Finding a Personal Style, Part 01: Finding Inspiration

As I wrote at the beginning of the year, one of my goals for the year is to hone in on my personal style and build a better wardrobe. That may sound a little frivolous, but my intention is to actually simplify my closet with less, but better quality pieces and to wear things that give me the confidence to feel goodin my own skin. 

I’ve always enjoyed fashion and dressing, but I’ve never quite felt on top of what I’m putting on my body. I’m guilty of being a bit of a trend-chaser and purchasing items I don’t completely love because they’re on sale and make me feel good in the moment. But becoming a mom has made me realize how desperately I want to put my best foot forward for my daughter but also how little time I really have to focus on putting together a confidence-boosting outfit these days. And don’t even get me started on the whole new component of practicality when it comes to nursing, the inevitable spit up, and excessive sweat accumulated by the end of hauling a tiny person around all day. It felt like a time as good as ever to truly assess things and make a better action plan that worked for who I am right now in this season. 

I’ve been working my way through The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees, which has proven to be a holy grail for personal style. The book is filled with exercises that push you to take a hard look at what you have, what it’s doing for you, and what you want to accomplish in the process of narrowing in on your personal style. I’ve been doing my best to truly take it all in slowly, starting with a commitment to photographically document my outfits for a two week period. I finished it off with a good hard look at the photo evidence, only to come to the conclusion that I haven’t been doing myself any favours. It was eye-opening though. I knew I didn’t feel great wearing what I was, and the exercise (combined with a questionnaire to work through afterwards) inspired a set of intentional goals to work towards in regards to a personal style. 

Which brings me here, to the next step in the process – gathering inspiration to fulfill my style goals. I thought it could be fun to share this journey, since I know that I feel inspired when I watch other people take these types of action steps. Plus this was a commitment I made to myself at the beginning of the year and I know that writing about it here will help me see it through. This aspect of creating a goal statement and gathering inspiration is one of the sub-steps out of the main goal and a good reminder that these goals don’t get accomplished by waving a wand. You’ve got to start somewhere.

So, with all that said, I’d like to start with the personal style statement that I created for myself after a few weeks of mulling over my daily outfits, thinking about the function of my clothing, and figuring out how I want to feel in what I put on my body:

My style goal statement is an important guide for what I want to accomplish and how I want to get to that point in terms of the function, feel, and intention. But it doesn’t address the details of what that would practically look like – what I literally want to put on my body. Naturally, the next step was for me to narrow in on the visual inspiration for my ideal style.

I want to first say that going through the first steps of assessing my current style and how it is (or rather isn’t) working for me truly helped me feel confident in whittling down what my preferences are. As I started to gather images and compile them together, I was pretty easily able to edit out the images I just thought were pretty from the images that fulfilled my statement and were something I would actually wear. If you ever start this process yourself, I just wanted to say that so that you realize how important it was to actually do the gritty preliminary work. It was the difference in finding what is my style over what is stylish.

I ended up putting together a Pinterest board of inspiration imagery:

Once I gathered the inspiration and laid it all out in front of me, a few patterns stood out to me – patterns that I have come to realize, in retrospect, have always been fundamental in what I wear time and time again. Perfect. I have realized:

• I like striking a good balance between casual and sophisticated (unfussy but clean-lined)

• I like clean and simple individual items (basics) and neutral colours (with the exception of the odd warm tone)

• I like creating contrast and dimension by mixing texture

• I like completing an outfit with some sort of statement piece, whether it be a pop of colour, a single accessory, a bold lip, or a fun shoe

Visualizing this and then distinguishing this has really helped me to establish a better action plan moving forward, or rather, a sort of filter that will help me determine whether something I am considering adding to my wardrobe is something that will actually get worn. Creating a truly-wearable wardrobe, especially one that you intend to be fairly curated and minimal, will take time, so I don’t expect this to happen overnight, but that is exactly why this is a goal I’ve planned to take on over the course of the year.

I’m currently working through a list of specific items I would love to add to my wardrobe and researching ways to find better quality and better fitting items. I’m thinking that this aspect is the next step in the process – one that I intend to share once I get a better footing under it. For now, I’m trying not to rush, as I’ve already seen the benefits of taking my time to truly work through this experience. It feels good to know that I’ve taken a step in the right direction though, even if that step was really only laying out more steps ahead. 

Here’s to taking on our goals – one stylish step at a time!