Style evolution over the last 5 years

Where my clothes have been and are going

I recorded a podcast episode recently, discussing my style values. These are the three words I’ve chosen to represent myself, to which I refer whenever I’m thrifting or creating clothing. They help keep me focused, when it’s easy to become distracted by bargains in charity shops, or destash sales on Instagram. The difficult part of trying to shop second hand, is that everything can feel unique and one-of-a-kind. It can add to that feeling of scarcity; if I don’t buy it now, what if I never find it again? In reality, there are very few things I can recall feeling lasting regret about not buying spontaneously. I’m more likely to feel remorse about buying something that ultimately doesn’t get used.

Recording that episode got me thinking about previous blog posts I’ve written on this subject. Since my readership has grown over 2024 (so grateful to all of you for being here!) I thought it might be a nice opportunity to go back through my archives and pull out the previous articles I wrote on the subject of style evolution. I’ve lightly edited them, but it’s interesting how many of the points I made back in 2021 and 2023, are still relevant to a greater or lesser extent today. This is definitely a topic I think on frequently, and it’ll be interesting to review again in a year or two (or five!).

Side note: it’s interesting to see how my writing style has subtly changed over the years. I’ll be writing more about this in the future but I’m currently working my way through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and I’m excited to improve my writing,, experiment with different types of blog posts and articles, and ultimately share the process with you all!

Thoughts on evolving personal style

March 2021

I've been thinking about my personal style a lot recently, planning what sewing projects I'm going to take on over the next few months. In 2019 I did Love to Sew podcast's Create Your Dream Wardrobe booklet, a freebie you get when you sign up to their newsletter. It's a short (around 5 pages if I remember rightly) booklet that guides you through some simple exercises to help you identify the types of garment you want to wear, and would fit into your life. It's the kind of booklet you can spend as much or as little time on as you would like. One of the steps involves creating a Pinterest board of your style influences and aspirations, which is the kind of activity that can be a real time vortex. I created mine at the time as instructed but have found it most useful for saving images as I find them in my daily browsing, and it's building into a really helpful resource. I'm gradually honing in on the shapes and looks that will make me feel comfortable and stylish, whilst allowing me to get on with my day without thinking too much about my clothes.

The other main use I found for this booklet was identifying a colour story for my wardrobe, the core colours that I know I will reach for over and over and will go interchangeably with everything else. This has been incredibly useful for me to realise what fabrics I'll wear and love (jersey in greens and blues, you are my friends) and what will become a wardrobe orphan (purple. I've had so many failed experiments with purple over the years).

With Me Made May around the corner, I'm looking at my wardrobe and thinking about the handmade items that don't get regular wear. My Meliliot shirt is probably the saddest languishing item, given that it was my birthday present to myself and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. It feels quite dressy for hanging out at home but I'm planning a few more versions in the short sleeves and I think that might help make it feel more casual, whilst still retaining that cute button-up collar look that I love. I'm also realising that most of my knitwear is quite long, often stopping below the hip and making me feel overwhelmed and fussy when I wear a sweater with a button-up. I'm planning a few knitted sweater projects that will purposefully stop at the hip, with a neckline chosen to wear with a shirt.

The perfectionist side of me wants to know what styles and colours work for me and wear them and only them, never experimenting for fear of wearing something that I'll regret in the future. I have so many outfits that I consider in retrospect and cringe, wondering what past Amy was thinking. Browsing my Google photos for this newsletter, looking back on photos from nearly a decade ago, has made me realise both how far my personal style has come, and also how many surprise hits I have had over the years. In my anxious brain, it sometimes feels like every old photo of myself I'm looking a mess by one metric or another, but sitting here calmly and objectively looking at images of my past self, I can see what baby Amy was striving for. Although I often miss the mark, I can see that each mistake has brought me closer to my ultimate goal.

Past Amy, I applaud you for trying and I will try to take that message forward. I don't have to be perfect, I just have to keep trying and make peace with mistakes being part of any learning process. This is about sewing. This is not about sewing.

Thoughts on personal style evolution

November 2023

(Editor’s note: clearly past Amy wasn’t that imaginative when it came to titling her journal entries!)

For context to this post, for those who don’t know, I’m 37, which I think makes me an Elder Millennial. I came of age in the 00s, when low slung jeans with your G string showing were all the rage. I never personally partook in that trend, but I did go to a girls’ school, so have many a G string burned into my retinas for all eternity. Spaghetti straps, pedal pushers, dyed black side fringes, ‘Ladettes’ and Christina vs Britney were the trends I associate most with my teen years.

I’ve never had a clear sense of my own personal style. If I’m honest, as a youngster in the 00s and 2010s, I was easily influenced by the people around me, tending to adopt the style features of whomever I considered cool or chic, whether that was a celebrity, a friend or a random person in the street. I didn’t consciously copy or emulate people, but found myself subconsciously drawn to the same things as my friendship group. I used to shop my bestie’s wardrobe, only to feel sad when wearing those clothes didn’t make me feel as cool as I perceived she looked. Turns out, style isn’t just held in the pieces of clothing, but in the person wearing those clothes.

I find it hard to parse what I like for me, versus what other people like for me. I still to this day, struggle to embrace styles or items of clothing I like, if, for example, my husband expresses aversion or I associate a particular item with someone I consider ‘uncool’. Even if objectively, that single item of clothing is not the reason they are, in my opinion, unstylish; it’s tainted in my brain.

I envy people who have a clear sense of their own style and strong preferred colour palette. Back in 2019, I used Love to Sew’s free newsletter download, ‘Sew Yourself a Dream Wardrobe’ to begin the journey of curating a personal style. Up until this point, I had bought or sewn clothes based on fabrics I had thrifted (regardless of whether the colour, pattern, or fibre fit with my desired look) or cheap deals in charity shops. It’s unsurprising, in retrospect, that this lead to an incoherent jumble of looks, with plenty of ill fitting pieces, random colour choices, and strange combos. The following year, I partook in Me Made May properly for the first time, photographing my outfits daily and found that process invaluable for starting to hone in on what I like, what I think suits me, and what makes me feel like ‘me’. I sent three bags of clothing to charity that year, aiming to keep only those clothes that fit, felt good, and were within my chosen colour palette. This is an ongoing journey, and one in which I feel more and more comfortable with the direction of travel. In the past couple of years, my bestie used the term ‘androgynous’ to describe my style and a light bulb suddenly came on for me. I’ve never been into feminine styles, right from being a small child. In the recent past I’ve got rid of all my heels and dresses, and opted to wear a suit to my brother’s wedding. Boxy work shirts, unisex shoes, and graphic tees now form the basis of my daily uniform. I switched to using ‘mens’ and ‘androgynous’ search terms on Pinterest and suddenly feel inspired by the content the algorithm serves. Side note: I don’t care what Pinterest tells me about trouser trends, as a Millennial, you can prise skinny jeans out of my cold, dead hands (Editor’s note: fast forward a year and I have finally liberated my lower limbs and embraced wide-leg trousers!).

My problem now is in struggling to accept that the evolution of my personal style is an ongoing, and most likely lifelong journey. My perfectionist, all-or-nothing tendencies (thank you three rounds of counselling for identifying those unhelpful thought patterns) tend to make me feel bad about not having this stuff nailed down from the start. My aforementioned school bestie has always, to my eyes, looked effortlessly stylish, despite having gone through several style changes over the two decades since we left school. Do I judge her for it? No. Do I celebrate her evolution and look back fondly on the studded belt, dyed black fringe, emo-kid days? Absolutely yes. So why can’t I gift that same positivity and acceptance to myself? I look back at old photos and videos of me in my 20s and 30s (some of which are only a couple of years old) and all I can think is judgmental, disappointed, irritated thoughts. “Why did I think that looked good?” “Why didn’t I recognise at the time this outfit makes me look [insert nasty descriptor here I would never apply to someone else]?” “Why didn’t I listen to Andrew when he said he didn’t think these clothes suited me?”. I beat myself up over these past decisions, even whilst rationally recognising that part of finding a sense of personal style is experimentation. You don’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, as the saying goes. In science (my background), even a negative result is considered valuable, since ruling out a possibility is as important as discovering the reason for a phenomenon.

The times I feel particularly frustrated about how I looked in the past, are the times when I remember thinking those thoughts, or feeling those feelings at the time but not listening to them. I tend to have an “it’ll be fine” attitude to life in general, relying on my smarts to figure out any problems along the way. This has generally served me well, but does lend itself to a ‘learn from your mistakes’ process. The problem with learning from your mistakes, is you have to accept that mistakes will be made. If you’re a perfectionist over thinker, mistakes represent failure. And what do we do when we fall/fail Master Bruce? Beat ourselves up over it for many years to come Alfred. No wait, that’s not right…

My counsellor recently introduced me to the concept of your inner child. This part of yourself is formed during childhood and represents the vulnerable, impressionable parts of your personality that often come forth when you feel you have unmet needs. Exploring your inner child can help you understand your wants, needs, and triggers. Healing my inner child means working to accept mistakes, recognising that change and evolution does not represent failure, and that ‘perfect’ is an unattainable goal. This is obviously oversimplifying a complex, lifelong process but you get the gist.

In the meantime, I'm trying to give myself space to experiment and grace to fail. I'm reading and absorbing information on style and fashion, and learning to apply those lessons to my own wardrobe. Some people and accounts I've found particularly inspiring are The Real Professor X and Advanced Style on Instagram. Xander of the Real Professor X, does these fascinating video breakdowns of celebrity style and his delivery is impeccable. Advanced Style is an account sharing fashionable older people, some of whom are in their 80s and 90s. It's so inspiring to think your later years don't have to be all beige slacks and elasticated waistbands, unless that's your chosen ‘fit.

I've followed Elise Joy's online journey for over a decade and whilst our style choices don't align anymore, I find her positive attitude to change very inspiring. I recently reached out to her in DMs, in response to her posting a shot of herself from 8 years previously, asking if she ever cringes or criticizes when she looks back. She responded with her trademark positivity and grace,

“sometimes I cringe, of course, but never criticize! past me deserves kindness just as much as current me.”

So true and so obvious, when someone external to you states it out loud.

I’m excited for this (hopefully) lifelong journey of style experimentation and evolution. I just need to continue working on acceptance and love of past Amy and her sometimes questionable fashion choices. I feel anxious that my current choices will become the outfits future Amy criticises, and that fear can make getting dressed more difficult than it needs to be. But I’d rather continue to make mistakes and learn, than stay in the same place for the rest of my life.

Back to Hogmanay 2024, the day on which I am writing this post.

I definitely feel more comfortable in my style choices these days, and less anxious about either making mistakes in the past or future. I have no doubt I’ll have moments of doubt, experimentation that goes wrong, or outfits I regret. But it’s all a learning experience after all, and I’m excited to see where the road leads me.

If you’re reading this before the bells, I hope you have a lovely festive time. If you’re reading this in 2025, here’s to the new year and all it brings. Thank you so much for being here. I’ll be back next week with a podcast episode and blog post about goals, one of my favourite topics!