Wardrobe

Fair warning: 6 minute read on how you can transform your wordrobe and how your wordrobe can transform your life

The reason is simple and twofold – lack of knowledge and lack of interest. This thread will change the former. The latter may or may not follow. Interest is key, knowledge is crucial.

Note that the lack of money plays nearly no role in style. You can demonstrate noticeably flawless style without spending thousands or even hundreds. Conversely, no matter how many thousands you spend, without knowledge (or knowledgeable hired help) you can dress like a clown, covered in logos, noticeable branding patterns demonstrating utter tastelessness, as we see excessively often.

Ideally, you have both – style comprehension and a budget that can turn your style knowledge into sartorial splendor.

In this blog, we will examine your current wardrobe situation. In order to make any improvement, you need to start where you are and define the reason why you may not be as stylish as you aspire to be.

There are five pillars of impeccable style. I call it Style Parthenon. I developed my signature method in the first couple of years of serving clients in style need. In this thread, I introduce you to four of the pillars, one by one.

To have style, you have to build all five pillars. Four of them directly relate to your wardrobe and your looks in your outfits. The fifth one describes you as a person and how it influences your shopping and dressing habits.

If you buy clothes solely for the purpose of being dressed and warm when required, your wardrobe is undoubtedly practical. You buy garments that somewhat fit you, you think they are okay based on your observations when 
you look around, and you wear all your clothes often. Kudos to you. Most people just buy clothes and never wear them. You don’t care about your looks (because all that matters is arguing with strangers on Twitter about how unimportant your looks are). You dress for yourself while fulfilling (very) basic clothing standards required in your ecosystem.

There are two main categories of you.

a) In your perception, everybody who dresses better than you (your recognize that much), or worse – teaches others how to dress well – is superficial, vain, stupid, pompous, scourge (on women), irrelevant and should just be quiet and/or leave you alone

b) You genuinely don’t care about clothes and other people’s opinions on the way you dress. You have other interests and priorities. You don’t understand why people make comments on other people’s outfits and you believe they never comment on yours because you are dressed just fine.

Your wardrobe, while being practical, may very well be boring even for you. Your clothes may be ill fitting, of unflattering colours and colour combinations. You may be broke or just have low self-esteem, so you don’t want to take risks, in case you don’t do it well.

Getting educated on how to dress well is a waste of time and money. It shouldn’t cost anything anyway because spending money on learning how to dress well is ridiculous. Dressing is a mundane thing, merely a necessity for you. What’s to learn about how to put a T-shirt and slacks on?

To define style personality in short is the type of clothing you enjoy wearing (or would enjoy wearing, if you were bolder) as a form of self-expression. There are eight basic types of style personality, which I will address in one of the upcoming blogs.

You are creative, sometimes to your own sartorial detriment. You buy clothes that you like because they are ‘so you’, or those that are ‘fun’, ‘funny’ and ‘cute’. Because you are an impulse buyer, you don’t wear a great portion of your wardrobe more than once. You shop without any concept whatsoever. You tend to overspend and then try to sell your unworn or rarely worn pieces online. You donate the ‘funny’ and ‘cute’ items to charity.

You seek attention, enjoy when people notice you, and compliment you on your sartorial creations. You like eccentricity on you and appreciate it on others. You are oblivious to what your flattering colours and correct fits are. Your wardrobe doesn’t fully reflect your actual lifestyle due to the emphasis on self-expression regardless of your ecosystem. You expect your employer to accept and respect your clothing choices because this is who you are. It’s nobody’s business what you wear – as long as they pay you compliments.

Your wardrobe is most likely impractical; your clothes may be ill fitting and are of all the colours you like. It’s definitely not boring, especially for you, but can be overwhelming, even for you.

There is a special branch of this sort of wardrobe – Goths and people in Seattle. All their clothes are black, which is practical to them. I blame the weather in Seattle.

You know what suits your particular body type and all body features and you don’t buy anything else. You keep up with the newest trends. You read articles on style tips in fashion magazines, a book or two on details to get your lines and curves in alignment with your clothes.

You think you are at the top of the style game because you know what you should wear. You are either lucky to have a figure that your favourite brands create clothing items for or you have a tailor that alters your clothes to fit your body. It’s a very smart step, by the way. Different brands cater to different body types and you nail it.

Based on that, your fashion forward but style ignorant friends ask for your style advice. They like to go clothes shopping with you and seek your opinion on their semi-clueless choices. The only problem is that you are ‘qualified’ to give style advice only to people that look like you, have a body like you, natural colouring (hair colour, skin tone and eye colour) like you, that have the same personality and very similar lifestyle, not to mention the spending budget. Your advice reflects your personal taste, not general knowledge about style solutions for a variety of body features etc.

Your wardrobe content is very well-fitting and flattering to your figure but can be impractical due to your inability to mix and match effectively – with colour in mind.

You are a smart cookie. You understood that style is a system based on colours. Therefore, you took the most important step – either hired a pro (that would be me or someone comparably qualified) to create your personalized colour palette or you dedicated a certain sum of money and a lot of time to understand the colour enigma – how colours work on humans, why certain colours flatter you while others never will. This in itself is a huge step towards sartorial splendor. Congratulations.

Your wardrobe is eye-soothingly colour-coordinated. It resembles those fancy advertisements on closet systems where everything matches everything in a carefully crafted colour palette. You exude taste and trust in equal measure. Colour is a basic human experience. People notice it first and remember it the longest. Humans create an immediate emotional response to colours in their brains. It happens on a subconscious level in less than a second.

You know it and you play your colour game like a poker player – cool, unmoved by the unflattering colours that you pay no attention to in a clothing store. Your undoubtedly tasteful and exciting wardrobe may or may not be practical. That depends on how well you know your physique and if you shop accordingly. If not, you wear ill-fitting outfits of flattering colours.

The goal is to build each pillar equally well so they can support your style knowledge and implementation. Seek balance between all four pillars. Always.