How to know if your wardrobe lacks an identity
A random October blizzard had my mood trained on the winter scaries there for a minute, successfully thwarting my inspiration for this newsletter by prompting a lot of homemade soups instead —But I am pleased to report I am fighting back! And so is fall which is now making a second entrance for a few, 50-degree days this weekend. (It's been a lot of, “Oh-well-whattheheck'”s, around here for that El Nino, ya'll. IYKYK)
Anyway, the sudden cozy downtime had me thinking a lot about this particular topic of a ✨f u l l y r e a l i z e d p e r s o n a l s t y l e✨ —Do I even have that? Can we be in a state of perennial realizing? What if I have a few different versions of my style?
A client recently had one of those mega-bummer / nothing-is-working type dressing room experiences and said to me, “…maybe I should have played it safe." We were going for riskier pieces, far outside of the corporate professional look she had had for years and, I gotta' say, it's not unusual for a more commanding style (or any change really,) to set off a few panic bells before you're fully able to grasp the bigger picture. A new look and wardrobe can bring v i s i b i l i t y, (a common allergy for many of us, 😜) and I completely get it—Putting yourself out there can be scary!
But what I've come to understand as necessary for any successful styling endeavor is that it must first begin with a vibe-y, deep dive into self reflection and style exploration. (Think poster boards, glue sticks and magazine clippings in your nineties bedroom, but like, as an adult now who has the internet and perhaps a stylist / guide / pal.)
If you don't do the important work in realizing your style, before anything else, you will most certainly succumb to your doubt and frustration like an urgent compulsion to make soup on a snow day…
I have a lot of tips on how you can personally navigate what to do when the wheels start to come off in a dressing room, and on style realization in general, but let's start with a broader prognosis to help you reflect on whether or not your style identity could use some realizing / rebooting / reimagining.
Of course if you already know you're in the market for a road dawg on a wild trip through your closet, headed for dream-style-paradise, well then you should know I got a killer playlist and everything. Holler atcha’ girl.
3 signs it’s time to realize your style
Gone are the days when a stack of fall fashion magazines helped guide our preferences and shopping carts. Today, it's influencers and algorithms rebutting our instincts with buzzwords like, “Mid-sized Mama Amazon Haul,” thronged with affiliate links and sped-up, try-on reels.
Not to dog on influencers, they're just the new iteration of the entertainment industry that we used to look to for fashion inspo, (and I have zero beef with emulation as inspiration,) but I don't think we stand to make thoughtful choices when there's a constant loop of marketing happening anytime we open a social media app.
Especially if we don't consider ourselves to have some type of style that isn't coaxed by rampant Tik Tok slang, or the next new Free People dupe.
But this is a lighthearted newsletter not a soap box so I digress.
If you often find yourself lost in the fray of suggested content and have a confused, trend-addled closet to prove it, then I'm here to give you a Tommy Boy guarantee that you'll find it particularly gratifying when you take the time to riff off your favorite IG accounts and map out the real pillars of your style identity, “Boy Mom” t-shirts aside.
We've been told all our lives, “Our appearance says a lot about us.” I'm not trying to take the tone of your mom in 2002, protesting your new tattoo for all the “jobs you'd stand to lose”, but I would like to say, (and this is coming from a heavily tattooed person), she was on to something. Not about the tattoos, but about the impact your appearance can have.
In our digital age, the idea goes well beyond our wardrobes and combing our hair or whatever. How we used to consider our “appearance” is now synonymous with our IG grid, our triple w's, our professional portfolio, our ✨p e r s o n a l b r a n d ✨
Taking some time to make your personal style work for you can majorly scale your success and leverage your ideas without you doing anything else. And if you're not tracking on this concept, then you're seriously stunting yourself from stepping into all the good things you've been called to do / be / create.
That's a lot of untapped, “do / be / create”, happening if you're only styling the pieces in your closet one way and only that way. So much of what styling is is just play. People can often be confused with the value and offerings of what a personal stylist provides. “So you tell people what to wear?” And while that is indeed a disjointed perception, I won't deny that personal styling really is pretty esoteric.
Think of it like this: I'm here to hold the door wide open for you to usher through all the best parts of you that are waiting for translation to the outside.
(And also do the heavy lifting— 😧 to 🤩)
If you are someone who is tired of the one-track outfit loop happening in your morning routine, holding only space for function and no fashion, you're missing out! And you probably have a wardrobe that reaches way farther than you realize!
