Reconnecting With Your Sense Of Style

 

 

 

 

As someone women have called when they were in need of having their wardrobe resuscitated and their style tweaked, I now have a bit of an idea of what type of issues go some way to contributing to a wardrobe crisis and identity melt down. I thought it might be useful to share a little of my insight on these issues. Our identity and our sense of style are closely linked, so it’s probably no surprise to discover that we often feel uneasy when what we see in the mirror doesn’t fit with where we are currently in our lives.

 Some reasons why we might find ourselves doubting our sense of style are a change of job or roles, a change of relationship status or a changes in body shape, can you see a common theme; any change can shake things up and leave you feeling out of step with your wardrobe and your personal sense of style. Sometimes much smaller lifestyle issues such as having too narrow or wide a focus on fashion or having a very one dimensional busy lifestyle can have a negative effect too, stifling or overwhelming the creative process of enjoying fashion and style and leaving us feeling lost in a fashion wilderness.

 

Getting your Style mojo back is not about having tons of money to spend, although it helps to have some, it’s about understanding who and where you are in your life and reconnecting with the creativity of fashion and your own personal sense of style in a more relaxed way.

 Our sense of style can feel so fragile it becomes a whisper or a tiny flickering flame that needs fanning so it can burn brightly again and help us feel really alive and attractive again.

  My best advice if you’re at a style cross roads is don’t go and blow a load of money and come home feeling really pissed that nothing worked for you.Taking a friend along to help you choose what to wear won’t help either, not at the very early stages of a wardrobe crisis, because just as it takes time to grow into your nose, it takes time particularly when you have a million things to do and think about or are living in what feels like a vacuum with little inspiration (these two places are very similar) to reconnect with your sense of self and get excited again by what to wear that really projects your personal sense of style. This is not a plug, but when I work with women as a stylist it's really a bit of a process, I don't like sticking a style that I like onto someone else and the happiest clients are always the ones who see the whole experience as a bit of a process not just as me waving a magic wand and helping them look hot, we work together to understand what they want and to create a new wardrobe to reflect them. 

 Think back to your teens - you probably slung anything on with reckless abandon, copied numerous looks and slowly as you grew a little more, experienced new things in life and discovered stuff about yourself, you started to gravitate to friends that were more like you and clothing that was too, till one day you woke up and realised that you had developed your own sense of style and it felt pretty good!

If you are at the itchy irritating beginning stages of a style rut, stomping around with out a clue as to what to wear and the following apply to you - your bogged down by purchases you never wear or constantly wear the same thing over and over because your job is dominating every aspect of your wardrobe and your sense of style or have not purchased anything new in a looong time because you hate shopping and what you see; start by separating your work wear and your partners clothing from your own.

 

  Next you need to cleanse your wardrobe space and create a very tight capsule wardrobe of clothing that works for your personal body shape, forget colour and pattern and just focus on getting the shape right for your body, take everything else out of your wardrobe and pack it away. Keep things clean and simple and and limit your shoe choices to just two to three pairs and your handbags to two also. What your left with will probably feel like a uniform to start with but that’s ok, because in my opinion it takes the pressure off you, which goes a long way to allowing your Style mojo and a love for fashion to resurface again.

 The next step is to commit to not buying any new items for a period of at least a month and up to two, in my opinion it works better if you can go full term on this one. 

 The next two months are all about you enjoying fashion and without any pressure to buy and that includes online, vintage and charity shopping and yes even swapping, you’re shedding the old and letting in the new. If you feel like it jot down ideas or take photos for inspiration about the things you like and why, these could range from anything from a hair slide to a shopping bag , a swatch of fabric or a shade of nail polish, pay attention to what others are wearing and why you like what they wear or don’t. The most important part is to have fun, live a little, get off that hamster wheel, experiment with your make up, take more time socially, listen to new music, try new food and make merry. Incidentally some of the best fashion tip offs I have ever received have been in ladies loos, so loiter with intent, apply a double helping of your favourite shade of red lippy you never know what you might discover about the new you.

 

 At the end of this freeze on buying clothing, choose at least one item that reflects your your personality now outside of your job, it must be something you absolutely love, but it must also work with your existing capsule wardrobe. The beauty of having a very small capsule wardrobe to add to, is it becomes very easy to grow your new look when you can actually remember easily what few items you have in your existing wardrobe and you will naturally want to make these pieces work a lot harder for you with so few options available. Repeat the process next month, less is more at this stage, proceed slowly, only allow purchases you absolutely love in through the hallowed doors of your new wardrobe. Once you reach a point where you have built up a wardrobe that better reflects the new you and your new found sense of style you can take the training wheels off and access all your old wardrobe again in light of your found sense of style and decide what to let go of and what to keep. For me the best part of letting stuff go, is allowing the good stuff/style back in!

 Have you recently hit a wall with how you dress or are you happy with your sense style right now?