In Part 1, I covered the more practical elements of style that need to be honed in and specified in order to choose the best garments you can access to create outfits that look AND feel great. Curating an eye for style requires extra attention to technical details.
Still, even if you have access to the best garments in the most customized, tailor made sizes in styles and silhouettes that help you embrace your Kibbe ID, there may still be something missing.
Clothing is Democratized; Style is Harder to Access
Clothing is the most easily accessible it has ever been in all of human history. Only a few decades ago, one’s wardrobe was highly dependent on items passed down from elder family members or special outfits created by a seamstress or tailor. The possession of clothing required ample time, money, and planning.
Now, clothing can be purchased at almost any price point from almost anywhere in the world. Trends dictate the new round of seasonal releases, often overwhelming the consumer with seemingly limitless choices. A dizzying range of options and the influence of social media and the popular desire to maintain a controlled and aesthetically “relevant” personal narratives only exacerbates the consumption of clothing styles and outfits designed for the masses. Individuality and personal taste becomes a matter of fighting the momentum and slowing down in the ultra-fast whirlwind of fast fashion and endless scrolling.
Clothes are now very easy to buy but style development still requires more work and planning.
Personal Style Requires Universal Exposure
Even with the structure and focus offered by styling systems such as the Kibbe system or McJimsey system, the individual is still at the mercy of whatever popular information is available and what styles are accessible (sizing, pricing, locale, color, material, etc). The only way to create a sense of personal style is to commit to translating all styling information into personally relevant terms and filtering out all options that don’t fulfill those new meanings. One only becomes good at filtering out options when many options are intentionally assessed.
To translate style advice into something personally significant, one has to do quite a bit of exploring. Without being exposed to many different items, outfits, styles, and possibilities, one has a very limited palette to work with. Akin to painting a flower in your own style, this feat becomes easier and more expressive when one has awareness of more colors, paintbrushes, and overall artistic styles. Even if the most resonant style requires a limited number of tools and shades, prior exposure to contrast surely refines that unique expression.
Personal Style Requires Inspiration
Personal style shines when it is rich with significance and intention. A wardrobe that was created by only cold calculation cannot shine like a curation of well loved outfits that have been sought out through imagination, excitement, and thoughtfulness.
Well loved items hold memories, aspirations, and values. Perhaps a suede skirt resembles the one worn by your sassy grandmother in her favorite photo from her youth. Perhaps a blouse embraces your body just so and makes you feel like a Roman-Greco statue. Perhaps a certain blazer makes you feel slick and mysterious and instantly calms you down when you don it. These items transcend their physical practicality and become energized symbols or amulets of personal value and importance.
Perhaps your dream is to live as a tousled haired beach bum. Does that reflect in your wardrobe or do all of your items keep you chained to cold, rainy weather and a sense of formality?
Do you feel a special bond with a certain decade in time? Have you infused that into your closet or does your clothing keep you well adjusted to the current times?
Do you feel a sense of excitement when you surround and adorn yourself with ethereal florals and wispy silks? How about the ultra-sleek and modern? The very earthy and lived in?
Personal style reads like a journal- of the past, present, and future in whatever ratios you tend to dwell on. It should communicate something authentic about you…a little bit of who you are, who you’ve been, and who you’d like to be (in values, lifestyle, aspirations, hobbies, pleasures, or whatever frame suits your contemplations). Otherwise, you’re wearing a costume devoid of any personal associations.
You can have the most tailor made wardrobe with pieces that fit you like a glove and harmonize with your skin, hair, and eyes to the highest degree. You can check all the boxes for the physical criteria- the overall lines, shapes, rhythm, details, sizing, and materials. Still, if it doesn’t speak to something of importance to you (and that means authentically to you, not who you’d rather be), your clothes remain devoid of personality and life.
Outfits are a collection of symbols we choose because they resonate with something authentic in us. Are you wearing a costume or are you developing a second skin?
