ICONIC: The Story Behind Katie Julia’s Creative Philosophy and Life’s Work
We are always so excited when we receive submissions from the wonderfully talented Katie Julia, from her beautiful wedding photography, to her own breathtaking Fine Art Provence Wedding or her recent images from Wilden X Duboux, her work is always a feast for the senses.
Stepping into Katie’s world is a fully immersive experience, she truly thinks of every element when embarking on any project, and ICONIC is no different. As Katie moves into her next evolution she draws upon the chapters that have gone before from Bride, Artist and photographer into a new realm of creativity and mentorship. We share with you, in her own words ICONIC.
"Some people create to be seen, or to sell but ICONIC women create to know themselves.
I believe that the closer you get to yourself, the harder you are to imitate.”
- Katie Julia
ICONIC: The Story Behind My Life’s Work
I never imagined ICONIC would become what it has become.
It began as a one-to-one experience and, over more than a decade, grew alongside my own career, my creativity and the women I had the privilege of working with. What started as something I was trying to understand for myself gradually became a body of work — a philosophy around creativity, identity, brand, self-leadership and the way we bring what is uniquely ours into the world. Now, ICONIC is becoming an online education and creative philosophy for women. And honestly, it feels like my life’s work.
Where it began
I started my photography business at 22 and began teaching a couple of years later. At the time, I was an artist trying to work out how to build a serious business around being an artist. For years, I assumed that meant I needed to become somebody else. There was Katie the creative person: instinctive, emotional, obsessed with imagery and ideas. And then there was Katie the “businesswoman”: harder, more strategic, more commercial. Somehow separate from the artist.
The work I needed simply wasn’t there for me, so I began discovering it as I went. Eventually, I realised something that changed everything. I didn’t need to become less creative in order to become better at business. My sensitivity was useful. My eye was useful. My intuition was useful. My obsession with art, story, beauty, people and emotion was useful. The very things I thought I needed to put to one side in order to become commercially successful were often the things creating the commercial value in the first place.
My artistry wasn’t sitting on top of the strategy. It was inside it.
Once I understood that, I began seeing the same pattern everywhere. The work on myself affected the work I made. The work I made affected what people associated with me. That affected the brand, which affected the opportunities, which affected what became possible next. None of it was really separate.
Following the patterns
I’ve always been fascinated by patterns. There have been distinct periods in my career where I’ve experienced immense growth, and every time it happened I wanted to understand why. What had changed before the result changed? What was I doing differently? What had I stopped doing? Was it the work? The way I was talking about the work? What I believed I could do? The people around me?
So I experimented constantly. I thought strategically about the work, but I was also doing the work on myself. I read, learnt, watched, repeated things, changed things, failed at things and took mental notes on everything. And the more I noticed, the more fascinating it became. Creativity affected confidence. Confidence affected the decisions I made. Those decisions affected the work. The work affected the brand. The brand affected what people believed about the work, which affected the opportunities that came back to me.
What looked like a sudden career breakthrough was often years of invisible choices accumulating underneath it. That became the beginning of what would eventually become ICONIC.
The women behind ICONIC
I remember sitting with my own coach in my twenties and coming up with the idea of “Create Your Iconic Brand”. It was never intended to become what ICONIC eventually became, but the word stayed with me.
I began mentoring women one-to-one alongside my photography, and over the eight years I did that work, something quite extraordinary grew around it. I watched woman after woman move through the work and flourish, sometimes in ways that were far bigger than either of us had imagined at the beginning. Their businesses grew, their work became more recognisable, opportunities appeared, confidence shifted and the things they were creating became extraordinary.
At some point I remember thinking, there is really something in this.
From the outside, people mostly saw the finished result. They saw the shoots, the beautiful imagery, the visibility and the women becoming successful. But they didn’t see everything happening underneath it: the fear, the self-doubt, the uncomfortable conversations, the decisions, the standards being raised and the work of figuring out what somebody believed, what she stood for, what she wanted to say, what she wanted to make and what she wanted to be known for.
The shoot was never the strategy. The shoot was the expression of everything underneath it.
But something else was happening too, and I didn’t fully realise it until later. The women were finding each other. They became friends, collaborated, recommended one another, shared ideas, contacts and opportunities, and championed one another. What had begun as mentoring had quietly become a community.
Eventually, we brought everyone together in real life, including gatherings at Thyme in the Cotswolds and The Franklin in London. Some of my greatest memories from those years are of watching a room fill with women who had largely been building their businesses independently, often in completely different creative industries, and seeing what happened when we put them around the same table. The conversations, the energy, the friendships and the collaborations made me realise that the community itself had become incredibly valuable.
It was something I hadn’t expected to create, but it became one of the most meaningful parts of the work.
Your art is your gold
That doesn’t mean the visual piece doesn’t matter. I believe the complete opposite. Eventually, all of that inner work and strategy has to become something. The idea has to leave you and exist in the world. That might be an enormous editorial production, but it might also be one extraordinary photograph, a painting, a collection, a film, an event, a piece of writing, a new service or simply a completely new way of showing what you already do.
Bigger isn’t better. More intentional is better.
One of the things I say all the time is: your art is your gold. Creativity isn’t the pretty bit you put on top of the business strategy. For a creative person, it is one of the most valuable things you possess. I have watched a single body of work alter the direction of somebody’s entire career. So ICONIC has always needed to hold both things at once: the invisible work and the visible work. The roots and what eventually grows from them.
What ICONIC actually is
At its heart, ICONIC is about becoming more fully yourself, and then understanding how to build your work, your brand and ultimately your life from that place — towards something unmistakable.
It begins with the woman behind the work: her self-trust, identity, creativity, beliefs, voice and ability to lead herself. Then it moves outwards into what she creates, how she becomes recognised for it, how she communicates it, sells it and eventually builds an audience around it. It has never been about fame. It has always been about self-discovery and reconnection to your voice, then applying it in a highly intentional way.
I sometimes think ICONIC could be mistaken for being about creating beautiful content because the visual world around it is so important to the storytelling. But the work underneath it is deeply strategic. It is brand work, positioning, identity, voice, visual language, communication and marketing. It is about understanding what makes you stand apart and then building from there. It is powerful brand strategy from the inside out.
There is so much work that people simply don’t do before they get to the website, the content, the marketing or the selling. So many brands are trying to build upwards without ever really building the roots. When those foundations are there, the brand itself becomes an incredibly powerful marketing force.
The philosophy underneath ICONIC is that the woman and the work are never really separate. What you believe about yourself affects what you dare to create. What you create shapes what you become known for. And what you become known for changes the opportunities you attract. That is why ICONIC begins much earlier than marketing. It moves through self-leadership, elevation, brand, voice and visual expression before arriving at sales and scale.
I also think women are often taught business and brand through quite a masculine framework. I wanted to approach brand building differently: through creativity, instinct, identity and self-knowledge too, without losing any of the strategy underneath it. Because when a woman understands what is truly hers, there is suddenly so much more clarity around what she creates, how she communicates it and how she takes it into the world.
The ICONIC Eight became the framework for that journey: SHIFT, PRACTICE, ELEVATE, BRAND, VOICE, VISUAL, SALES, SCALE.
It is deeply strategic, but I never wanted it to be a collection of hacks that work for a moment and then disappear. I’m much more interested in culture, human behaviour, art, identity, psychology, creativity, positioning and the principles underneath why things work. I wanted to create something timeless. Something you return to as you change, because as you change, the work reveals something different.
The Inner Icon
At the heart of all of it is the Inner Icon. She isn’t a fantasy version of you. She isn’t a more impressive woman you need to manufacture. She is the truest version of you.
The work is about stripping away enough of the noise, expectation, fear and inherited belief to actually hear her, and then learning to lead from there. That is why I don’t really think of ICONIC as a traditional course. It is a philosophy, a body of work and a journey, with a lot of strategy woven through it. And you have to actually do it.
Making ICONIC
Because I cared so deeply about the philosophy, I wanted the creation of the course itself to feel like an expression of it. I was incredibly intentional about the visual world around ICONIC.
We filmed at Hepburn House, which I fell in love with not only because of its beautiful heritage, history, architecture and atmosphere, but also because of the name and its connection in my mind to Audrey Hepburn, who has always been one of my icons. The house felt completely aligned with my own brand story and with what I wanted ICONIC to represent.
I cared about making the course as visually beautiful and considered as the content itself. The clothing became part of that language too. Charlotte Wilden designed the pale blue dress using my paintings as part of the inspiration, while the multicoloured watercolour bodysuit was designed in-house and made by my seamstress Zoe. Those details were deliberately threaded through the films because I wanted the visual identity of ICONIC to feel connected to my own artistic language.
And then, rather extraordinarily, we filmed the course twice. We first filmed it in July 2025. Afterwards, I knew in my gut that I wasn’t completely happy with it. I wanted much more structure and depth in the curriculum, so I went back, developed it further and we filmed it again in January 2026.
It was a huge decision, but the second time I came away feeling so happy with what we had created. I think that probably says quite a lot about how much I cared about getting this right. Because I didn’t want to make another online course. I wanted to make ICONIC.
Taking myself through the journey
There was another decision I made while creating it that feels important. I decided to take myself through my own ICONIC journey while making the programme.
Inside the course are the ICONIC Diaries, which document that journey and will be released gradually throughout the programme — almost like a vlog running alongside the teaching.
They document a transformative chapter for me personally and creatively: my wedding as a huge expression of my own visual identity, the creation of my new website, the evolution of my work and brand, the filming of ICONIC itself and the process of releasing all of this into the world. I wanted women taking the programme to see me actually applying the ideas I’m teaching, rather than simply talking about them retrospectively.
Because I’m still living the journey too.
A community, not just a course
One of the things I perhaps hadn’t realised until we opened ICONIC and started speaking to women about joining was quite how much they were craving community. Connection. Access. Other women to build alongside.
That mattered to me because I never wanted ICONIC to be somewhere women came to consume information and then disappeared. The ICONIC Eight is the heart of the work, but I want the experience around it to feel alive too.
The programme is designed so women can move through the ICONIC Eight in their own time, because I want the work to fit around real lives and real businesses. But self-paced does not mean doing it alone. I’ll be coming into ICONIC for live sessions, members will be able to submit questions, and I’ll be taking real challenges and conversations from inside the community and exploring them with the group.
That distinction is important to me. ICONIC isn’t private mentoring, and it isn’t about me personally building somebody’s brand for them. The philosophy is actually the opposite. I want to teach women how to uncover what is already uniquely theirs and give them the depth of thinking and tools to build from it themselves. But I also don’t want to hand someone eight modules and disappear. I want to remain part of the conversation as the work is being lived.
The women joining now are arriving at a really special moment. They are among the earliest women through the doors of this new chapter, but they aren’t walking into an empty room. They are joining women who have already lived this work and becoming part of what I hope will grow into an extraordinary global community of creative women.
We have already seen what can happen when these women are brought together. Now I want to nurture that intentionally.
The world around ICONIC
There will also be an entire world continuing to grow around the ICONIC Eight.
The ICONIC Diaries document me taking myself through the work and applying it to my own life, creativity and evolving brand. ICONIC Conversations will be honest, filmed conversations with brilliant women about creativity, identity, ambition, business and what it really takes to build something of your own. They will turn the camera towards the women themselves, documenting their businesses, their turning points and what happens as they take this work and make it entirely their own.
I see those becoming almost like an evolving documentary series living inside ICONIC. Part education, part conversation, part real life. Something that continues to unfold as the women and the community grow.
That matters enormously to me because I never wanted to create another online course and walk away from it. I wanted to take everything I had learnt from years of doing this work privately and create something that could reach far more women without losing the depth, creativity, humanity and connection that made the original work so powerful.
Why now
We are moving into a time where beautiful imagery, polished words and enormous amounts of content can be produced almost instantly. So the genuinely human things become more valuable, not less.
I don’t want creative women to become better at producing more noise. I want them to become more themselves.
I suppose that is the thread that connects ICONIC back to my photography and now my painting too. I’ve always been obsessed with why some work stays with you. Why you can recognise an artist before you’ve seen the signature. Why one photograph makes you feel something and another doesn’t.
My art history background taught me that long before I had the language for any of this. The artists who endure weren’t following a content strategy. There is something of them in the work.
That is what I mean when I say your art is your gold.
My life’s work
And perhaps the most emotional thing for me is that ICONIC has given so much back to me too. Some of the best moments of my life have been working creatively with these women. Watching somebody see herself differently, find her voice, make the work she was frightened to make or finally give herself permission to build the thing she actually wanted.
ICONIC has absolutely shaped my career, but it has shaped my life too.
I never imagined that when I started helping women in my twenties. I certainly never imagined that all these years later I would be taking everything we had learnt together and putting it into this enormous body of work for women I haven’t even met yet.
But I believe in this work more than anything I have ever created. It feels like my life’s work.
And perhaps that is why I cared so much about every detail. The curriculum, the philosophy, the films, the clothes, the location, the imagery, the stories and the journey itself. I wanted all of it to feel intentional.
Because ICONIC isn’t really about becoming more impressive. It is about becoming more you. Understanding what is different about you. Trusting it. Protecting your creativity. Finding your voice. Creating from that place. And then having the courage and the strategy to put that voice into the world.
That, to me, is what becoming ICONIC actually means.
Reserve your place on the ICONIC waitlist HERE
Credits
ICONIC by Katie Julia
Filming Stories From Eros | Bridal Couture Wilden London | Hair styling Hair by Duboux | Makeup Artist Jessica Rose Makeup Artist | Pale blue dress water color silk by Katie Julia design by Wilden London | Two piece colourful watercolor dress by Katie Julia
ICONIC Event - Community Images
Concept and Photography Katie Julia
Planning & design In Awe Weddings in collaboration with Katie Julia |Floral design Paula Rooney Floral Designer | Associate shooter Faye Taylor Photography | Black dress Halfpenny London | Music Aston Band |Napkins Bertioli |Film/video White Ark Weddings | Chairs & bar The W Collection | Hair & makeup Jessica Rose Makeup Artist | Stationery & illustration Written by Emily |Tablescape The Social Kitchen | Linen Just 4 Linen | Candles & candlesticks Alba Tableware
