It’s harder than ever to find your personal style

Fashion brands aren't going to help you find your personal style, you are

I misplaced my personal style during the height of extended pandemic lockdowns. All of the structures that had dictated my wardrobe - work, exercise, social events, holidays - evaporated, leaving me with soft clothes and beat-up ugg boots.

But it doesn’t take a global pandemic to misplace your style.

Image: thegreenhubonline.com

It’s easier than ever to get lost in the fashion racks, by design.

The retail environment has had a seismic shift in the last 20 years. In her newsletter The Sociology of Business, Ana Andjelic identifies the complexity of the current fashion landscape:

When the fashion world was simpler - seasonal trends were agreed on, editors steered consumers’ attention - premium fashion brands competed through a combo of an owned aesthetic mixed with seasonal favorites. But today there’s isn’t the trend. There are many fashion trends, all happening at the same time and all peaking quickly and then dissipating into the mainstream.

Mass-market fashion brands compete in the rapidly changing landscape by quickly releasing runway copies and lowering prices, both of which are done at the expense of quality. Clothes from these brands typically last less than 10 wears. They are designed to make you need more clothes each season, making shopping feel like an infinite game, played at the expense of the planet and your wallet.

With such a large quantity of poorly made clothes, retail tricks, and social media normalising staying up-to-date with every trend, it's no wonder we're all feeling a bit lost.

Style challenges

Here are some other common reasons why you might not know your personal style, as identified by wardrobe stylist Payton Dale:

1. You feel like you have to pick one style, but you like more than one style, so it's all too hard and you give up.

2. You have body dysmorphia, which makes it hard to see yourself clearly and make confident fashion choices.

3. You know what you like but don't know where to find it.

4. You know what you like, and where to buy it, but you're too scared to wear it.

5. You have too many items in your closet, but no outfits.

6. You're not buying items with intention, you're just buying things when you like them.

Do these sound familiar? I experienced numbers 5 and 6. My wardrobe was missing basics that would have improved its functionality, and I bought items randomly for events (like a wedding) or situations (like work-appropriate dresses). This meant that I had nothing to wear when an occasional, in-between event came up, like a night in the city with friends.

What are your main challenges?

The solution is not infinite shopping

Personal style is about more than just the clothes you wear. It's a reflection of who you are, how you relate to the world, and what you value. It's creative work, and it requires attention and intention. As Ralph Lauren says:

“Style is very personal. It has nothing to do with fashion. Fashion is over quickly. Style is forever.”

However, if you buy clothes that only last for 10 wears, you'll find yourself needing to buy more clothes regularly (by design). This creates the feeling that shopping is the solution to the challenges mentioned above. Shopping has become an infinite game with new trends, new collections, and endless marketing messages telling you that the answer is just one click away.

To break out of this cycle, you need to solve the core style challenges you face.

Stanley Tucci makes over Anne Hathway in The Devil Wears Prada. Image: 20th Century Fox

Decide to prioritise your style

The decision to focus on your personal style can be daunting, given all of the reasons above. Many of us secretly hope that Trinny will bustle us into Zara and make us over, or Stanley Tucci will fling clothes out of the Runway Magazine closet at us. Makeover movies like Clueless, The Breakfast Club, Grease, The Princess Diaries, and Pretty Woman all suggest that we’re incapable of addressing our own personal style, and should be adhering to others’ ideas of what our personal style should be. Neither of those things is true. The first step is making the decision to prioritise your style, for you.

Neuroscience studies show that making decisions can provide a sense of control, which in turn can reduce stress and increase pleasure. Choosing a goal like “improving my personal style” and achieving it actively can lead to a greater sense of satisfaction than when positive things happen by chance.

The early decisions I made in my quest to find my misplaced style were not perfect and included some terrible mistakes, but the decision to start had an energy to it that created positive momentum. This lead to much healthier, more productive dressing and shopping habits.

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What’s your endgame?

If you’ve made the decision to focus on your personal style, then knowing what success looks like is important. Success could be a feeling you want to have when you’re standing in your wardrobe or a vision of how you want to dress. It will be different for everyone.

My goal emerged when I was listening to the Articles of Interest podcast by Avery Trufelman. She interviewed Dallas Penn, a Ralph Lauren collector. His description of why he loves Ralph has given me my wardrobe goal. He believes Ralph Lauren clothes “rhyme”:

Avery: What do you mean “rhyme”?

Dallas: Well, I mean clothing can reference itself with other pieces. A plaid hit on a hat can reference a plaid collar on a shirt or plaid somewhere else. So it's about having the items reference and speak to each other and kind of say, hey, yeah, we're not from the same season, but we're all cousins, we're all family here. That's rhyming for me.

Avery: And that's the particular attraction of Ralph, because he references his own world and his own past enough times that he's constantly revisiting and reissuing and reworking his own motifs. You can find a lot that rhymes.

Dallas: I hold onto Ralph because it does change, but just like the earth flying around the sun when it comes back around, it's a little different, but it remembers itself. It has a thumbprint that repeats itself. It's self-referential enough where it's like, man, having something from 2022 that connects to something from 1992. That's a jam right there. That's a jam.

While I’m not a Ralph Lauren devotee, the way Dallas speaks about his collection has inspired my wardrobe endgame.

I want a wardrobe that rhymes, containing items that reference and speak to each other, reflecting how I spend my life and what I value.

This won’t come from following every trend, or randomly buying something because it’s cheap. It requires patience, attention and intention.

Making the decision to give your personal style the attention it deserves, because you deserve to feel good in your clothes, is the first step. Working out your endgame comes next.

Do you have an endgame in mind?

Creativity comes from constraint, and a beautiful wardrobe (and life) is such because it is limited and therefor savoured. That’s a jam right there.

Link roundup

• In case you missed it: my last newsletter explained my being bedridden with Long Covid and the goals of this newsletter.

• Bow down to the thrift gods. When someone finds their dream items secondhand, we celebrate 🎉

• John Green explains how tuberculosis raised hemlines and reinvigorated shoe fashion.

• Buy Me With the Lo On - a short documentary about the guys that stole Polo Ralph Lauren in 80s NYC and created a subculture. A reminder of the power of clothes.