Easy Ways To Find Your Personal Style
Find Your Personal Style
One of the best ways to feel confident about yourself is knowing your personal style especially when you reach 40. Here are 7 easy ways to finding your personal style, which is not all about wearing the latest trends.
Knowing your personal style sounds like it might be easy enough but in actuality, it can be hard for some to define. Once you know your personal style though you will feel more confident in how you look and feel each day.
I don’t know about you but looking to girls in their 20s and 30s for fashion inspiration is no longer ideal and can sometimes be hard on oneself. They are not a true representation of you or where you are in your life.
Why Do You Need To Know Your Personal Style
Finding your personal style and knowing your personal style is always the first step when editing your closet. It helps you determine how to properly edit your closet. We will get to that in a different post but first, let’s help determine your personal style.
Knowing your personal style can make shopping and editing your closet so much easier. You know exactly what you’re shopping for and know exactly what to wear each day.
No more going into a store and thinking you need everything you see or buying something just because it’s on sale. Also, no more buying an outfit just for one night’s event. If it’s not something you would wear over and over then it doesn’t necessarily fit your personal style.
This isn’t to say you can’t ever deviate from your style, you should just know what you do or don’t like to wear. In turn, this should make things much easier when deciding what to wear.
How Do You Know Your Personal Style
- What’s In Your Closet
- Find your fashion inspiration
- Write down 3 words to describe your style
- Know your body type
- Know which colors you like to wear
- Edit your closet
- Build a capsule
What’s In Your Closet
What you already have in your closet can tell a lot about your personal style unless you are in need of a major clean-out. Go into your closet and pull out 10 of your favorite items that you absolutely couldn’t live without and wear a majority of the time. Look to see if these items are a similar style, fit, or color.
Next, pull out anything you don’t love and that doesn’t fit the way you want to represent yourself. Also, take a look at things in your closet that are more trendy and think about how you feel about those items.
Can you see yourself wearing those items 5 years from now? If not, then maybe it’s time to clear them out. Just because something is trendy doesn’t necessarily mean you need to wear the trend.
Find Your Fashion Inspiration
You can find your fashion inspiration in a variety of ways. My favorite way is to make Pinterest boards dedicated to my style. For instance, I have a board dedicated to Fall style and I will pin all the Fall outfits I see that I would like to wear.
Make a mood board as well if you want something to physically hang up in an office or closet. It’s so easy to print pictures off these days from Pinterest or look through magazines for fashion inspiration and clip out those pictures.
Also, make a list of 3 people whose fashion you are inspired by and take note of their personal style. My top 3 would be
- French women in general, especially Emmanuelle Alt
- Kate Middleton
- Audrey Hepburn
Make A List of 3 Words To Describe Your Style
Now, make a list of 3 words to describe what style you’ve gravitated toward. My 3 words are:
- Neutrals
- Parisian
- Classic
Based on the pictures you saved and the words you wrote down what do they all have in common? Is there a certain color reoccurring? A specific look like bohemian, timeless, or casual. Do you prefer pants over dresses? Heels over tennis shoes?
Know Your Body Type
Everyone has a different body type and shape and knowing which one you are will help in shopping, picking out outfits, and how you feel about yourself in general. You want your clothes to work for you and not against you. There’s nothing worse than trying to squeeze into something that doesn’t work for your body type (no matter how hard you wish it did). Believe me, we’ve all been there but focus on the body you have, not wish you had.
I know that I have larger hips but a smaller waist and am more pear-shaped. I need to focus on emphasizing the upper half of my body and de-emphasize the lower half. Nordstrom provides a good description of the different body types and how to dress for each in case you aren’t sure which one you are.
Which Colors Do You Prefer To Wear
Another way to find your personal style is by the colors you prefer to wear. The easiest way to determine what your color palette is would again be by looking in your closet. A great guide to follow is to have 3-4 main colors and 2-5 accent colors. This isn’t a hard rule obviously but it will help simplify determining your personal style.
The main colors are the ones you feel best represent you and that you feel the most comfortable wearing. My main colors consist of mostly neutrals of white, black, grey, navy, and stripes (yes stripes are neutral ). You want to have neutrals in your wardrobe otherwise it will make pulling outfits together pretty tricky.
Your accent colors are ones that should be mixed in with your main colors in small doses. My accent colors are green and pink. Of course, depending on the season your accent colors could change.
Patterns and texture also add to your wardrobe but these are also items you want in small doses. If you have a pattern on top, then you want to balance that out with a neutral color on the bottom and vise versa.
Edit Your Closet
Editing your closet can be a very emotional process but also very rewarding once you are done. There are many ways to edit your closet but the most simple process involves 5 steps.
- Pull everything out of your closet and go through entire wardrobe.
- Make a pile for donate, sell, keep, tailor.
- Sell items to reinvest in wardrobe and repair items worth keeping.
- Organize everything once you’ve completed steps 1 and 2. Buy new space saving hangers and organizational boxes if needed.
- Rebuild wardrobe with esentials.
Build Your Capsule
After you have the foundation of your personal style, which colors you prefer to wear, and have edited your closet you can start to rebuild your wardrobe with the essential pieces you can mix and match the whole year. Building a capsule wardrobe takes time but these first steps of finding your personal style will make things easier.
Hopefully, this has given you a clear way to find your personal style. Your clothes should make you feel confident and your style should help you enjoy getting dressed every day and feeling your best.
“Fashion you can buy, but style you possess. They key to style is learning who you are, which takes years. There’s no how-to road map to style. It’s about self expression and, and, above all, attitude.”
Iris Apfel
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