There are so many ways to tell women we’re doing something wrong.
Here’s someone to tell you why your bangs don’t frame your face right. Here’s someone else to tell you why your clothes don’t make you look skinny. Here’s a bunch of someones to tell you why you look 45 when you’re only 26. Here’s someone else to tell you why your favorite color makes you look like you’ve got dysentery. It truly never ends.
Part of why I was drawn to styling—not just in the official sense nearly a decade ago when I started my business, but spiritually, years and years before I was even really cognizant of what it was—was reading fashion magazines, consuming fashion media like What Not To Wear and Fashion Police, and existing in a body far more “developed” than most for my age, and realizing just how normal it is to browbeat women into conforming to ever-changing standards, and how crushing the pressure on women to do everything exactly right when what’s right is constantly just out of reach. Thin brows, thick brows; heavy makeup, no makeup-makeup; skinny jeans, flares; big boobs, big butts; the pendulum swings, trends go out and come back in faster than you can fill in your brows or buy a new blazer, and you, the person, had better keep up lest you be called out of touch, or tacky, or—worst of all—old.
Of course, there’s no shortage of “help.” If you ask Google “how to be stylish,” you’ll get plenty of diverse answerers ranging from stylists to fashion bloggers to whoever writes WikiHow articles, yet, somehow, the answers themselves all kinda read the same. “Dress for your body type,” “wear neutral colors,” and “follow/don’t follow trends” are the most common (and vague) refrains, but occasionally you’ll get super-specific advice like “wear your coat over your shoulders” or “half-tuck your shirts,” or—my favorite, ““invest in these ‘timeless’ pieces that we have linked (we make money if you purchase via our link).” You can even find specific advice as to how to dress for your age, for your shoulder broadness, for your bra size, for your hair color, for your desired mate…
Yes, all of this can be ignored, and plenty of us manage to block it out, but we are the minority. Many others will struggle with it all their lives, and others may grow disillusioned, but never manage to fully divest. Regardless of where you are in the journey, though, it’s still a journey, and figuring this stuff out is hard and requires navigating the immensely and increasingly confusing fashion landscape. There’s nothing wrong with looking for guidance for that, especially professional guidance (I say this, of course, as a professional who provides guidance), but, guidance that doesn’t take into account your lifestyle, your preferences, what you love, where you are, where you’re going and, most importantly, who you are, and rather focuses on putting you in a category with specific limitations is nothing more than a bunch of shallow rules that can ultimately leave you feeling unfulfilled at best and scrambling to fill the void at worst.
Sometimes, the issue is not that you’re choosing the wrong things to make you “look good,” sometimes, the issue is how you’re defining “look good.” It’s a cliche, truly, but it’s one that I stand by: You look best in what you love. So, figure out what you love first, and seek guidance from there.
Here’s some guidance (and a complete tonal shift).