‘Under The Surface’ Vol #2 Why do our wardrobes often fail to represent our true selves?
“If there is a gulf between how we feel and how we look, then it can be broadened or bridged by the clothes we wear.”
- Shahidha Bari, Dressed.
We can learn to harness the power of developing a true, authentic, personal style to support our lives, and in that process a kind of magic happens, like a sprinkling of fairy dust.
When I was seeing private clients, one of the biggest concerns women had was how to cultivate a personal style. Some felt it was beyond them; you either have it, or you don’t.
Others wanted it, but worried about being confined, they wanted the freedom to express themselves in any which way. Their wardrobes were a wild ride through the multitude of personalities they had tried on and discarded along the way.
They all knew that they wanted to create their own sense of style, but often continued to make the same mistakes. So why does this problem remain unsolved for so many? In this ‘Under the Surface’ essay, I will explore the relationship between our clothing, how we feel about ourselves and why the disconnect remains.
If you glance back over your life, did your clothing habits reflect your emotional landscape? Especially when living through periods of self-doubt, was your wardrobe a random mix of dopamine purchases? During times of more selfassurence did your wardrobe reveal a self-confident person?
Dressing is such an intimate daily aspect of our lives, every time I would enter a client’s home invited into their wardrobes, I did it with great reverence, like entering a sacred space. All our personas, mistakes and celebrations laid bare and vulnerable.
As Shahidha Bari says in Dressed:
“The garments we wear, bear our secrets…”
Those clothes were there with us through our most personal and intimate moments, during the biggest highs and lowest lows.
What is personal style, and can anyone possess it?
“For me a stylish person is anyone who knows themselves well and expresses that through what they wear.”
The reality is, we all have a style, design elements and colours we are drawn to over and over. Causing us to buy the same variation of one sandal ten times over. But for many of us we have wardrobe baggage we are holding on to, old stories and patterns that hinder us from truly expressing ourselves through clothing.
Whilst there are those, who appear to possess the innate ability to seemingly throw a bunch of stuff on, resulting in a captivating and harmonious outfit, reflecting their innermost self. Most of us need to do the groundwork to develop our personal style. It doesn’t need to be expensive or high maintenance, but like anything in life, there is some effort involved.
“I’m not sure you can be stylish without being prepared work for it, at least a bit.” - Sandy Powell, Costume Designer.
How do you feel about your style expression?
What do you see when you open your wardrobe each morning?
A carefully curated wardrobe of clothing that fully reflects you in this present stage of your life? Clothing that fits perfectly and makes your body feel fabulous? Congratulations if you do!
Some 86% of people are not happy when they look at their wardrobe, or simply haven’t worn anywhere between 50-80% of their wardrobe in the last 12 months. Perfectly illustrating the 80/20 rule, where we only wear roughly 20% of our wardrobe.
Interestingly, from my anecdotal experience, it also reflects how people spend their clothing budget too. Often spending the largest portion of money on the items they wear least. That special event dress, those stunning shoes that get dusted off occasionally.
Yet the casual shoes we throw on every day are not the shoes that bring us our deepest joy, those ‘special ones’ are kept safely unworn in our closet. Why wont we allow ourselves to have the very best every day?
The Roadblocks Preventing Our Style Expression
So why do we only wear 20% of our wardrobe? Why are we filling our closets with clothes that we don’t end up wearing.
Over consumption?
Not discerning enough when we buy an item?
Unsure of what clothing designs we like or suit us?
Major life changes affecting our wardrobe?
Weight changes?
Our style choices changing?
Preconceived views what you can and can’t wear (childhood)
Dopamine hit purchases regretted later?
Impractical clothing purchases
Likely it’s a variety of these reasons and more.
As we experience major life challenges or big changes that cause us to question our whole identity – who am I really?
This often leaves us staring in the mirror looking at our clothing wondering, are these clothes really me anymore? A divorce, a move to a different country, a change of career, becoming a mother, all these significant events can affect our relationship to our wardrobe.
Not to mention the fact, us humans are sentimental beings, many people find it hard to let go of ‘stuff’ that reminds us of special events, or a certain time in our life.
As Shahidha Bari says in Dressed, “We outgrow (our) clothes of course, and yet they stay with us, as though their fibers were imperceptibly threaded into our memory, winding through our experiences.”²
For many of us we have self-censored our clothing choices, sometimes due to societal expectations, or opinions of family members growing up. “Oh, you mustn’t ever wear yellow…” or, “in our family we have very thick ankles, we don’t wear these kinds of skirts.…” The list goes on.
Or perhaps, your partner has strong opinions on your clothing choices and what they consider attractive.
Sometimes there is guilt around spending time on our appearance. The message that intellectual and intelligent women don’t waste time on fashion, you can be one or the other, not both fashionable and intellectual.
“I learned a lesson about Western culture: Women who wanted to be taken seriously were supposed to substantiate their seriousness with a studied indifference to appearance. For serious writers in particular, it was better not to dress well at all…” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie³.
Other times we have used shopping as a crutch, a way to fill a void in our lives and we begin to associate style with guilty overspending. For others there are challenging body image stories we can’t seem to let go of. We won’t allow ourselves to dress beautifully, until we are a certain size, a constant punishment as we open our wardrobe daily.
Or sometimes the items in our wardrobe just aren't functional, they don't support the activities we do every day. After all, our clothing needs to fulfill a practical function as well.
How does an alignment between SELF & STYLE enhance our lives?
“It was an eureka moment for me, the realization that I could change how I felt about myself by playing with the relationship between my clothes, my reflection and my emotions.”
Let’s face it, we are bombarded with a multitude of messages on what we need to do for our self-care. It’s overwhelming and we don’t need more stuff to add to our ever growing to do list. What’s the point in taking time to consciously cultivate a personal style?
When we take time to get curious about what lights us up and we have the courage to express our authentic self through clothing, all sorts of magic happens. When we develop more discipline and stop settling for that will do and only allow pieces into our wardrobe that we truly love, there is a transformation as much psychological, as material.
Some people notice significant and concrete changes, they finally get the job promotion, their business levels up, or revenue increases. Others experience a positive shift in a significant relationship, they expand their community, more opportunities seem to appear, or other times a deeper sense of confidence radiates from our being, we just ‘feel’ better.. People often say, ‘you look really well’, but they can’t put their finger on why, it’s because you are expressing your true self.
As your eye becomes more discerning, you waste less money on purchases that sit hopefully in your wardrobe yet never selected. Your wardrobe becomes more edited, you end up with less stuff, surely the ultimate in being sustainable.
Instead of fighting your way through a mish mash of different wardrobe personalities, you begin to have a style vision which means daily dressing can be time efficient, easeful and joyful in the mornings, as opposed to a frantic scramble.
As people’s wardrobes align more fully with themselves, people feel more confident, new jobs land, a new hobby is taken up, relationships elevate, you feel a sense of ease.
How To Start Re-Alignment Between True Self & Style
There are of course a multitude of ways to embark on the holy grail of a signature style. Whilst it does require some effort and time, it does not have to be complicated, costly or restrictive. Some people need a lot of freedom to express their multidimensional selves, whilst others aspire to a sharply edited closet, like a daily uniform. All is possible and everything in between.
Before you begin frantically pinning vision boards, or manically throwing out clothes or hitting the stores, take a breath, make a cup of tea. You need to spend time in your own closet, herein lies hidden clues as to your innate style, you need to look within first. These clues will help you unearth your style character from a deeper place.
I love Allison Bornstein’s closet editing method in her book ‘Wear it Well’. One of the exercises she gets you do, is to pull out all your ‘regular’ outfits. This is an interesting and enlightening exercise, you must be honest, pull everything out you grab on a weekly basis to wear, accessories and shoes too. This is not what you ‘think’ you should wear, or ‘hope’ to wear, be honest, it’s what you actually wear.
Once you see this pile, the clothes you wear on a weekly basis, you can start to get a realistic picture of your style character as it is currently. You will need to be gentle with yourself at this stage. Don’t spiral into judgment. What are you selecting again and again? Where are the repeated motifs you love and wear? What are the things you love, but don’t wear? What are the failed purchases, never worn?
“The clothes we love are like friends, they bear the softness of wear, skimming the various planes of our bodies, recalling proportions that they seem almost to have learned by memory..” Dressed, The Secret life of clothes.⁴
I take this further and ask you to assess your items by their 5 design elements, colour, shape, scale, material and pattern. Learning to systematically assess clothing by each of these elements, will make you more discerning, start to have a deeper understanding of design and give you a kind of loose structure to work in. Without any framework things get very chaotic in our wardrobes.
‘If your closet bums you out, it’s because no one has taught you how to relate to it of how to take care of it…. I am not talking about tidiness. I’m talking about taking the time to pay attention to your own needs, tastes, desires – to truly listen to yourself - in a way that enables you to create and maintain a wardrobe that brings you joy.’
Allison Bornstein then goes into another exercise of identifying what you don’t wear in your wardrobe. This idea of identifying your ‘never wear’ items is also central to Andrea Cheong’s book, ‘Why don’t I have anything to wear?’ and her Mindful Monday method. Analyzing what we don’t like in our wardrobe is one of the most powerful tools we can use, to understand our innate style and stop us repeating the same mistakes.
I would urge you to pay particular attention to the design element of material. It’s an oft overlooked element of why certain pieces stay unworn in our wardrobes. How many times do we love the colour and shape, but the material is too sheer making it impossible to find appropriate underwear. Or it’s too itchy and synthetic, or it's too heavy for the climate we live in, or it's too shiny and really we like matte finishes, the list goes on.
The fabric must be functional for your lifestyle.
We are sentimental beings, many items we feel pained to part with. ‘Even the most loved gowns will languish in a closet one day. If we imagine that faintest brush with their faded sheens will recall some residue of that old promise, returning to them brings with it the realization of loss too…What remains is the desire for the glory these garments once brought.’⁵
Too many fashion characters in your wardrobe will turn you into a persona, rather than illuminating your true essence. We can’t be all things to everyone, sometimes we must take a stand, and say this is me – take it or leave it. This too requires courage, not everyone might like your style choices.
Of course, working with a personal stylist one-to-one is a fast track to developing your style, they will guide you, illuminate things you can’t see easily and have an in-depth knowledge of brands, colour theory, support you with your roadblocks and guide you on any technical aspects of dressing. It’s important to find someone that wants to support you, unearth you, it’s never about them imposing their style ideals on you. It’s never about whether the stylist even likes it in fact.
My Style Journey
I have some clear memories of hitting stuck points in my style. After university when I started working, I started to dress how I thought a working person should dress.
Next was arriving in Hong Kong in my early thirties, everyone dressed in such dark colours in Hong Kong and China, their outfits were conservative, a world away from the eclectic and liberal use of colour in London, where literally any style goes, and no one blinks an eye. I was lost in a sea of black and white tailoring. So, I dyed my hair a shade darker brown, straightened out its natural wave and darkened my clothing for the office, to camouflage myself in this new and foreign Asian metropolis.
The British TV presenter, Miquita Oliver shared a similar experience, where she found herself at the start of her TV career dressing how she thought a presenter should dress. But she said, ‘I felt a very long way from myself. I had lost touch with my style inheritance – both the Caribbean preppy look and the secondhand clothes obsession. I wasn’t dressing honestly.’ Miquita felt like she hiding and conforming. I had felt the same.
More recently, after the birth of my third child, I found the image of me staring back at myself and wondering who this stranger in my bathroom was. Where had I disappeared to, amongst the endless play-dates, swimming parties with kids, kindergarten gossips with mums over coffee, endless cupcake baking and sweaty afternoons in playgrounds with a gaggle of kids and mums.
I never really grew up with much style guidance, but I did endlessly visit the theatre and frequently go to art galleries from a young age, which was the beginning of my appreciation of colour and the elements of design.
My paternal Grandma loved style and no matter her life situation, always appeared well dressed and groomed. It was her armor for the world, it was the image she presented of our family to the outside world, and she had strict codes of conduct.
Her style was that of a typical southern Mediterranean woman, glamourous, conservative and meticulous, lots of black and gold.
She despaired of me wandering around Athens in my ripped London Denim, whispering to me if I needed money to buy new jeans.
Whilst our style undoubtedly evolves, are there foundational elements that always remain part of our expression?
“The things we loved between the ages of twelve and sixteen leave indelible marks on ourselves and our style.”
My style is not the same in my 40s as it was in my 20s, but there are common elements and themes from both eras. I see that more clearly as I unearth my style at a deeper level as the years pass. A favourite pair of trousers I have now, is very similar, if not the same, as a favourite pair I wore in my early 20s, but styled differently.
The colour palette I was always drawn to, is the same since childhood. For many years I experimented with colours, influenced by trends, music culture, peers, fashion magazines and so on. But in later years I gave myself full permission to return to this palette. Coming back to it felt like coming home to myself.
Our style mostly certainly evolves and is expressed differently at different points in our lives. Change is ever present. But I also believe we undoubtedly have a style blueprint that is immutable, much like an energetic blueprint.
Conclusion
Once you have spent time in your wardrobe exploring the 5 elements of design in the pieces you like and don't like, you will begin to form a picture of your innate style. This is your foundational place to begin this journey of self and style.
As you begin to spend the majority of your clothing budget on everyday items, rather than the saving the budget for the ‘special’ items, you receive that dopamin hit or joy as you dress daily. You don't need to constantly visit the stores or purchase things online to create this excitement. Your wardrobe is filled with the pieces you actually wear reversing that 80/20 rule. Changing this mindset is key to feeling different about your wardrobe.
Many items remain unused as they don’t serve their practical purpose very well. Clothing must fulfill its functional purpose, keep us warm, or cool, allow us to move as we need to throughout the day, and be appropriate to the tasks we will carry out (in general). If we have to sit in aircon meeting rooms all day and yet our suits are flimsy and light and we feel cold, no matter how much we spent on those items, we may hesitate to reach for them in our wardrobe.
Style and our relationship to clothing is complex and nuanced, it can’t be separated from other aspects of our lives. Our roadblocks to style often reflect back to us, that we are out of alignment in other areas of our life. I have seen and experienced how discovering our true style self can be a catalyst to live out a life more fully aligned, giving us the confidence to pursue and manifest our deepest dreams and desires.
[1]Style & Substance – Bay Garnett
[2]Dressed - The secret life of clothes - Shahidha Bari.
[3]Style & Substance -Bay Garnett
[4]Dressed - The Secret Life of Clothes by Shahidha Bari.
[5] Dressed - The Secret Life of Clothes by Shahidha Bari.