127. Persona-fication

I've been thinking a lot about (my) style lately.  I've always been into fashion in theory, but as I've become an adult I've been thinking much more seriously about why I wear the things I wear and what I want my clothes to say.  For most of high school and college I shopped in the men's department.  Baggy pants and loose-fitting men's polos and button-downs were my staples.  My clothes were comfortable, stylish (to me), and I think they fit my personality at the time. 

Toward the end of college, I transitioned into women's clothes and filled out a wardrobe of Express, NY & Company, and Forever 21.  I wanted to be cute, but not fancy, and not spend too much money.  I'm also a lazy shopper and don't like to go to too many stores to find what I want.  So I tend to find a reliable source for my basics and then do 75% of my shopping there.  For the first couple years of grad school nearly every top in my closet had a NY & Company tag in it.

Now I've moved solidly into a Banana Republic phase.  For a while I just thought "I like their style" and figured they had good sale prices so it was a good match for me.  But I think my shopping there is mostly about my own style and what I look for in clothes.  I'm learning that I have a pretty distinctive, but exceedingly basic sense of style.  I like "clean" clothes that are reasonably comfortable and still somehow elegant.  Simplicity is key. Figuring out how to exercise that and put pieces together in a way that feels right has been more trial and error than I would expect.

For instance, we've all seen those lists of the "10 Pieces Every Man/Woman Should Own," or something similar.  Here's an example from Real Simple magazine.  The first few items on the list (and the pictures that go with them) could've come straight out of a GAP ad.  Black tank top, white tee, jeans, khakis.  But these pieces actually aren't for everyone.  I don't own a pair of khakis and I don't wear black tank tops outside the house.  They're both underwhelming on me.

I once asked a bunch of people, "What outfit most accurately captures your personality?"  For me, it was a pair of worn in jeans, a fresh fitted beater, hoop earrings and flat sandals.  That outfit is quintessentially me.  I feel great in it.  My style goal for the next couple years is to deconstruct that quintessential outfit to build a wardrobe full of pieces that make me feel just as good.  I've got a good number of them already, maybe even most of them.  But collecting them is the easy part.  Putting them together is trickier.  It gets the creative juices going though, and that makes it a lot of fun.