Sewingplums

Do you feel good in your clothes ? Do they help you to feel you ? to feel special ? to feel confident ?

The basic rule for people like me is :
“remove everything from your wardrobe that you don’t love, that doesn’t make you feel happy”.
If everything in your closet makes you feel happy, you’ll feel happy when you look at it 😀 what a boost to morale and self-confidence 😀
And you haven’t got to follow wardrobe advisors’ advice about what to love. But they may help with suggestions for finding what is good for you.
Though there are many people who prefer to have rules for making decisions, rather than going on feelings. You may find it more helpful to look at some of the category suggestions than I do 😀

From my patterns of spending money and time – I would have to say that exploring style advice is one of my hobbies ! So as usual my opinions on this topic kept spreading, and I’ve divided this discussion into sections. This first section is about using the style categories that stylists suggest for us.

(And if you don’t want to be bothered with all this faff about clothes, then that is part of your style. Stop reading this immediately, and go and do something you do enjoy 😀 )

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Using style categories

Personal Style consulting is a big industry these days – in person, online, and in books. The consultant has a way of deciding what style category you come in, and then suggests clothes a person in that category may like to wear. The 4 styles usually included are classic, casual, romantic, dramatic. Then most stylists add other styles they think many people wear, such as boho, chic, cute.

Ignore it when stylists say you ‘must’ or ‘must not’ wear some styles at a particular age. You probably combine several styles, and you probably find the balance of styles changes with changes in life style in different decades.

If you’re anything like me, you don’t fit cleanly into anyone’s style categories. I’ve tried the systems listed in the next post (and many others), and I don’t fit neatly into 1, 2 or even 3 of the categories suggested. I’ve never found myself liking everything suggested for a particular style. Or I like the clothes but have a very different body shape or colouring from the typical shape or colouring described for this style. In the past I’ve spent too much time trying to force myself to fit into various simple ‘types’, instead of realising that the key to decision making is how I feel about it all.
For people who like decision-making rules, you may find you have to choose for yourself the rules that work best for you.

Stylists suggest options for you to try, in your clothes and in your life. They give you permission to try things you may not have done before. But these suggestions are just a starting point, you choose if you want to go further with them.

The important issue is not which category you are in, it’s how what you wear and do makes you feel : when you wear this do you feel special ? do you feel confident ? do you feel true to yourself 😀
The categories are just a guide in getting to that happy position. The stylist has picked out, from the rich range of clothing possibilities, some styles which may be more likely to help people in this category feel that way.

It doesn’t matter if your favourite garments and accessories are spread around in someone else’s categories. When you feel good about yourself, you’re too busy living your life to be bothered about what label describes you. At best the label just becomes a shorthand way of remembering your priorities, in clothes and in life. Such as : “I’m a 2/4, so I’m a double introvert and prefer very quiet clothes”, “I’m an INFJ, so have a constant tug between kindness and perfectionism”, “I’m Soft and Sporty, so I need practical clothes with flowing lines”. Different classification systems draw attention to different aspects of your nature.

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Starting from what you love

After years of exploring stylists’ suggestions, I know that my clothes need to be comfortable, easy to move in and care for, with soft lines, ‘modest’ body coverage, of high quality in design/fabric/fit/make, in textured light neutral fabrics. For detail I like ‘heirloom’ stitching and cargo pockets. I wear bracelets and pins/ brooches, and flat shoes, and carry a basket or wear a leather backpack rather than a handbag. My ‘uniform’ is a frilled blouse and slim pants with an oversized or smock-style layer or a padded vest.

Which of those descriptions did you respond ‘yes please’ to ? or ‘aargh, not for me’ ? 😀 What does that tell you about your own style ?

Clothes like that ‘say’ quite a bit about me.
some Personality words : practical, value quality, private, a little quirky.
some Style words : Casual Chic with a touch of Ingenue.
I don’t look child-like or dainty, but ‘Ingenue’ is a style word near to some of what I do like.

Many stylists don’t mention ‘Chic’, ‘Ingenue’, or ‘over-sized’. I also love smock styles, and I have yet to find a stylist who mentions them at all. Most stylists also don’t mention vests, another staple of my closet. Or my favourite jewellery items. . .
So most stylists don’t suggest what to wear for those styles, and don’t even remind people that some of my favourites are among the styling options.

A photo of favourite things, which I made years ago as a style exercise. These are embellishments, I wouldn’t wear them all at the same time 😀

It’s not surprising that stylists only mention styles that at least 10% of people wear. But that does mean that if you have some less popular elements of your own personal style, the big style advisors aren’t the people to look to for help with finding out more about your styling options.

The second post in this group focusses on some big styling sites.
Happily, there are many millions of us buying clothes and sewing patterns, so even minority styles are worth the attention of designers. The third post has some ideas for exploring beyond stylists’ categories.
And the final post has a little about checking how well the clothes work for you.

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So choose your clothes according to how you feel when wearing them, not according to which style category they might fall into. The categories are tools. They help the stylist point you towards clothes you are likely to feel happy wearing, they are not an end in themselves.

Of course it’s good to have that ‘this is my tribe’ feeling. But it’s not good to wear clothes that we don’t feel happy with, just because they’re in a category we have identified with. There are on-line presenters who identify so strongly with one of the style systems that they treat the person who devised it as a guru who can do no wrong and must be followed to the letter. But there is no ‘absolute truth’ about style. I don’t find that extreme attitude is helpful for many of us.

Use the categories for suggestions about things to try. And don’t expect the categories to include all your preferences. Make your own decisions about what works for you.

Going through all this is definitely not a quick fix, but it can have a big pay-off.

Very Good Luck with your explorations 😀

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There are 4 in this group of posts about personal style. The others are :
2. on-line style advisors.
3. exploring styles.
4. trying on clothes.

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August 2019

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This entry was posted on August 22, 2019 at 10:55 am and is filed under personal style. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.