there are TWO WAYS to build a personal style wardrobe. What are you doing?

Comments · 224

• MA

  @mariamcdonald3841 · 6 days ago

  Love it when philosopher Hannah joins the style party … everything dissolves away ❤

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• BI

  @biancabriggs · 23 hours ago

  Hannah, I just truly appreciate you always highlighting humans of all skin tones, body shapes, lifestyles, and aesthetics!

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• FL

  @fldombro · 6 days ago

  My job involves a lot of presentations and networking. I tried for a few years to “look the part” but it added so much anxiety to my days. I never felt like myself, I felt like I was putting on a costume and it was adding undue stress to already stressful work events. Now, my style is extremely cohesive. I have different levels of formality inside my wardrobe but everything feels like me and I refuse to compromise on my personal style to “fit” into corporate spaces. It’s improved my confidence so much and I feel much more calm entering work spaces knowing that what I look like matches who I am.

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• CA

  @carl28648 · 7 days ago

  I think the cohesive style also is hard is you have a variety of 'personas' like if you work in an office, skateboard, hike, are in a music based subculture like punk or goth I think the cohesive style makes sense within those activities but not between them easily. Kind of like how you have a tango wardrobe and an everyday wardrobe.

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• RA

  @rachelbh11 · 6 days ago

  I studied abroad in Berlin and one of the teachers was an older woman who wore head to toe black every day, including a black hat with a perky feather, and bright red lipstick. She looked absurd and awesome. I've never met anyone else with such an incredible stylistic point of view. Too bad I could never commit to such a strict formula--I'm an eclectic dresser but she was an inspiration.

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• MI

  @mirandameyer237 · 6 days ago

  I think there's room to treat this as a spectrum, and I'm somewhere in the middle. I have pretty defined boundaries in terms of certain characteristics of clothes (color palette, unfusssiness, pants are the only bottoms I wear, defined rather than fuzzy shapes, limited textures), but not in terms of style per se. Last night I went out in smooth wide leg black pants, a loose ribbed maroon T-shirt, a somewhat offbeat makeup look, and patent black oxfords with platform bright red soles. Today I did errands in somewhat rough-textured skinny olive green cargo pants with a very worn-looking black and silver belt, a tight smooth navy T-shirt, no makeup, and worn-in boots that are like the non-aggressive cousin of combat boots. Totally different levels of drama, different silhouettes, different color palettes, different styles in terms of the common categories, arguably different personalities. But all within my restrictions and they ultimately boil down to t-shirt, pants, shoes. (For the purposes of this exercise I am ignoring layering.) I wouldn't call my style hyper-cohesive - it definitely has rooms and corridors - but it's not unboundedly eclectic either.

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• CA

  @carolefletcher · 7 days ago

  I'm definitely a cohesive dresser - tight colour palette, clean lines, considered purchases. But I'm 63. I don't think I refined my style until my 50s - before, I was playing dress-up much more. But being eclectic is something you have to be careful about as you age or you could end up looking insane. It was a video by Mili Velikova that made me realise what I was doing - I was separating my taste from my style. Many things are my taste - sugar pink, flower prints, frills - but they're not my STYLE for clothing.

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• KA

  @kagitsune · 6 days ago

  I started my life as Eclectic, became Cohesive because of you (!), got bored, and am now unearthing my remaining Eclectic style pieces as my tastes re-embrace richness and frivolity... but now with a firm grasp on my styling fundamentals and what I actually like.  It's been a fine 3 years. :)

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• AS

  @aseriesoftubes-u8v · 5 days ago (edited)

  I do the first. I’m a soft summer, ethereal/angelic essence with a flamboyant natural body. I’m so locked into my colors, shapes, lines, trims and accents. It’s been so freeing. Everything works and the constraint actually encourages creativity. The caveat is that it was a ton of mental labor and troubleshooting at first. I wouldn’t recommend it until you’re settled in yourself and can be honest about your assets and areas of improvement.

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• ST

  @standdownrobots_ihaveoldglory · 7 days ago

  A funny story about too many people with cohesive style: I worked at a museum & the 4 women (including me) all had an identifiable POV: I wear cardigans & usually streamlined bottoms; the art curator wears cool girl fashion of the moment with her tats & bold hair color; the history curator wears a blazer, vaguely Christian tee, science earrings so you know she’s cool, & whatever type jeans she has determined are the thing (she’s on the spectrum & has a system); and the goth Lolita-ish office manager. 1st, the poor goth was accused of actual witchcraft by a small town 4th grader whose teacher wanted to DIE (we understand, home school parents love our prices but not our obvious leftist selves). 2nd, we have a benefactor who is very chic and posh and he normally is very smooth socially, but I decided to wear a blazer & accidentally dressed like blazer girl. We are about 75 lbs apart and a good 3 inches. He could not tell us apart & we realized people just sort of memorized our look. I have worn cardigans to events ever since, except when my mom was honored, & I wore my grandmas dress & she had dementia & I should have anticipated that she’d think I was her mother, which was fine as she then forgot again quickly. I do have a real early 1900s face, I look like it’s 1930 lol.

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• AV

  @average_coverage · 7 days ago

  I see I'm in the minority with my preference for the first method. I guess for me the personal style was a puzzle to solve and I was naturally very drawn to frameworks like seasonal colours, essences and Kibbe body types and I've spent A LOT of time thinking about them, even without trying to do so. Also just thinking about the type of aesthetics, spaces, moments I like and the presence and way of showing up that feels mine. It was not, however, split into the planning part and then the implementation part, more like a spiral where my choices got more and more focused. Eventually, there was one day that I was overwhelmed with my accumulated wardrobe and just packed away everything that was in any way off (size, fabric, ripped and not fixed, or felt off) and amazingly I was left with a ready, consistent capsule wardrobe. So far I love it

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• EM

  @emilyjensenius4289 · 7 days ago

  "Everything is dissolving away, all the time..." getting Buddhist with your toddler in the bath, I'm here for it. I informed my 4-5 yo son at one point that someday millions of years from now, the sun would expand and swallow the earth (he wanted to know, ok????) And he has made it his life's goal to devise a astrophysical strategy for preventing this. Kid does not like change lol

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