Recently I’ve had a designer dilemma. The question has come up often in various conversations, what is your style? Typically I would skirt around the question, ramble on for a little while and end up at “I have no clue.” It’s not really an acceptable answer for someone who calls themselves a designer. So I’ve sat on the question for awhile and I was still struggling on it. I thought, well, I have my own style for illustrating. I would like to think that my girls don’t really look like anyone else’s illustrations. But then there is my personal style and I found out that has almost nothing to do with the things I tend to create when I’m designing. I needed to separate the two in order to define my aesthetic. It is much harder than it seems and I would recommend this process for every beginning designer.

I’m going to start with my personal style. So here is what I did. I took some advice from Madelynn Furlon’s blog where she is currently writing a continued story on how to create the perfect wardrobe. Find it here Wide Eyed Legless  I then pretended to purge my closet (get rid of everything I haven’t touched in months, but I’m too lazy to do this so I did it virtually). My first step to defining my personal style was to head on over to my style board on Pinterest and see what I’ve gravitated towards in the last three years. I then made a private board so I could weed out what I’m liking now and see what similarities there were between the pieces I chose. Above are some selections from the board. I found five categories in my personal style that I gravitate towards time and time again: fur, leopard, oversized tees, hats and stripes.

So now I knew what I gravitated towards on Pinterest but was that the same as real life? Because we all know that our Pinterest is not even close to what real life looks like. I headed over to my closet and I laid out the pieces for each season that I wear on the weekly. For summer there are two black and white striped dresses that I wore all of the time. In winter, I’m almost always in ankle booties, an oversized tee and throw a fur coat or jacket over it. I wear hats through every season, whether that is a baseball cap in the summer or a beanie in the winter. Leopard is also a huge staple in my wardrobe and if I continue to buy different pieces with that print on it, I know it will be worn. So far, I have gathered that my wardrobe is filled with a lot of loose fitting pieces but I love adding that touch of glam or feminism to an outfit because I definitely have a girly side to me, which comes out much more in my design work than my wardrobe. You can see a few white airy tops pictured above. I gravitate towards that type of shirt in the summer paired with a ragged high waisted shorts.

I am now at the point where I can define my personal style: grunge with feminine and boho touches. So what was the point of all of this? Well, for anyone in the fashion world, it is important to have a personal style and then be able to articulate what it is and what that means for you. It is also huge plus when you are shopping because you want to invest in pieces that fit into your aesthetic and aren’t just going to sit in the back of your closet. I am a firm believer that you can be trendy and buy pieces that can be worn season after season.

xo-

qk