Perhaps you’ve experienced this frustration. You’ve settled on a Kibbe Identity or Kibbe Type, you’ve compiled lists of suggestions and outfit ideas, and you’ve shopped for items that should work with your lines but still…you feel even more lost. Your outfits should work in theory, but when you look in the mirror or play back a video of you confidently walking around in your new ensemble, you feel a terrible sense of disappointment.

You still don’t look put together. Your outfit looks wrong and your overall aesthetic just seems off. You don’t feel anymore stylish than when you first started.

Then you wonder…have you been assigning yourself the wrong Kibbe ID? Are you seeing your own Yin Yang attributes in an extremely distorted way? Is the whole system a fluke?

Although I obviously adore and highly value the Kibbe system, I certainly don’t think that assigning yourself a type and shopping through the suggestions like a grocery list will develop your sense of style overnight.

Style Is A Journey and a Relationship

Style is truly a journey and takes reflection, trial and error, exploration, and studying loads of inspiration. Lather and rinse and repeat. You get out of it what you put in.

Style and any suggestion has to be contemplated. If you want to develop a beautiful wardrobe and cultivate a highly personal aesthetic, you need to not only fall in love with the journey, you need to tend to the process like a highly valued relationship.

Going out and buying shopping bags of clothes at time will NOT get you to your style destination. Style and personal aesthetic development blooms at a sustainable pace. You have to figure out what elements you really resonate with, both in body/silhouette and mind, and cultivate a wardrobe based on true alignment and satisfaction.

This requires many seemingly “fruitless” trips to the shops and hours in the dressing room. This necessitates your own style boards filled with inspiration from an extensive range of sources- from style icons to color schemes to architecture to movies to flowers and anything else that resonates.

Cultivating a Sense of Well Fitting Clothes

Settling in on a Kibbe ID does not automatically grant you an understanding of how clothes best fit your silhouette.

This requires understanding how your own proportions relate to the clothes. Clothing options are not designed to suit everyone- just look at the differences between even a small handful of designers. Some clothes are destined to grace a lithe, willowy body. Some are built to exaggerate the movement and beauty of athletic silhouettes. Others are created with more petite figures in mind. Some lines cater to more curvaceous bodies and some prioritize a more slender stature. If you add in actual aesthetic preferences, the target demographic becomes even more specific.

Clothes are meant to fit you- and you are not meant to mold yourself to clothes. This also means being honest about sizing. Sizing is truly so inconsistent amongst brands, almost to the point of meaninglessness. Don’t worry about the number or letter on the size tag- simply go for the option that truly fits your body.

What Constitutes a Good Fit?

Clothes that fit properly will honor your range of motion. Anything that strains as you sit, raise your arms, bend over, or walk is probably much too small. Anything that squeezes you too tightly and creates indentations on the flesh is also too small.

Clothes that fit properly will still honor your silhouette and the various twists and turns. Unless intentionally oversized, clothes should lay relatively close or flat against your body with no excess fabric.

For example, pants that fit properly should not bunch up or billow out at the waist, buttocks, or crotch, nor should the legs be so long that the knee contour ends up at the middle of the calf. To put it shortly, well fitting pants should clearly communicate the various aspects of your lower body (hips, thighs, knees at the very least).

Other common areas prone to incorrect sizing: necklines, armholes, shirt hemlines, waistbands, overall skirt shapes, and sleeves.

Creating a Cohesive Color Scheme

Color is extraordinarily important when it comes to personal style. Even if you wear garments that fit you like a tailor made glove, they can look off if their colors clash with your own shading and color attributes. If the clothes also don’t blend well or harmonize in terms of hue and intensity (imagine wearing a bright , freshly dyed red top with a powder blue skirt that looks like its been drying in the sun for weeks) the outfit will also seem off.

Please see my Seasonal Color package for help.

Choosing Quality Fabrics and Materials

So the item fits well and the color works beautifully. How about the material?

There are so many fabrics and textiles used in clothing- not all of them will suit your personal aesthetic or even the garment you have in mind. Paying attention to the material tag and how clothing moves and feels on your body is a very crucial process. You have to cultivate a sense of material and figure out which one feels good and moves well and suits your desired aesthetic.

For example, I personally love airy and light items that have a soft and cozy texture. I have filled my closets with very soft cottons, linens, rayon blends, silks, and natural knits. I stay away from polyester, as I feel suffocated in it and dislike the general finish.

Some people adore corduroys, canvas, suedes, and thick cottons. Others love cashmere, wools, twill, and tweed.

Figure out what textiles you are the most content in.

Summary

Fit, color, and material are all three very practical aspects to style. They truly lay the foundation of an intentional wardrobe. Build your foundation on solid ground and only choose items that satisfy these requirements.

A tailor is also absolutely indispensable when aiming for a truly custom fit. If you take joy in the process of highly customized clothing, you can even sew your own items or choose the exact fabrics and patterns for a seamstress to create. Remember, clothing is ideally an art or a craft. Someone designed it and stitched it together with some sort of intention, so align yourself with the sources that cater to you.

Again, this is a very broad subject and I can only offer these general observations and guidelines. If you’d like more assistance and personalized attention, please see my list of services.