UP Fashion: Stylist Profile-Wanja Knighton

It was just the other day when I visited her webisode, ‘What to wear KE’ and got a comprehensive understanding of how to rock the Maasai blanket. It is no doubt that fashion webisodes are not only becoming a creative screen format of showing trends, but are also providing the audience with a necessary ‘how to’ concept of dressing up specific apparel. Wanja Knighton is not just your ordinary stylist. She has taken a step further to give you illustrations on how well you can dress.

Drawing from the concept that fashion styling is giving clothes life, she believes that anybody can be indeed, stylish. “I believe that fashion is extremely expensive while style doesn’t cost a dime.”

Through her webisodes, she has found a niche way telling fashion stories in just two minutes, instead of following suit and replicating the usual fashion blogger template. “I decided to use my one year worth of work to create short webisodes that help ladies know what to wear for every occasion as well as reinterpreting current trends my way.” This, she is able to do together with Methodworks production and Katriona music. A team, she acknowledges, has made her who she is today.

Her creativity knows no bounds, just take a look at her ‘Biker Chic’ episode. Here, we see her using an affordable thrift shop leather jacket, that she accessorizes with studs from a hardware store. This pinpoints the fact that you do not have to buy clothes and wear them as they are, as the most stylish people always know how to recreate clothes, or ‘upcycle’ an outfit.

Inspired by Coco Chanel, Knighton’s aesthetic follows a classic and elegant lookbook. She articulates the fashion icon’s popular quote “dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.” In her own words she also emphasizes that ‘“sexiness is not nakedness.”

Wanja takes you even further, as far as her bedroom, through her ‘Bedroom elegance’ episode and tells you why you do not have to wear labelled t-shirts and stockings on your head. Instead, a beautiful robe would do just right. She also gives you tips for the racing track, an episode known as the ‘Sports Luxe’, which basically shows what to wear and how to wear sport-inspired items.

As Wanja Knighton gears up to entertain fashion lovers in Kenya, we can only hope that she will be the next Jeannie Mai.