Creating Your Personal Style: 4 Golden Rules to Stand Out from Trends
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At first glance, it may seem easy to get dressed. With the number of trends emerging from the fashion market each year, one might think that creating your own style is child’s play.
After all, all it takes is to read the latest fashion article, check your Instagram feed, or follow your favorite fashion influencer to stay updated on the latest trendy outfit.
But when you take a closer look at this phenomenon, you realize that to have your own style, you need to detach yourself from trends.
Stylistic trends can be oppressive. By closely following fashion influencers and other icons in the fashion sphere, we tend to copy what already exists, completely losing our artistic sense and personality.
So, how can we turn the situation around? How can we have fun with clothes so that they become an extension of our personality? How can we successfully create our own style: an independent, unique style that reflects who we are?
This is what we will attempt to dissect in this article. By applying these 4 golden rules to your stylistic daily life, you should be able to have fun with your clothes to find your own style; the one that truly represents you.
Golden Rule Number 1: Dress for Yourself, Not for Others
A trend exists because it is popular. And when we talk about trends, we refer to market trends, fashion effects, those that disappear before blooming, those created by trend offices, and designed solely for the purpose of selling and flooding the fashion market.
From these trends arise improbable styles that last no more than a season and are picked up by fashion icons or fashionistas, making these looks new standards.
But this poses a problem: it is because fashion is standardized that it pushes consumers to dress like others. As a result, we dress not for ourselves but to imitate the group or conform to the norm.
And this is the great paradox: if you want to dress like others, you will move away from yourself. If you try to copy trends, you will never succeed in finding your own style.
Hence the golden rule number 1: forget about the gaze of others. Become the actor of your style, not a spectator to whom a way of dressing is imposed.
If it may seem easy, the exercise is not obvious when you are used to letting others dictate your way of dressing. Dressing for oneself requires focusing on yourself, your desires, your needs, and your personality. You drop the masks and what is expected of you to reconnect with what you want to express, to communicate.
Golden Rule Number 2: Keep an Eye Out for Inspiration and Create Your Style
The key to finding your style is inspiration. True inspiration, not the kind you find a click away on Pinterest or Instagram, but that which can be found in every little detail of everyday life. The kind that transports us, evokes emotion, marks us, moves us, and makes us more sensitive.
And it can be found everywhere.
In a movie, a song, in a photo album, in archives, in stories, at a café terrace, in the movement of passing people, etc.
Because if we assume that trends kill fashion, and thus by ricochet, they satisfy everyone’s style, it is counterproductive to refer to them. The idea is rather to detach from them. And for that, you need to look for inspiration where it is not found, that is, in real life. In the colors of nature for instance, in raw materials, in thrift stores, in grandmothers’ wardrobes, in attics, in architecture, in landscapes, etc.
By keeping an eye out in your daily life for what can help form the foundations or details of your own style, you force yourself to open your mind, but especially to compose with your own affinities. And this constitutes the basis of a look that truly reflects you.
Golden Rule Number 3: Think of Your Style as a Whole
Fashion images tend to show us looks that are not suitable for everyday reality. A crop top in the middle of winter, clogs as shoes for spring, patchwork on a summer dress, etc.
However, not everyone has the same daily life, and depending on our lifestyle, we approach our days differently. For example, you may very well bike to work every day. In that case, wearing an evening dress in broad daylight is out of the question. Conversely, your activity or desires may require you to wear an elegant or classic outfit. At this point, adopting the XXL trend with loose cuts and streetwear-influenced clothes is surely not the most appropriate choice.
The weather also plays an important role. You might not wear your little lace top when it’s -10 degrees outside just because it’s the trend at the moment. Just like wearing a wool coat when it’s pouring rain isn’t the most practical.
In short, there are many criteria to consider, but what you need to remember is that it is important to adapt your style to your day, your activities, your habits.
Think about practicality before aesthetics. You will always feel better in a “functional” outfit than in a fashionable one, because it has a big advantage. You can upgrade it.
Compose your outfits for your everyday life, even if they may seem basic, simple, or even boring. But think that you can always enhance it, jazz it up, take it to the next level. How? With accessories and with the right choice of colors. Jewelry, belts, caps, hats, glasses, pins, scarves… Consider all those little details that can elevate, brighten, or energize your outfit. Well-chosen, they will make a difference, as they have the advantage of adding depth, but most importantly personality to your outfit.
And that’s exactly what we want!
Golden Rule Number 4: Become the Explorer of Your Own Aesthetic
If market trends do not help anyone define their own style, they do have the merit of helping in one area. They can serve as a guide for you.
There is no point in denying them since they exist. But you can appropriate them. Then see them as beacons guiding you through your own stylistic quest.
Because it is clear that your style will go through several phases, steps, and attempts. And that’s perfectly fine. The idea here to succeed in creating a style that reflects your image is to think like an explorer.
Try, explore, test, experiment, match, combine… In short, give yourself the freedom to express what you want, regardless of the gaze of others, what trends, brands, or magazines may show you. Take several elements from current trends or from decades like the 2000s or the Seventies, and mix them. See how you feel.
After all, it’s just a game, so have fun exploring. Push your own style limits to go beyond what you know. This exercise requires a certain letting go, but once you engage in it, it becomes invigorating and fun.
And it is by pushing the doors of exploration that you will learn. You will go through fashion faux pas but also beautiful discoveries. This is what will gradually bring you closer to your style, the one that truly reflects you.
But remember that it will not be fixed, just like you. This style, this look, this swag, will change as you evolve. You will then need to explore again, attempt, discover. Ultimately, just like an explorer would.
If we had to conclude, creating your own style is the right balance between inspiration, listening to oneself and one’s needs, and experimentation. And by thinking of your style as an extension of who you are, you will have everything to gain: better self-confidence, a new perspective on your wardrobe, more responsible consumption, and increased creativity.
💡 And to understand how some people manage to appropriate stylistic codes, check out our article on Next In Fashion, the hottest fashion competition at the moment!
Image credit: © Sandra Semburg
