Lauren Smelcher

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After learning that my high school stint at McDonald’s wouldn’t get me a job at a mag, I worked as a freelance journalist for a few years. With much haggling and many annoying phone calls, I got a job at Cosmo! As web ed, no two days are the same – some days I’ll be at a video or photo shoot, others I’m interviewing celebs or updating myself on the latest goss (all for research purposes, obviously).

Apart from that, I have a healthy addiction to cupcakes, clutches and Christian Bale. I once watched a VH1 countdown of ‘The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever’ and was proud to announce that I loved every last one of them. I’m very good at tripping over, talking too loud and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Oh … and in an acrostic poem that my friends wrote about me, the “e” in my name stood for “embarrassing.”

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Wed 14
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Desperately Seeking Stylist

What to wear?

The scene: my bedroom, 7.30am. Picture it: there I am, standing in my underwear, pacing the floor in front of my wardrobe. It's a familiar - if cliched - routine that haunts me daily. What to wear?

The problem is not that I have nothing to wear. Not at all. I have a wardrobe bulging with clothes, and a flatmate who is the same size as me (effectively doubling my choices, particularly on hellish days like these). The problem is that women (read: me) are incredibly competitive about fashion.

I work in an office with innately stylish women, and while there's no nasty vibe or pressure to conform to a certain look, it's very hard to resist the urge to emulate my very fashion-conscious colleagues. And besides all that, I love clothes. I love putting an outfit together, getting gussied up and walking out the door feeling like a million bucks. This morning, though, that feeling was definitely eluding me.

Jeans were out; I'd worn them yesterday with my new pussybow blouse. Dresses - of which I have roughly 14,738 - seemed frivolous in this chilly Sydney weather. Sure, I could do high-waisted pants with a cute shirt … but after my pizza OD last night, I decided against the belly-swathing pants.

What I needed, I decided, was a stylist; someone to sift through my wardrobe, select the best pieces for me, and dress me from head to toe.

A stylist would shake her head at the amount of black in my wardrobe and force me to be more colour-forward. A stylist would find cute vintage dresses for me and make me look like a contemporary Laurie Partridge. Yes, yes - a stylist was the answer to everything.

Of course, the only thing standing between me and my stylist is a winning lottery ticket. So until then, I'm going to take some cues from the very classy Cosmo kids. Lately, we've been covering up a little more to brace against the cold outside.

Sarah Bonett has invested in an amazing ivory tux, Leigh has more leather jackets than she knows what to do with, and Aimee nabbed a black Zac Posen for Target blazer. With colleagues like these, nobody needs a stylist.

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