How Anna Lavo Helped Sam Turn a Strict Graduation Dress Code Into a Look That Was Still Her Own
White top, black bottoms, black shoes — that was the rule, no exceptions. For Sam, who was days away from walking across the stage at her university in Scotland, the dress code was the easy part. Not looking like she’d wandered in from a catering shift was the hard part.
She came to stylist Anna Lavo with a Pinterest board full of soft, romantic tops and one clear boundary. “I didn’t want to end up looking like a waiter,” Sam said, laughing, on their first video call. “I just didn’t want to wear plain black trousers and a white long-sleeve button-up. That felt so boring.”
Anna’s read on the assignment came fast. Every other graduate in that stadium would be wearing some version of the same two colors. The way to stand apart wasn’t to break the rules — it was to get specific about fabric, structure, and silhouette within them. “I want you to stand out,” Anna told her. “That’s why we’re going to work on structure, silhouette, and texture and fabric.”
That meant steering Sam away from the expected button-down and toward the necklines she actually gravitated to — Peter Pan collars, sailor-flap details, anything with a little architecture at the shoulder. It meant treating the classic white-top-black-bottom formula less like a uniform and more like a blank canvas. And it meant solving a real fit problem: Sam has a short torso, and she’d noticed that high-waisted trousers tended to make it disappear entirely. Anna’s fix was simple — if the waist sits low, let a longer or corseted top carry the elongation instead, so the proportions still work.
There was a practical thread running under the styling, too. Sam wanted trousers she could actually wear again — to job interviews, around campus and the city once she starts graduate school in London this fall, and to her new office after she’s got the degree in hand — whether that job lands in the UK or back in the USA — and, with the right shoes and a tank top swapped in, to a weekend with friends. “You can wear them to the interviews, you can wear them to work, and you can also wear them with kitten heels or loafers and a tank top when you’re out with your friends,” Anna said. “You can mix and match.” A skirt stayed on the table too — Sam had loved a few mini-skirt looks on her board — but the pants won out for sheer cost-per-wear.
The shoes were already locked in: a pair of secondhand Saint Laurent heels, a graduation gift found at a flea market in Paris, with a four- or five-inch heel Sam admitted she still needed to break in. “I need to do a lap around St. Andrews in those shoes,” she said — which told Anna everything she needed to know about keeping the rest of the look comfortable enough to stand in for a two-hour ceremony. Jewelry stayed small to medium and quietly tasteful; no bag, since Sam would have nothing on her but a phone and a lip gloss under the gown. Hair was left open-ended until closer to the date, so it could be built around whatever the final outfit needed rather than the other way around.
Working across an ocean and five time zones didn’t slow any of it down. The two never met in person — everything happened over video, from the first consultation through outfit options Anna would send for Sam to react to before a single piece was purchased. With the ceremony about a month out and a tailor in St. Andrews on standby for last-minute alterations, there was room to try a few options, see what actually worked on camera and in person, and return the rest.
What Sam walked away with wasn’t just an outfit for one afternoon. It was proof that a dress code doesn’t have to mean disappearing into it — and a couple of trousers-and-blouse combinations that will outlast the graduation photos by years, following her straight into interviews and her first weeks in London.
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This story reflects a real, paid StyldLife client session.