I used to create so many lush, beautiful Pinterest boards of what I thought my style was.
Expensive designer clothing. Fabulous photoshoots. Classic art. And lots and LOTS of stylized photos of gorgeous women. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I wanted their style or if I just wanted to look like them.
Sure, I loved that green Dior jacket with the flared skirt and military buttons, and I definitely would have worn it if I’d had or wanted to spend $1400 on a fall jacket. I loved those images of women leisurely bicycling through the south of France wearing floral maxi dresses that somehow never got tangled in the spokes.
But was any of that representative of my style?
Nope. Most of it was a really nice looking distraction from me actually doing the work - and in some cases, even served as discouragement. “I’ll never look like her or be able to afford those clothes, so what’s the point?” Or maybe worse - thinking that because I put the effort into crafting the board, I was somehow representing it in real life.
Dreaming and planning are important parts of crafting your style, and I actually use Pinterest boards frequently in my coaching work and my own style evolution. I think it’s really, really important to dream your dream before you try to live it! If you don’t know anything about what you want your style to be like, you probably won’t have much of one.
I know because that was me. I bought clothing at random and didn’t know how to put together functional outfits. I panicked when I had to dress for a wedding. I wondered why every lipstick I tried looked weird on me. I thought I’d live the rest of my life as someone who just didn’t “get” how to dress, and I worried that everyone I interacted with would know I had no clue what I was doing.
To have an exceptional, immediately-recognizable personal style, you don’t need to enjoy shopping, have a huge clothing budget, look like a supermodel, or be gifted with an innate, creative know-how when it comes to style. You do have be intentional about your ideal look, and more importantly, make decisions based on that look. You need both the dreaming and the doing.
And if you want help, you know where to find me.