When I look in the mirror, I find that how I dress is influenced by the personal style of certain designers I pay attention to.
Most notable is Rick Owens due to his quote “Trying to talk with your clothes is passive-aggressive”. I interpret this as stating the importance of minimalism and having a cohesive wardrobe where every garment is interchangeable and many of the pieces in a wardrobe can be worn together.
I find the easiest way to achieve this is to abandon loud colours or patterns and have the vast majority of the garments I own be a tone of black. This allows for experimentation in silhouette and texture without having to worry about if each colour or pattern matches.
My main philosophy behind personal styling is finding a uniform template that is easy to wear and makes the wearer feel good. For me, this usually means a pair of pointed, heeled leather boots by Carol Christian Poell, slim jeans by Unsound Rags, cropped black t-shirt with a selection of whatever silver jewellery I feel like on the day. I find this an easy outfit to default back to that still makes me feel confident about my appearance.
As easy as it may be now to just wear whatever is closest and not worry about my body, it used to be something I struggled with a lot. This is because during the figuring out phase of what I wanted my personal style to be I was a lot more experimental with different patterns and colours.
Even though sometimes it would work out, the most notable example of this was a phase I went through of wearing a lot of Golf Wang, which is a brand known for its loud patterns and colours. This look was not always flattering on me, and it didn’t feel like what I wanted my end goal to be.
I find that the best way to make myself not worried about how the proportions of an outfit look on my body is via using an all-black wardrobe as it has the benefit of always looking quite flattering when worn with the right pieces.
My real end goal with my personal style is probably just to continue slowly accumulating a coherent and flexible variety of outfits using preowned pieces by designers I love, and to be able to enjoy how I look each day regardless of what I wear due to the curation of my wardrobe.