Confidence is the secret sauce in life. It’s the one ingredient that can set you apart and really change your life and your prospects. 

So why is it so freaking hard? 

I’ve been doing a lot of learning around this very subject lately. It seems that not only is there a physical component to confidence (some people are literally genetically programmed that way) but there’s also a huge social component - to do with your upbringing and environment. A lot of this - mainly the societal part - actually makes it harder to be confident as a woman, which will surprise precisely no one female. 

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to become more confident. The great thing about brains is that they can be rewired, with the right tricks and a little patience.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to elevate your look and give an appearance of being pulled together (even if you’re a mess underneath, like me!) is to stock your wardrobe with a few on-point accessories. 

A bit of well placed tailoring or the right bag can give everything a bit of a sophisticated slant without any extra effort on your part. That’s why bags have always been one of my favourite pieces to buy. 

Any bag capsule wardrobe should really contain a large, structured tote in black, but strangely enough this was the one thing missing from my collection. 

It’s that rather seductive idea of the one bag to do it all - office days, trips to the gym, airport dashes. Everyone needs a large, smart tote that can cover all these bases and look good doing it. And I might just have found it in the beautiful ‘Stockholm’ bag from Azurina.