Don't Let Style Happen To You

We don’t always choose how we dress. Sure, we can pick specific pieces, and decide how we put them together, but, what leads us to choose those pieces? And how do we learn how to pair them?

A complaint I often hear from my clients is how they feel they’ve spent their entire lives simply “acquiring” clothes—almost as if their wardrobe has just sort of appeared out of the ether with very little meaningful input from them. Sometimes, it’s literal: gifts, hand-me-downs, or even donations are difficult to turn down, especially when there’s no other options for things to wear. Sometimes, it’s indicative of living on autopilot: doing what you’re told, maybe in more ways than one, without stopping to consider what you actually want out of life, or at least out of your pants. Maybe you blinked and realized your wardrobe is little more than a graveyard of your past selves with nothing of you now. Or maybe you struggle to find something to wear when you want to do anything more than the bare minimum of protecting your body from the elements.

What do you do when it feels like your personal style just kinda happened to you?

For those who can’t simply walk into a store and find their size, who perhaps don’t even have any stores available to walk into at all, or for whom shopping online is difficult for one reason or another, your style ends up being, well, whatever you can get your hands on.

I’ve had a lot of clients who, for some reason or another, simply feel left out of fashion. And while inclusivity has gotten somewhat better over time—thanks to the internet—even if they’re now able to afford options now, the issue of actually finding them arises. How do you start looking for something that never even really existed to you until now?