Lakisha Pattin Promotes Style, Self Love, and Confidence Through Focused Fashion LLC

By Olivia Miller

Fashion in its simplest form is a type of transformative expression. Merely putting on a polished outfit can allow your most authentic self to shine through, immediately lifting your spirits and putting a step in your stride unlike anything else. Professional fashion stylist and speaker Lakisha Pattin has harnessed the power of style and the positive effects it has for self confidence to up Pittsburghers’ fashion game through her company Focused Fashion LLC. 

Pattin began making her “imprint on Pittsburgh” in 2007, but her passion for fashion started much earlier. She fondly remembers admiring the Black models on the covers of publications like Ebony Magazine and “aspired to be like them, even as a child.” She says this was “where my fashion gift and talent really developed.” 

However, as a Pittsburgh native, she notes the lack of opportunities to advance her fashion career. She says “To have a mentor and cultivate that gift; I had to be that for myself.” Despite this, she was able to build on her talent by attending fashion workshops and styling her friends in college. 

The idea of wholly devoting herself to making her way in the Pittsburgh fashion scene came about after she did not finish college and was left wondering, “‘What is my purpose?’” However, she firmly believed that “I can still define my own success. [This] does not mean that has to be the end of my story. 

She says it seemed like the “odds were stacked against me” as she did not have resources like transportation or a computer. But that hardly stopped her in her thirst for stylish success. She says “the library became my best friend” and recalls long days of catching a bus to the Carnegie Library in Oakland to do research and print off flyers before catching another bus to networking events. She says, “I stuck with it and that consistency coupled with hard work and determination, literally it has opened a lot of doors.” 

From that point on, Pattin has built an impressive portfolio, working with acclaimed organizations like Pittsburgh Style Week, KDKA News, Washington DC Fashion Week, and Macy’s. She also has an illustrious career as a speaker, focusing her lectures on self esteem, style, and the relationship between the two. She has done speaking engagements around the country from a female empowerment event in California to a seminar for Duquesne University students. 

The core of Pattin’s business is her styling services. Unique to Focused Fashion, customers are offered a free consultation “to make sure it is a good fit on both ends.” There is then a needs assessment where she asks clients “What are you looking for? What phase of life are you in?” This is the most important part of any consultation for Pattin. Whether they are a new mom, a new wife, embarking on a new career or even newly retired, discovering the season of life customers are living puts everything in motion. 

From there, she starts by first going through their closet to see what her clients already have in their wardrobes and organizes it into items to keep, items to donate, and items to be altered. The items that are kept are then sorted into colors or seasons depending on the client’s needs. During this process, Pattin says it is “amazing for [clients] to see things they may have overlooked.” 

Clients also have an option to have her create a “Brand Book” for them, which is essentially a digital catalog of the pieces in their closet. Pattin says this “vital and valuable” book promotes “more focused shopping” and “retail therapy within reason” as it makes it easier for clients to see what they already own. 

When clients do choose to go shopping, Focused Fashion offers them a list of the best places to shop. These are broken down into different budget brackets and further separated into specialties like the best places for curvy or petite women to shop. Pattin’s ultimate goal for clients when shopping is “make sure whatever you’re buying is an investment in your wardrobe.” 

She also offers “a la carte styling” for important events like galas, award ceremonies, weddings and even date nights and proposals. 

However, Focused Fashion is about much more than just clothing for Pattin. The mission of the business is “to help clients find what their style is, how to enhance it, and how to leave a lasting impression anywhere with their image.” She takes an “innovative approach” to this by first “working on the inside” by addressing clients’ self image and confidence. 

With one-on-one coaching available, she believes “that is where it starts, how you see yourself.” She believes that self esteem and self acceptance itself is the foundation of fashion and dressing. She says, “When you know who you are and know you’re valuable and no one else is like you in the world and you accept your flaws and imperfections; that is the foundation of style.” 

She says that confidence can make even a simple outfit like a t-shirt and jeans look like something straight off the runway. 

She starts off by asking clients “Do you feel beautiful?” and believes that this often loaded question is the first step to improving self confidence. She believes “If you own your own beauty and own your own look, you will always look good.” 

This has inspired her newest venture, a video series called “Beneath Your Beauti” guest-starring successful women in Pittsburgh. The first episode was live streamed on August 12th with Crystal McCormick Ware, the Chief Diversity Officer at Duquesne University. The series can be found on Facebook and Instagram and will be available on YouTube soon. 

As someone who struggled with self esteem, Pattin has made it a goal of hers to normalize the heavy conversation around self confidence. She says lacking self worth is a “global thing” and is often a “common thread” between women. However, she notes the conversation around it is often taboo and begs the question “Why don’t we have that conversation?” She says “Let’s share our stories and encourage each other.” It is a belief of hers that realizing that others struggle with the same issues as you will let you “not feel alone” and “can help you on your life path.” 

Along with facilitating conversations about self love, her ultimate goal with Focused Fashion and Beneath Your Beauti is to kill off the competition between women. She notes that social media, and the body standards created by it, often “[creates] negative competition” that has become so normalized that most women cannot even recognize it. She says the “most important thing is knowing who you are and being fully accepting of that.” 

For women and men who are struggling with self confidence, Pattin’s “number one thing” to overcome it is to “kill off negative self talk.” In her own life, “When I stopped criticizing myself, that was the most liberating thing.” She wants others to remember “I have flaws but I am still worthy. I make mistakes but I am still valuable” and “There is still hope for me.”