For Laura Jane Foley – known by her Instagram fans as the “Sensual Soul Stylist” – looking glamorous isn’t just a lifestyle choice, it’s a vital form of self-care. I know that all too well, having enlisted her services after my son was born.

As any new mother knows, having a baby doesn’t do much for you in the glamour stakes, despite what all those celebrity and influencer mums will have you believe. After three days on the labour ward, my body no longer felt my own, having been prodded, monitored, poked, pushed, wheeled on a bed trolley, injected, cut open and stitched back up again.

This was immediately followed by five gruelling weeks on a neonatal unit, trying to bond with my premature baby covered in tubes, while pumping milk day and night like some demented dairy cow. I lived in Crocs, nursing bras, a button-down shirt and stretchy shapeless leggings that didn’t irritate my bandaged C-section wound. After we finally got the all-clear to go home, I was offered birth trauma counselling, which made little impact on the fog hanging over me. It took time to realise that speaking to someone like Foley was what I actually needed.

I found out about her through a fashionable friend. For those looking for an easy dose of glamour, Foley’s Instagram @style_bylaurajane is a hub of style inspiration, featuring advice and live chats with fellow style mavens from all over the world. I felt like I had been thrown a lifeline and promptly signed up for her Style & Shape Illumination service. Speaking to Laura over Zoom was better than therapy. Like a fashionable fairy godmother, she wove together my style profile, talked about my style muses and the kind of clothes I might like to wear, and how I could express different sides of myself in my outfits.

She encouraged me to not wait for a special occasion to dress up, which went against a lifetime of being told to save nice clothes “for best”. (Things can always be washed.) Hiring a stylist would have seemed incredibly self-indulgent and decadent in the past – but I needed this, after the year I’d had. While I still don’t have time or the inclination to go full-glam for the nursery run, I do make more of an effort, for instance adding accessories, like a headscarf to jazz up an otherwise mundane outfit – and I have never felt better. It was almost as if I’d finally been given permission to stand out and be noticed.

A touch of glamour: Laura-Jane Foley

“At the heart of my work with women is the drive to guide them toward finding more pleasure in their everyday lives,” says Foley. “I aim to help them reconnect with themselves and their passions, introducing them to the most extraordinary versions of who they can be.”

As with me, it was having children that prompted Foley to reconnect with her love of style and led her to her current calling. “It was the only thing I could control with toddlers running around,” she says. “My body changed beyond recognition, but I knew how important it was to keep that element of myself.” Her love of beauty and style helped steer her through the storm of early motherhood. “Women at playgroups would ask how I always looked so glamorous, and I’d say it was easy because it’s always been part of me. My makeup takes no more than ten minutes!” It was then she started doing workshops and styling sessions, focusing on empowering women through fashion in the same way.

Foley is the granddaughter of “very Bohemian” Czech Jews, and her Instagram account is a treasure trove of vintage-inspired outfits that has captivated famous figures of the fashion world, including NY Jewish style maven Tziporah Salamon. Based in the sleepy Kent town of Tunbridge Wells – where her eclectic ensembles stand out by a country mile – this magnificent magpie and mum of three views getting dressed as more than just a daily task. For her, it’s about donning emotional and psychological armour. She credits her Jewish grandmother, Alice Winston née Bechertova, as the inspiration behind her love of style.

Alice escaped Czechoslovakia before the Second World War and settled in Oxford, where she met Foley’s grandfather, doctor Josef Weinstein (later changed to Winston), another escaped Czech Jew. All their possessions had been confiscated on leaving. Nevertheless, Foley’s glamorous grandmother lived a life dedicated to style. “She adored art and music and travel,” she says. “Her home was full of beautiful objects that she’d collected and she imported crystals from eastern Europe and crafted them into beautiful pieces. She was always so beautifully put together, very elegant, and adored clothes and shopping. So, I have her to blame – or thank – ​for my own love of fashion. Helping women transform their style is life-changing,” she enthuses. “I truly believe that glamour and beauty heals us – it really helps to take us away from the difficulties of modern day life.” 

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