How to Find Your Personal Style
Everyone has a unique personal style. You might know yours inside and out, you might have a style that you’ve developed that you’re not keen on anymore and want to evolve it or you might not have a clue what your style is yet. No matter what position you’re in when it comes to your personal style, this blog could well be of help to you.
Here, we take a look at what we actually mean when we talk about personal style and how to develop your look into a unique, personal style that really reflects what you love as well as your personality.
At Shop It To Me, we’ve always been a fan of our clients who aren’t afraid to be unique when it comes to fashion. Following trends is a great way to keep your wardrobe updated and contemporary and sourcing inspiration is a fun way to get ideas for new outfits. However, when it comes to personal style, it’s all about what feels best for you.
Finding the perfect fashion pieces that exude your personality is the goal, but what if you could also find them with a slashed price tag that you won’t find anywhere else?
Sound good?
All the pieces selected in this blog are from the Shop It To Me site, where you’ll find designer and high street brands from all over the world at the best prices on the web.
What Do We Mean by Personal Style?
Let’s kick off by looking at what we actually mean when we talk about personal style.
Elle describes personal style as “an attitude, a way of life, and how you share your personal story with the world”. Glamour talks about personal style in terms of identifying which adjectives describe your clothing, whether that’s tomboy, girly or bohemian. When it comes to fashion publication icon Vogue, it talks about personal style being a “point of view” and a steady, unchanging blessing, like having “great wit”.
Vogue also talks about the potential death of personal style. With the inundation of social media, fashion trends and fads, and over-exposed celebrity, are people just simply copying what they see around them to the extent of diminishing their personal style entirely?
Well, at Shop It To Me, we’re into trends. We’re into celeb inspiration for outfits and also checking out the designer’s new runways. However, we still very much believe in personal style.
For us, it’s all about creating a wardrobe in which every piece exudes a sense of your personality and fits it just perfectly in one way or another. It’s not about perfection and style can absolutely evolve as does our personalities.
It’s all about having comfort in looking and feeling our very best.
Why Find Your Personal Style?
If you’ve never really thought about this before, you might be thinking, why on earth do I need to “find my personal style”. And there are actually a couple of great reasons.
- It will help you to shop better and dress better
Defining your own style will make shopping for yourself so much easier. You’ll notice more and more how you’re less confused by what suits you and you’ll start to source the things that you know your closet is missing. Once you’re shopping better, you’ll be dressing better. And that means every day not just when you’ve planned outfits the day before!
- It will make you love your wardrobe
At Shop It To Me, we want everyone to love their wardrobe and all the pieces within it. Defining your personal style and shopping better will make you love your wardrobe every time you go to get dressed because you’ll no longer be left staring at a bunch of pieces that you don’t really love or know how to style.
- You’ll become more experimental
You might think that defining your personal style will keep you in a uniform, always choosing the same or similar styles and shapes. Actually, defining your signature look can often do the opposite. Although you’ll find your go-to picks easy to shop, it will also open your eyes to new looks and ideas and encourage you to add them to your closet as statement pieces.
How to Find Your Personal Style
We’ve taken a look at what personal style is and why it helps us to shop, but how do we find our own? Let’s take a look at some of our stylist’s top tips to discovering your own style and finding the pieces that are really you.
Body Shape Is Key
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, shopping for your body shape is so important when it comes to style. We’ve even written a blog on it and started a blogging series looking at every shape from pear to hourglass!
Once you’ve narrowed down your body shape, it will start to really help you to find the fashion pieces that suit your shape the best and you can start to incorporate these shapes into your everyday style.
Inspire Yourself
Inspiration isn’t the same as downright copying and during the times that we’re feeling a little stuck in the style stakes, taking inspiration from others can be exactly what we need.
From Pinterest to Instagram, start checking out the people whose style you love and making some notes on what it is you love about them, or not! Once you’ve started to do this and build up a mood board of your favorite looks, you’ll start to see the trends on what it is you actually pick out and like the most.
Note the Details
Details are important when it comes to styling ourselves and when you’re doing the inspiration process of finding your own personal style, you’ll start to notice the details that you love and the details that you really don’t. This is very important.
From hating statement buttons to loving a high-waist, flared jean, even though you’ve never tried one on, the details will start to mold your style in new ways.
Get Your Colors Right
Choosing colors that don’t work with your skin tone can actually throw off a whole outfit. Take the time to learn a little more about your skin tone and what colors work for you with the help of Instyle. You can even go the extra mile and have a professional “do your colors” for you, which will give you all the answers.
Have A Clear-Out
A really important part of building a wardrobe that you love is to start with clearing out what you already have. We mention this a lot in our blog “How To Build The Perfect Capsule Wardrobe” and it’s just as important when finding your own personal style.
Go through each piece in your wardrobe and if you don’t know why you have it, haven’t worn it in the last 12 months, or just simply don’t like it, throw it into the charity pile and donate. Once you’ve simplified what you have in your closet, you will instantly feel less overwhelmed with pieces that you never wear.
Invest in Key Pieces
We can’t all go out and fully replace our wardrobes in one go. It’s just not practical. However, by using Shop It To Me and never paying full retail price, you can start to invest in beautiful quality key pieces that will really help you to start shaping your style. These are the key pieces to start with:
- Jackets
Jackets are important to get right. Do you love trenches? Are you a denim jacket kind of girl or are blazers your best friend? Once you’ve narrowed down a couple of the key jacket styles you like, invest in high-quality transitional pieces on Shop It To Me that will take you from season to season.
- Pants
Pant shapes differ so dramatically from style to style and they can really have an impact on overall look so don’t underestimate. A pair of jeans is never just a pair of jeans. From cigarette trousers to ripped jeans or palazzo pants, what’s your flavor?
- Dresses
Shopping for dresses can be overwhelming because there is simply so many and in so many different styles. This again is so important to look at with your body shape because getting the right fit, length and fabrics are key. Are maxi’s your bag? Do you love a pencil midi? And everyone loves wrap dresses, right?
- Shoes
Shoes can make or break an outfit so never underestimate the need to invest in beautiful quality. From staple white trainers and pointed pumps to edgy brogues and statement heels, find high-end shoes from all brands on Shop It To Me.
Don’t Forget Accessories
Accessories are just as important as the clothes themselves and everyone’s tastes and styles in everything from scarves to earrings is unique.
Work out whether you’re a statement or subtle kind of style and invest in pieces that you can re-wear time and time again.
Finding your personal style is a personal experience in itself. How you feel at the time and what happens in your day to day life will also play a part in the kind of style you see yourself in. Take your time with research and the inspiration stage of the personal style process as this is what will really help you to define what you love, stopping you from impulse purchasing pieces that remain in your closet tags and all.
Keep your eyes on the Shop It To Me blog as we continue to bring you shopping tips, designer sale advice and all things fashion and style.