I never really thanked my followers for helping me reach this great milestone.
My blog, and the information I share with you here, is my way of saying THANK YOU and of giving something back to you.
How did I manage to reach such an audience? It didn’t happen overnight; however, it didn’t feel like “work”. The audience expanded together with my self-development.
I started my Instagram account less than 6 years ago. At that time, I had a pretty ordinary life in Prague. I had just left one toxic relationship behind and didn’t know what was to come.
My posts were not so different from millions of others—they were simply things I found interesting about my daily life.
I was traveling, but my travel snaps taken on my phone were too ordinary to catch the interest of anyone other than the people who already knew me. I was living in Prague, working at a golf course as a receptionist, while studying to get my Bachelor degree. I was also hanging out with friends, going to restaurants from time to time, and I played golf occasionally.
So far nothing special.
In winter of 2015 I decided to go to Australia and study English there. One day I am sure I will write a book with all the details about that trip and more, but that’s in the future.
I started to post pictures on Instagram from Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to new people I met on the way, my Instagram following grew a bit. After I came back to Prague,
I began working for an international company, and this gave me more opportunities to travel. Still, these adventures didn’t have a particular effect on the numbers of my followers.
Then I posted few pictures from Cambodia, Vietnam, or Italy where I was on holidays… still nothing.
In Italy my boyfriend bought me my first leather jacket (more about this story in the previous post). After hesitating at first, I totally fell in love with it and started wearing it all the time. Paris, Rome, Slovenia, Madrid, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, Corsica - everywhere I went I took my beloved leather jacket along with new leather leggings I bought in Prague.
At that time, I had around 300 followers. Instagram wasn´t really important and it didn´t consume much of my time. I was working or traveling all the time, being busy enjoying my life and I didn´t care who liked my account or not. I liked it and that was the most important thing!
(Don´t get me wrong, I still enjoy my life today, I enjoy it fully but as you can imagine, I spend a bit more time on Instargram than before.)
In the summer of 2018, my life changed when I had the chance to discover premium leather clothes for the first time. It was a beautiful dress from one well known Parisian brand.
I couldn’t imagine anything that would fit my body better than this dress! It felt like it was made to measure, following every curve of my body like a second skin. This was the moment when I understood the power of leather. Wearing this dress, I felt empowered, beautiful, classy. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself. It was me, but a much stronger me than I ever knew. She was someone who could achieve anything she wanted, help others and make a positive impact. She was someone with whom you wouldn’t play games, like people used to in the past.
I didn’t want to take that dress off!
It has been one year since I got my jacket and, in the meantime, I was working on unleashing my true self. Little by little I started to gain my broken self-confidence back and leather has been accompanying me in the process of my self-transformation. I wanted to wear leather more and more. It was my armour, my gun, my power. People finally didn’t see me as a weak sweet girl, but as who I really was… a powerful woman.
It was after I posted a picture in this leather dress that my number of followers started to increase. Empowered, I started to use my new discovery and posted more pictures in leather.
And that's how I started to gain a real following. It was not only leather that people liked; it was me in leather and my energy gave the message I wanted to share.
“Clothes mean nothing until someone lives in them” - Marc Jacobs
Fashion is armour in which we battle the world. It gives us power to say anything without speaking. Leather in particular has that power. It gives you the power to get what you want without having to ask.
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