After several years blogging about fashion, researching brands, and taking outfit photos I’ve finally come to a place where I’m wildly happy with my wardrobe and it’s safe to say- I’ve found my personal style. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way, and a few tips for you during your personal style journey that will help bring you clarity.
How to Find Your Personal Style
Finding your personal style can take years of trial and error, experiment and have fun with it but also be intentional. I never was until I got older which I think prolonged the process but I’m okay with that. Here are my top 7 tips to finding your personal style and feeling confident and comfortable with your wardrobe, and how you dress.
1. Don’t compare your personal style with someone else’s
For me comparison was the biggest roadblock. I would look at other bloggers style on Instagram or their blogs and feel so inadequate, this fueled a long road of buying pieces and styles that just didn’t suit me because I was going for someone else’s signature look. I felt this need to either keep up or look a certain way to be successful and happy.
Looking for inspiration is one thing, but comparison is another. It’s great to look for inspiration when styling your outfits and when picking pieces for your wardrobe but always put your own spin on it, and make sure it’s something you really love.
2. Take note of styles you feel the most comfortable in
This is a big clue into what your personal style is or looks like. To start, take inventory of your wardrobe and look at what styles you tend to buy the most of and which styles are more for a one-off occasion. I tend to buy a lot of t-shirts and crew neck sweaters, and stay away from denim for the most part unless I’m going for a good street style fashion look. This means I’m more of a casual basics type and need to stay away from anything restricting and not very comfortable.
This knowledge helps a lot when shopping and getting dressed every day, I know what I won’t like and what will make me feel good all day.
3. Take note of pieces you reach for the most
This goes off the point above, take inventory of what you wear the most of and duplicate it somewhat. If you love dresses then buy more of those and think about thicker ones with tights for the colder months. What category do these pieces fall into? Romantic, street wear, casual, modern, minimalist, boho, or vintage?
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4. Look at what you save as inspiration
What outfit photos are saved to your Pinterest boards and Instagram saves, these are typically styles you would wear yourself or at least get inspiration from. What we save to refer back to has a huge impact on how we dress ourselves and what we are drawn to.
5. Define your style type
Once you’ve taken inventory of your closet what category do these pieces fall into? Romantic, street wear, punk, vintage, trendy, casual, modern, minimalist, boho, or vintage? You can search on Google or Pinterest for these style types and you’ll get an idea of what each one looks like.
I switch from season to season, romantic in the summer, minimalist in the winter and boho or casual in the spring and fall.
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6. Find your style niche
Just like with everything else niching down can decrease decision fatigue and give you a clearer path of what pieces and styles to go for, niching down could refer to styles, colours or even brands. I always rotate between a handful of brands because I know my size and what to expect. I also stay within the same colour palette so everything is more versatile. This can provide you with your own signature look aka your own personal style!
7. Always experiment, your personal style is never set in stone
Defining your personal style doesn’t mean you have to stick with the same things all the time. Experimentation is the spice of life, so enjoy trying new things when the mood strikes. This is how we keep interest in our wardrobes.
Once you’ve defined your personal style it helps to create small capsules whether seasonally or for occasions such as work to make it even easier to put outfits together. Check out the post below for a guide to creating a work capsule wardrobe with a free downloadable checklist you can use to make sure you’ve got all of your bases covered.
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Great article! I’ve never really thought much about style until I got older! I just wore whatever! As I got older, I didn’t care what people thought if I wanted to wear a little house on the prairie-type dress! It’s taken me years to be comfortable with MY STYLE:) Thanks for sharing!
I love your perspective Susan, comfort is key. Thanks for reading!