Personal style is often misconceived or is tagged to people who are fashion conscious. However, in real lives aesthetic look affects everyone. On the side note that personal style is evolving more rapidly now, than ever before, I shall like to discuss key points and ways to develop personal style.
How do you know how to style a garment, if you don’t know what your personal style is? That’s a big question, right? Before understanding how to create your style, let me tell you why should you have personal style?
· Limits your consumption
· Saves Money
· Helps to save time
· Create a cohesive wardrobe
· Gives you an Identity – which we all want to create in all the means possible
Limits your consumption: Once you discover your personal style, you wouldn’t fall for Sales/ Discounts. Admit it, we have all been there where we grabbed a dress or two from 'Sale' section and never liked to wear it/ get the most use of it. So creating your style limits consumption of resources, which also takes you a step closer to sustainability.
Saves Money: I could tell you tons of examples regarding how deeply I fell in love with a particular trend and bought some of the wardrobe pieces. After some time it’s no more in trend or it doesn’t look as good as it looks on X/Y/Z person. Understanding your style helps you stay clear of what you want and what you don’t.
To quote an example, i love wearing loose fitted pieces. But it doesn’t suit my Petite frame, this only further dwarfs my figure. Once I discovered it, I stopped purchasing those baggy pieces which I still adore on some personalities
Helps to create a cohesive wardrobe: When you consciously make the purchases and all the items that you own are thoughtfully selected to reverberate with your personal preference, then there is no room for ‘I have nothing to wear’.
As you make purchases thoughtfully, it helps you to match pieces easily. Colors in your wardrobe would complement with your pieces, creating a room to wear one top/bottom with another bottom/top. (To know more about cohesive color palette, check my other blog post ‘How to Create a Cohesive Color Palette for Your Wardrobe’)
Saves Time: After you have discovered your style, you are clear of what suits you, what makes you happy and confident. This takes your eyes off the styles that doesn’t match your lifestyle/ personal choice. You would only look for things that match with the dress sense of locality, occasion and importantly your lifestyle. Wouldn't this save your time in shopping?
Identity: We love to be remembered for something unique, isn’t it? Understanding your personal style and developing it with your wardrobe always makes you look chic and there you go creating your identity.
Once you identify your personal style, you tend to gravitate more towards pieces that match with your existing wardrobe. This exercise in turn creates multiple choices of how to style a piece of outfit.
STEPS TO DEVELOP YOUR PERSONAL STYLE
This section consists of step by step analysis and tips that help to find your unique style.
Consider couple of basic factors such as occupation and the city you are living in, which act as influential points in designing your style.
Location: Fashion collection is majorly influenced by location. Something that’s majorly worn in India is not worn in the US and so is the vice versa. Also, within the country the styles change from one place to another. Consider factors such as temperature, humidity and so on to create your wardrobe staples. Just to highlight, the place I live in is considerably hot compared to several places in the US. So, this makes me stay away from winter boots, jackets that are designed to tolerate ice coldness.
Occupation: This is the very basic thing that needs to be considered while developing wardrobe. Being realistic about reflecting your lifestyle could help save you lot of money. If you are working in a company that has strict dressing rules, although you love baggy tops and ripped jeans, that might not work for you Monday-Friday. So in accordance to your occupation design 60-65% of your wardrobe and the other can be in line with your casuals.
Search for your Inspiration: Find and understand what/who inspires you? To do so, one of the best ways would be to save pictures of your inspiration or pin your favorites. Once you have done this exercise for couple of weeks, go through your saved/pinned favorites
and analyze what comprises majority of your favorites. Most of the times it could be combination of different styles, no worries, I got it covered in detail what to do next.
If you have saved multiple styles and want to create them, look in-terms of percentage. What styles comprise majority of your inspiration pics? This should give you a fair idea of what you like. Also, inspiration boards help you to be creative. To quote an example, if you look the style elements of some bloggers, you might notice how they style one piece in several ways. Inspirations from such posts gives you an idea of how to get the most use of clothes, so you don’t feel the same outfit is on repeat.
How do you be liked to be addressed: Now that you know who/what inspires you, find the details why they inspire you? What do you associate with their styles? How do you want to present yourself to others? They seem like lots of questions, but just relax. Visualize what styles inspire you? What are the three words that come to your mind when you think of presenting your personal style.
Those words could be: Chic, Functional, Vintage, Eclectic, Bohemian, Trend-forward, Feminine and so on. The list can be limitless, but its personal to you and your lifestyle. Once you do this exercise you are another step closer in creating closet collection that you would love to wear for years to come.
Highlight your best element: Each of us have at-least one element that describes us. It could be makeup, bold lips, your hair, flawless skin or whatever. You can identify by taking note of that thing. Observe, what people complement you on? Whether it could be your accessories game, makeup or anything. Wearing them and matching with your other personal preferences will always make you look stylish, regardless of what is currently on-trend.
Click those absolute happy wears: You might have noticed some special times when you look effortlessly gorgeous. Snap a picture of that outfit and use as a reference for future. These act as outfit style that reflect your true personal choice and serve as inspiration to look forward to pull off similar pieces.
Choose a signature piece: There could be one signature piece that stands close to you and that’s the one which comes to your mind/ something that a person could recognize with your style. Audrey Hepburn had her ballet flats and cropped pants, Edie Sedgwick has her statement jewelry, while others could have a hat, watch, eyeliner, hat or whatever.
Work on your sweet spot: Repeat is not an offense. If you have tons of white tees, button down shirts, stripe tees, dresses, hats, hells or any certain item in excess just keep a note of it. The only reason you have excess of it could be, you are happy and comfortable wearing them. As long as an item or two makes you confident, comfortable and suits your lifestyle, dont feel guilty to embrace them on repeat mode.
Identify your outlier: You love playing a colorful game but you have one dull piece that doesn’t suit your style? If so, let go of that item. For instance, you could be someone who like miniskirts/ knee-length dresses, but have a maxi that never made you feel your best. Then ditch that piece.
These are my key ways of finding personal style and developing it slowly. What are your tips to find and embrace unique style that just stands for you?
Let me know in the comments.
Hope you had a happy reading.
Adorable! I love your style. These are so cute and stylish outfit ideas and and can’t wait to try these. Thanks a lot for sharing. https://www.tshirtideal.ca/