Notes on Styling | 33 | 9 Style Reflections for the New year
... that might be more helpful than those all-or-nothing New Years resolutions.
My first post of the new year & I’m excited to be back! Excited to share. I hope this year brings you lots of style moments that elevate how you feel about yourself because remember, style is not just what you choose to buy, it’s what you choose to do with it. It's a recipe, a feeling, a moment of creative play that gets you closer to yourself. If you like it here, please consider a paid subscription for only £5/month to support my work for 2024.
I'm excited to be a little part of your style journey this year.
Julie x
More than anyone, I am a lover of the fresh start a New Year brings. I love a to-do list and the energy that comes with a brand New Year. It’s exciting, forward-looking and full of hope. One of my strongest energy elements (the ones I use with clients to help them understand themselves better) is Wood. I am a do’er, a planner, a must be busy personality type. But I also know we are each different. I’ve learnt through many years of Personal Styling that when you understand your energy patterns, it helps you to make sense of what this time of year feels like for you - and in particular how you cope with the pressure that comes our way the first week in January - the pressure to make some grand New Year, New You gesture.
As I look forward for my clients and for you my lovely readers, to the year ahead, I know that the biggest changes to your style will come from taking a slower, more personal approach to exploring it all. In taking time to visualise what you would like to change and why first.
Let that alone be January’s work and maybe this will help..
We have a tendency, as women, to pick at the bits we are not doing, over the things we can do that feel more achievable, but that still allow us to be in our lives wholeheartedly while we do them. Big impossible promises mainly only serve to give us another stick to beat ourselves up with.
So, why not choose something that feels gentler but lasts longer?
A plan that reflects real life and not a plan only for the days when everything has to go perfectly to tick all those resolution boxes.
I also recognise we are each different in what feels right for us at this time of the year - listening to your head and heart is always the best way to go.
So for the week that’s in it, I thought it would be helpful to share with you 9 Style Reflections that I’ve come to believe in over the years. They aren’t really about big gestures but more gentle reminders of different ways to look at things when it comes to your style.
I hope they help you to ease yourself into January and be a bit kinder to yourself. Your doing great.
Your Style is a Muscle.
Much like weight training or running, you get better at putting your clothes together the more you practice you have. You have good days and bad.
You should be able to show up for yourself and your style without feeling the need to be perfect. You are learning.
Just like flexing any other muscle, styling for your everyday life in outfits and items you love, takes time to build. You give things time to see how they feel and you commit to doing it over and over. You make mistakes, you tweak things. After not too long, you begin to feel happier in yourself, feel proud of how you can create outfits you love and you will feel like the dial has shifted.
All you Really Need is Less
It’s so true that once you begin to connect to your style, I mean really connect, you realise how little you want and need to begin a whole new journey that feels great.
Good pieces, well chosen that you play with and build from is where it begins. There is nothing complicated or magical or ‘New Year, New You’ about it.
It doesn’t involve losing 2 stone or completely transforming anything. Just less but better to create more freedom, flow and happiness for yourself.
Remembering, you are in Charge.
Our style and how we feel about ourselves can easily become an outsourced thing, where our interactions with others outside ourselves (social media, family, work) become the main influence over how we feel and what we buy.
This is your reminder that you can be and are in control of what you buy, how you feel, when and to what extent you participate in trends.
It is under your guidance alone that you can show up in the world in the way that you want too. Although we know this consciously, sometimes we really need a reminder. You don’t have to do anything until you feel sure that next step or next item is for you to invest in and enjoy.
All good things take time.
Having Clothes V Creating Outfits
If having a big wardrobe was a measure of how good we feel about ourselves and our style, most of us would be knocking it out of the park. We all know by now, it’s easy to have a big wardrobe but not so easy to be in the midst of a true love affair with your style.
Lots of clothes does not = Personal Style
It’s what we do with our clothes. It’s how we play with our clothes in putting them together in our everyday lives that brings our Style to life. It’s simple maths too. An addition or a subtraction to create a different result. If you add pearls you get more girlie feel to a look. You take away that velvet bag and embellished top and swap for a simple white tee you get a more minimalist finish. Also, if you have the right Style Words to play with and give you a framework for your play, your clothes and how you see your clothes will begin to feel so much more full of meaning.
Your Style Words should be grounded in where you are right now, what you love and where you are headed with your style.
It’s Also How Your Style Words Show Up.
It is certainly a revelation for your Style to identify 3 words you can align your style with to focus your thinking, buying and creative play at home. The process of Style Design helps you uncover yours. But it’s not just about the words, but the order they sit for you. The first is your practical word, the second your more aspirational word (where you want to go with your style) and the third is the one that feels more flexible, maybe trickier to pin down, and more changeable is your emotion-led word. It’s how you want to feel in your clothes.
So, if your words were ‘Laid-back, Elegant & Effortless’ (maybe close to the mood board above?), in most cases it can be effortless (that third word) you can find the trickiest. It’s how you want to feel in your clothes. Maybe you work in a really formal office environment and the last 10 years has been a conveyor belt of form-fitting dresses that feel more girlie. Your journey will be in taking this third word and playing with items in order to create the more laissez-faire look you are after, while not compromising on the feeling of elegance.
My reflection here is to just begin over the coming weeks to think about what your words might or could be and how bringing them together like this might trigger a new approach with very little else needing to change at all.
A Simple Task - Ask Yourself - What are my Outfit Makers?
There are little things we all own that we know, just get worn more than anything else. I’m not talking about clothes either, but items that for you, finish off how you feel before you walk out the door. Maybe it’s a certain textured gold hoop earring, a bag from a certain brand you love that you bought on a whim and now find yourself amazed at how you are wearing with everything.
Your Outfit Makers give hints about your Style Words, the little things that create that feeling your after. That feeling can be anything from ‘minimal’ to ‘colourful’. But the piece you pick for this will help you identify your words.
Reflect on what your current Outfit Makers are?
Anchoring your Wardrobe
Do you need a whole new you or do you just need some identifiable pieces that feel great to you and that give you lots of room for styling fun and creativity throughout the year?
I like to call them your wardrobe anchors. They are the items that for you, hold your style together. I don’t subscribe so much to the idea of a wardrobe capsule. It’s come to have such a loaded meaning.
But Wardrobe Anchors are those pieces that you return too again and again, that you feel you can wear in many ways. They can be anything from a really great coat to an interesting printed skirt or an expensive wool Jumper in your favourite colour. The point is these items usually come when you pick from your own personal Style Framework, once you have a better understanding of what you want your style to be.
Considering the style anchors you already own is a good place to start for the New Year.
Making Your Style a Practice
Think of your styling as a practice and using less words like make-over/transformation/ overhaul helps you to see real styling for what it is - an ongoing cultivation of a part of yourself that builds you up and helps you feel ready to live your life more fully.
It kind of feeds back to my first reflection (our style is a muscle) but I like this one too!
Thinking of it this way also helps you move from a mindset of ‘everything’ needs to change to a mindset of beginning to make more helpful wardrobe decisions month by month, which you can then review over the year. i.e. Book a proper bra fitting.
Real style changes don’t really tend to happen within a ‘make-over’ unless it’s been rooted in something deeper within you. Real style is a practice your participate in everyday.
Realising How Personal It Really Is
We call it Personal Styling but mostly don’t understand enough of how personal it really is. I use the word Design in my work because I believe it fits what can happen.
It’s never just about the ‘jeans and a white tee-shirt’ - it’s all the details of your choice of denim and white tee-shirt that makes it a good addition to your wardrobe. You have the shade of denim (light, dark, medium), the silhouette you like that works for your body (boxy or fitted tee/ straight cut denim or wider leg, wide waistband or low waisted?), the fabric (lightweight and breathable, stretchy, loose), the little details (embellishment or none?).
It takes time to identify and start to feel what personal can mean for your style. True style is about taking aspects of all the traditional forms of styling (colour, body shape, proportion, personality-led styling) and creating your aesthetic. That’s when the path before you begins to fill with choice and brands that fit your personal brief.
Coming next week….
I have decided on which of the questions you kindly sent me, to answer. This one feels good because it feels softer than the idea of a new year transformation but still a juicy big question to reflect on - Love (and thank you!).
“How do you re-invent your style and make it stick.”
Thoughts coming next week. x
See you all soon and sending gentle thoughts of going easy on yourself to you all (including myself).
Julie x
