Reflecting Your Internal Mosaic

I believe that as we grow up, we collect bits of information about ourselves. A sunny color here, a favorite story there; we piece these treasures into a mosaic whole, continually radiating outward from the center. Over the years, our shapes, colors, stories, tastes, and ideas change, and as artists constructing our internal masterpieces, sometimes we’ll take a little chisel and dig out a piece that no longer fits. Other times, we simply move outward, appreciating the old pieces for what they once meant to us.

We aren’t the same people we were in February of 2020. Our old clothes feel like remnants of a different time - reminders of a self we may not recognize much anymore. So many women have come to me in the past few weeks wanting their clothing and accessories to reflect a changed interior. Preparing for re-emergence into the world, we want our clothes to say “Here I am.”

Very few of us are born knowing the shapes and styles that help us sparkle. I certainly wasn’t. We’re all born whole, enough, and exactly who we’re meant to be, but we never stop learning about ourselves and the world around us.

You already have everything you need to reflect your internal mosaic and feel over-the-moon about your style.

Sometimes there’s a chasm between our professed desires and the actions we take to bring those desires into reality. It’s not uncommon for new clients of mine to tell me that they’ve struggled for years with what to wear, what to buy, and how to express their inside on the outside. Trapped inside this lack of knowledge and unsure how to move forward, sometimes they were afraid to even try.

Maybe you want to relish the ritual of getting dressed for work, knowing that your clothes will be a point of calm in your workday, or you want to feel polished at the playground with your kids, while knowing that you can still comfortably engage in play.

My particular passion as a stylist is helping my clients learn to integrate their lives, personalities, and bodies into a personal style that feels cohesive and real. Everything has a place here: all of your offbeat interests, your sensory preferences, your day-to-day routines, your relationships with others. You don’t have to do what anyone else is doing.

You just have to be you.

I love working with creative women who want to build unique and authentic wardrobes, whether that means a 30-piece capsule or a sprawling costume closet. There’s no wrong way to do personal style!

How to Wear the Styles You Love

“I love Classic styles like simple jewelry, structured handbags, and tailored silhouettes, but going all-in on Classic styles doesn’t look right on my body type. How do I wear the styles I love and still look my best?”

I hear this question a lot, about every different archetype and season.

Conflict between what you like to look at and what looks good on your body can be one of the biggest difficulties when crafting your personal style, so if this is something you struggle with, read on!

Step One: Ask yourself what you like about the styles you admire

This may sound obvious, but make sure you’re not just reacting to how a celebrity or blogger looks in a certain style. Some of my clients have found that what they’re actually lusting after isn’t paper bag pants or millennial pink blazers, but the fantasy of a different body type or lifestyle.

Get specific. If you enjoy Romantic styles because you can’t get enough of florals and bows, write that down. If you enjoy Dramatic styles not because of a certain shape or item but because they feel powerful to you, make note.

Pinterest is a great tool for this. Try making a pinboard of stuff you flat-out love to look at (not just clothing!) and see what comes up for you.

Step Two: How can you make those elements work with your physical design?

If you love Romantic bows and florals, but they always look funny on you because your body type is more dramatic or linear, look for florals and bows that suit your proportions and angles. For example, you may not be able to wear a dress festooned with cabbage roses, but you can probably find a large-scale abstract floral you love. You may not get much style payoff from a pair of tiny bow studs, but you can find an oversized, sculptural bow-shaped belt or necklace.

If you love Dramatic styles because they feel commanding and in-charge, hunt around for the styles that feel commanding and in-charge on you. That might not be a long and sleek leather jacket with grommets - it might be a knit blazer with a rounded hem!

Step Three: Consider breaking the rules

If there’s a style you REALLY, REALLY LOVE, you might be happier just wearing it sometimes, even if you’re not “supposed to.” It’s unlikely to be the absolute worst thing you can put on your body, and even if it is? Every day is a new day. You might not choose to wear these pieces to important work meetings or big life events, but in my opinion, there’s zero harm in occasionally wearing something you like that doesn’t technically “work” for you! I know more than a few autumns who keep a tube of fuchsia lipstick around the house just for fun.

Step Four: Where else can you enjoy these styles?

I absolutely love blue and white china patterns, but they don’t look great on me and I’ve never been comfortable wearing them. Instead, I use these colors and patterns around my house, in curtains and dishes and paintings, where I can benefit from them visually without actually putting them on my body. Try buying a planner, a decorative pillow, a piece of art, a serving bowl, or a piece of furniture in the colors or styles you love. Nobody says your house has to match you!

Creating an Exciting Style With an Ordinary Lifestyle

I’m not a particularly fancy person.

I live in the midwest, I have two kids, and I work from home. The rhythms of my life are pretty ordinary: I have no red-carpet galas to attend, no holiday office parties, no hot dates with strangers I’m trying to impress. I may not have a closet full of ball gowns, but my clothing still makes me feel vibrant and ready for each day - however ordinary it may be.

Women tell me their wardrobes are boring, they’re in a rut, and they don’t feel like they’re expressing their true selves - and then they say something like, “I’m retired so I don’t need fancy clothes” or “I work from home, so what’s the point?”

You don’t need an exciting lifestyle to have an exciting wardrobe.

An exciting wardrobe, after all, is just a wardrobe that makes you feel good when you open the closet door. It could be a collection of graphic tees and Converse, an array of super-comfy sweater tunics, or a selection of chandelier earrings.

Some of my clients who have made the very most progress with their personal style are women who are retired or work from home.

When you aren’t going to an office every day, when you don’t have to construct your image around an outside dress code, you have so much more freedom! But it also becomes extra important for you to have clothes that make you happy to get up and get dressed in the morning…or you won’t.

One of my clients in particular has made incredible strides with her morning routine this year. She homeschools, works from home, and when we first started working together, she was in a rut where she wasn’t enjoying her clothes at all. In fact, she hated them. She struggled to really “get ready” in the mornings, because there was nothing to get excited about and nowhere she needed to be.

Now she’s playing with jewelry, building a mix-and-match wardrobe of colors she loves, having fun with lipstick, and still feeling totally comfy around the house. She feels more motivated and she’s expressing her personality through her style. When she sends me photos of her outfits, the first thing I always notice is how happy she looks.

Want my help building an exciting wardrobe? I’d love to chat! You can schedule an exploration call with me here.

Your Style is Not What You Put on Pinterest

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.