photograph or scenery. Different shades of red represent different emotions. It is important to Pacetti that people understand what works for one person may or may not work for others.

“There are colors for everyone, there aren't any, there are no colors that don't suit anyone and there are no colors that suit everyone. In fact, black doesn't really suit everyone,” she said.

The color wheel in tandem with emotion is a wide web. There are many different angles to tackle color. Pacetti covers eyes, skin tones and hair along with the colors in makeup, clothing and accessories.

An example Pacetti used was Julia Roberts and her red dress from Pretty Woman. She explained how the costume designers chose a warmer shade of red because it complemented Roberts natural coloring better. Pacetti heavily focuses on color because it's one of the first parts of someone's look that is noticed and attributes to how they stand out.

This idea of standing out is based on confidence. Pacetti's goal is to uplift others as she shares how she used to not be confident in her own skin and it's what made her become a client for an image consultant and eventually one herself. For boosting confidence she has curated three routes: Signature, Identity and Essence.

These three routes are to build the authentic personal style for a person. Each route works for different people and she works with them to find out which direction to take them on. For example, part of the signature program is to help amplify authority. Authority looks different for everyone, something Pacetti takes into consideration.

On the topic of what authority through image looks like in practice, Pacetti shared that “There's no single right way to imagine how authority looks. I feel it, I feel it by looking at my clients and how they talk, how they look, how their posture looks, their tone of voice.”

The other two routes, Identity and Essence, have a different focus. Identity is about deep personal work without a career angle. Essence is about finding yourself, returning to you. It's about recognizing yourself, having a continued pattern of familiarity and comfort in who you are. A quiet strong confidence. In practice, it's a four-week, fully online program built around a shared Pinterest mood board.

By the end of the evening, Rebecca Pacetti’s message was clear: she works to help others feel good. On paper, it's a simple goal that circulates around this quote she said “If you don't feel like yourself, and if you look in the mirror and you don't see the reflection, it doesn't work.” Whatever the current trends are or what looks good on others, she helps the individual person to get out of the headspace of looking at the influences around us.