Innate Style

By Elizabeth Slein

The meaning of style can be different for everyone. The mental images or definitions it evokes are infinite. What is constraining for one person is liberating for another. This makes style the enigma it is. How do we know what our style truly is? Is our sense of style recursive or dynamic? Is one person’s experimental evolution another person’s soothing return to their original sense of fashion?

Since quarantine, my habit of choice has been over-reflecting. I find myself somewhere between the camps of those who don’t subscribe to trends and those who do but don’t want to. Style has always been a difficult puzzle for me. I believe this attitude I harbor towards it can in part be attributed to my own uncertainty and insecurity. Participating in trends has always conflicted with my body image. But recently, I’ve watched a rise in people wearing what they want and redefining what clothes are “acceptable” for their body type. It’s been inspiring, and made me consider buying new clothes, pushing the boundaries, and going outside of my comfort zone. It appears we’ve entered this new era of truly unapologetic self expression and dressing. 

However, each time I venture out of my comfort zone, the end result is the same. I’m left with a graveyard of barely worn clothes. I’ve tried skirts and dresses, vintage jeans and layers—yet, none of these trends have worked for me. A part of me wonders if I truly don’t feel comfortable in these items, or if I am still believing in beauty standards prescribing me what to wear. I remain stuck in this overanalysis, trying to discern whether I’m being ruled by societal expectations or whether I’m successfully leaning into and defying them. 

My overreflection has led me to revisit memories and past versions of myself. When I was a kid, I distinctly remember not being into traditionally feminine clothes. I always said no to dresses or skirts and felt constrained in anything too tight. My main mission was to be able to go, go, go. The clothing choices of my youth were function over fashion. Nowadays, my priorities are a bit more confused. I find it hard to trust my instincts, to even think in terms of dressing for myself. But, even as I feel lost with my style, I can’t ignore that I have a default for certain clothes. Even when I’m caught in daydreams about my ideal style, I’m in my usual t-shirts, sweatshirts, gym shorts, sports bras, sweatpants, oversized sweaters, leggings. Yet I’ve never considered these clothes as my sense of style. But why not? I wonder where along the way I linked style with effort, that my style must be clothing that upgrades me to a 2.0 version. These thoughts have made me question other’s intentions. For someone like myself, who feels like style can’t be what comes naturally, but rather some idealized vision, this experience is stressful. It makes me wonder if others feel the same or if they have other intentions. Do they feel more empowered by their clothing choices?

This personal reckoning with my own definition of style has produced a plethora of questions in me. It has caused me to analyze style as something more than the clothes, shoes and accessories we wear. What is our style actually? Do we have any control over it? Is it ever original? 

I consider moments when I tried to change my style. When I sought to be a girl who wore feminine outfits, all put together. I planned days to deliberately dress up for school, a distinct break from being my usual, low key self. At the time, it felt like I was improving myself. It felt like my fashion was evolving. But now, after some reflection, all I see is adolescent insecurity and my desire to overcompensate with my femininity. I was striving to achieve what I thought others wanted of me. I was dressing more for external validation than self-expression. 

In all honesty, it’s not surprising I fell into that trap. Our social media driven culture has become obsessed with changes and transformations. They’re the epitome of achievement. We’ve even created the term glo-up to capture its significance in our culture. It seems we are always looking for dramatic transformations in others and in ourselves. So ingrained in us, it’s become a sort of coping mechanism. The phrase retail therapy didn’t come from nowhere. I’ve even noticed it in myself; on days when my mood has stooped low, my first thought of how to feel better is to change something about myself. Whether it’s thoughts of bleaching, dying or cutting my hair, daydreams of buying entire wardrobes of new clothes, or convincing myself to start wearing more make-up. When I’m feeling my lowest, I have this desperation to get as far away as I can from myself, altering my physical appearance as the most immediate solution. Clearly, I’ve absorbed some messaging. But why must we change? What about that is actually fulfilling?

I think this desperate desire of wanting to change is a product of our comparison culture. We see other people and immediately want to emulate them. I wonder how many of us have seen a photo of someone and wished we looked like them, or that we were wearing what they were wearing. I wonder why we can’t appreciate without coveting. I think about the times I would scroll through social media feeds, seeing these perfectly curated images of people, outfits, and places. It sold me a dream, and I caught myself chasing aesthetics. On some days, I wanted to be a person that wore black boots and went to concerts; on others, I saw myself as a girl in a floral dress, reading a book in a cafe.

Looking back, I can understand that, for me, none of this was actually about the black boots or the dress. It was about being my projection of the person in the picture. Deep down, I thought that if I dressed like them and looked like them, then I would be like them and life would be easier. That’s the crux of the issue. It’s true, if you had the two dimensional life of a figment in a photo, life would be easier because it would be flat. That always happy, trouble free person I aspired to be doesn’t exist. The real person is thinking the same thing as me, just about someone else. All of this was more about changing who I was rather than my style. The truth is, I’ve always liked brown boots more than black, wearing pants or shorts more than dresses and skirts. But for some reason, I didn’t feel comfortable embracing myself as I was. I was always thinking about how I could be better, pushing myself more. An upgraded version of myself felt not only possibly, but necessary. 

I’ve since returned to my comfortable habits. On the regular, I find myself wearing loose sweaters or oversized shirts. Style, however, is more than just the clothes; it is intention. The precise precipice of my confusion was that when I was faced with the decision to change my style, I chose to for the wrong reasons. That’s when changing our style becomes a disruption to our self-expression. Deep down we cannot fake who we are. Our identities desperately want to explore outwardly, to break free from the constraints we place on them in moments of uncertainty. At some level, we all want acceptance. But there isn’t a shortcut. True acceptance and self-expression doesn’t come from superficial emulation. It’s when you honor your wants, your visions, your sense of self, that you pursue your authentic style. How you do that is up to you. This is not to say that your style will not draw influence from others, or that it will never change. Whether you are someone who never changes their style, or someone who embodies a new persona everyday, what matters is that you pursue your image with intention and are satisfied with your choices.  

Style can be either: a cycle of change or consistency. Only in taking the time to ask myself questions about my intentions, preferences, and desires for my appearance was I able to come to terms with the versatility of my sense of style.The imagination of style is infinite and liberating so long as it’s rooted in acceptance. That acceptance is up to us.