The Best Personal Style Advice To Master Your Style

A lot of us are searching for the same thing. We all want authentic personal style. Style that is consistent, style that is unique, and something that makes us feel our very very best every time we get ready. But here's the problem. Sometimes there is a gap between our dream style and our style in reality. We know that these two are not the same but we don't know how to bridge it. I want to share with you the best personal style advice I've heard to help you bridge this gap. Because once this gap is bridged, we are just going to be so much more content with our wardrobe, we are going to feel more confident in our outfits, and ultimately we're going to be more detached from the trends and the more cyclical things in fashion. Let's start off with something that helped me bring my style vision into a reality. I love saving inspiration that is very relevant to me. The mistake I used to make was that I saved a lot of very aspirational images that wasn't really that helpful. The clothes were so different from what I would wear on the everyday. The people in the photos just had completely different features, different body shape to me as well. For outfit inspiration, I am always so inspired when I have similar pieces because then it shows me how I can bring this to life. When I'm looking at makeup, hair, beauty inspo, I am looking for people with similar features to me. Hair is a really good example. I used to save luscious, thick, curly hair. And if I think about it, what am I going to do with this inspiration? I can think about it for the rest of my life, but that's just not my hair type. So when I started saving photos of girls with similar hair texture, with similar length, similar color, it showed me what is possible for me and how I can elevate, improve my own styling. This is the best kind of inspiration because it helps you fall in love with the things you have. It helps you see what is possible and how much we can do with what we have. On my Pinterest, I save a lot of photos of white sweaters and I save a lot of photos of white dresses, white broidery because these are things I love the aesthetic of. And I also own in my wardrobe so I can recreate something similar. And then sometimes I will still save aspirational photos, things that are not relatable to me because I know that maybe one part of the outfit I want to recreate, one part of the outfit is something I'm going to adapt for myself. But I focus the majority of my inspiration on things that share a clear commonality with me. Something to know when you're finding your style is that it already exists within you. You know, we know what we like, we know what we don't like. The thing we need to do is to cultivate this style and allow this style to come through and be actually expressed in our outfits. One of the best ways to cultivate your style is to always ask yourself, exactly what do I like about this outfit or this piece that I'm looking at? Do I like the color? Do I like the shape? Do I like the fabric? Break clothing pieces apart and decide what exactly you like and don't like about it. When we start asking ourselves these questions, you'll be amazed at just how quickly you'll get to know your style and your style will start to come through. You can ask yourself these questions with all of the outfits you wear, with the clothes that you already own, the ones you love and the ones you don't love. In the change room is an amazing exercise. Just try things on sometimes, figure out exactly like why you wanted to try it on but what isn't really working or what is working really really well for you. You'll start to see patterns and you'll start to know your style. I don't know if I'm expressing just how powerful this one is because it allows you to uncover your true style rather than trying to fit yourself into boho or girly or classic. You're uncovering the depth that makes up your style. One of the best personal style rules I've heard is the three word rule by Alison Bornstein. You all know this one where you basically have three key words to describe your style and the idea is that our style is so much more nuanced than one word. No classic, girly, uh effortless. It's too simplistic to describe an authentic style. Three words while not perfect and covering everything is a lot better. But the reason I truly love this one is because it helps me dress according to my style in all facets of my life. Let's just say my dominant style word is feminine but I live a very active lifestyle. Every weekend I'm on some kind of hike. What am I meant to do with my feminine style word? It doesn't allow me to translate my style into the different facets of my life. Maybe your style is boho or it's feminine or it's whimsical but then you have a corporate office job. How do we bring that style across? And I think the three word rule is really good at that. My style words are feminine, modern, playful. Feminine because everything I wear has a feminine girly undercurrent. Modern because I like to try things. I like to dabble with a trend sometimes. I like to take inspiration from what is current and style that into my outfits. And then playful because I like a very mixed match approach. A lot of opposites in an outfit that often comes off a little playful. So with that in mind, no matter where I'm going I can lean a little bit more heavily into one of the style words. In my day-to-day, feminine is quite strong. And then a little playful, a little modern. In my more active lifestyle, I lean more into playful, into modern. And feminine is like a little bit maybe in like an earring or in like a hair situation or a makeup situation. If I was working in a corporate job, I'll lean very heavily into feminine and modern and the playful will be extremely subtle. But you can see how when you have three words, you can lean more heavily into one. You can let the other two just support your outfit and you now have a lot more cohesiveness in your style. That's the true takeaway of the three-word style rule and why it's at the very top of my personal style advice. Another way I use this one is that if you want to transition your style, let's just say you're inspired by a trend right now. I'm kind of inspired by like a coastal fisherman vibe right now. I knit, so this is like a knitting trend that I'm inspired by. I can fit this one under playful at the moment. But let's just say I don't feel like this is a trend anymore. I feel like it's such a big part of my style. Then I can replace one of my style words with like coastal maybe. It will allow my style to evolve in a really natural way while not doing like a 360 jump from one style to another. It's a very natural progression of my style over time and I find that very inspiring. One of the best things I've done for my personal style is to truly understand what clothes look good on me. This is one of those things where everyone tells us find clothes that look good on you, find clothes that suit you. But how? That's the big question. So clothes can look good on you for two reasons. The first one is that it suits your body shape, your body type, your frame, and your structure. The clothes physically look good on your body. And then the second way clothes look good on you is that it suits your essence. It suits the way you move and you carry yourself and the way you express yourself. It just suits your personality and you. Both of these things ideally should come together for clothes to look their best on you. Let me give you a good example actually. So in my last video, I shared this brown dress and I said to you guys, you know, I don't really like the dress. I think the color's not quite bright and you guys are so nice to me. You all said like that brown looks really nice. Brown is actually one of my best colors. However, there is something very natural, very rustic, very earthy about the brown on me that coupled with the linen fabric, I feel like doesn't work that well for my essence and the way I want to express myself. It's almost that the clothes suit in my body shape, but it didn't quite suit the second part, which is my essence. Because to be honest, I'm not that natural, earthy, boho, free person at all. So let me give you the details of what really helped me. Don't focus on your body shape, you know, whether you're an apple or a pear, whether you are more hourglass, stuff like that can give us some very general guide. You don't need to dismiss it, but I don't find it as helpful. The thing that helps me is understanding my bone structure and my frame. If you gain weight, if you lose weight, it doesn't change your bone structure. That stays the same. And I use a Kibbe body typing system where they give you a lot of recommendations. It's beyond just wear a v-neck, just wear a crew neck, just wear high rise. It goes far beyond that and it covers the details of what type of fabric weights look good on you, what type of angles, sharpness, what amount of ornamentation looks good on you. And there's a lot of depth to the system. The general rule here is that you're looking at your yin and yang balance, how much roundness and how much angularity you have in you. And then you use your clothing to mimic your structure. So if you're rounder, softer looking, you tend to look best in more delicate fabrics, rounder shapes, softer fabrics, and your clothes mimic your bone structure. Whereas if you're a dramatic angular person, then your clothes best accentuate you when they are also more angular, more structured, more crisp. A lot of people will be a mix. So I'm a soft gamine, a mix of yin and yang. And because of that, I can't just wear super sharp things. I can't wear super soft things. Needs to be a balance there between the two. I love this system because it doesn't try to force you to be something you're not. If you're soft and rounded, they don't try to make you angular. Or to work against that roundness. If you're angular, they don't try to soften your angles. It's never about diluting what you have, but using your clothes to create harmony with your features. The second half of the equation of what clothes suit you, you need to look at your own personal style, which is what we're talking about in today's video. And find the clothes that not only looks good on you, but makes you feel like yourself. And that's where you bring in your vision board, your three word rule. That's where you bring in, you know, all the colors, fabrics, designs you love. Something that comes into play here is essence. We all have a look. That look may or may not be the way you want to dress, but we all have a look. And because of that, clothing is going to translate slightly differently. I've been told in a lot of my analysis that my dominant essence is natural. In real life, you'll be able to see like, I have quite a bit of freckle, like pigmentation on my skin. So I don't know if that like adds to the naturalness. I'm not sure. But it's been told to me again and again that my dominant essence is natural. This kind of means that when I put on a very ornate feminine piece of clothing, if it's too much, if it's like pink with bows, with like frills, with details, if it's too much, it doesn't look natural on me. Whereas when I want to create a feminine look because of my essence, I need to find clothing pieces that still give a little effortless, a little natural, but maybe has some feminine details. The idea is that no matter what your style vision is, you can always create that style vision, but you can't always wear the same pieces to get to that vision. You need to adapt the kind of clothes you wear to create that look. Everyone here can create a classic look. Everyone here can create a natural look. But the pieces you wear will need to be very different. Sometimes I forget that personal style can also include our hair choices, our makeup choices. And these things ultimately works with our outfit to create the final look. Both in makeup and hair, this year I've been trying to figure out what I like. In the past, I just don't think about my makeup. My makeup was the same for like five years. I really changed almost nothing. Same thing with my hair. It was just kind of there. Like yeah, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. But I never stopped to think like what is going to really suit me? Makeup wise, instead of going quite contrasty, I've gone a little bit more muted with some of the colors I wear. Lip shades are a bit more muted. I've started to wear a bit more like blush just to bring some color in. And overall, I'm drawn to a fresh face, a clean girl makeup style. Whereas previously, I didn't really wear any color on my cheeks. But I'll have like a darker red lip. And after five years, I think I just got a bit sick of that look. Refreshing my look from time to time and then also just coming up with something easy, doable for my lifestyle that is going to make me feel my best even on not so good days is very empowering. I can always just step out feeling polished and content with this routine. And then with my hair, hair changes your outfits. And let me tell you the biggest way it's done that for me. Longer silhouettes tend to work a bit better for me now that my hair is not long. When my hair was very long and I wore a long dress, there's a lot of length happening. And this is something to take into account. For example, if I have really long hair and I was wearing really long things, I might do like something in the outfit to rebalance it. Whether that's like a headband or whether that's like necklaces to draw the eye upwards or like a 90s shoulder bag. I will be thinking about how to balance that outfit a little bit more than I do now. Now I know I've always got my hair that's shorter to kind of balance out those long things. It doesn't sound that impactful but visually it does make a huge difference. If I felt like I was wearing an outfit where everything felt long and heavy today, even the hairstyle I'm doing today where it's like pulling my hair up a little does wonders to balance out those looks. It's even in things where if I'm wearing a girly outfit, then I don't want my hair to be like too tight in the curls. I like it a bit more natural looking. Whereas if I'm wearing a more minimalist outfit, I actually like my hair quite curled, quite put together because it becomes the feminine part of my style. Girly hair with girly outfit, that pushes my personal style off balance. Whereas when the hair and the outfit goes together, we get the balance that's right for my style. Speaking of hair, let me also share with you this tip. Find personal style tricks that will work with your lifestyle. So for me working from home, some days I'm not going to go out with like nicely curled hair. I've got a no makeup editing chaotic situation happening. So I've got one of these tortoiseshell clips and the tortoiseshell headband. So it's a way for me to very very quickly in a matter of seconds, get my hair out of my face in a practical way but still is a bit more elevated than like a random hair scrunchie I may have had otherwise. So it's about finding little things that can elevate your worst outfits to still make you feel confident in them. Solve your lifestyle constraints because that will do wonders for your style at any time. Another thing is like working out. I like to look presentable when I'm working out. I don't need to look like I'm walking a runway. I just want to look decent. So for me, I actually love these headbands. They're very functional because it literally keeps my hair dry from like sweat but it looks a little cute before and after class. I like having like one nice tote bag that I can use for errands and it always feels nice against anything ultra casual. You know those outfits you love for your style where you put it on and you're 100% in your style element. You feel like this outfit captures your style perfectly. So a little challenge for ourselves to basically master our personal style is that you want to create that feeling with different pieces you own. You shouldn't have to wear, you know, that white dress to feel like you're dressing in alignment to your style. You should be able to grab the majority of your pieces and create an outfit that suits your style. When I look at all of these outfits and I love all of them, they are all so different but at the same time, I see a lot of similarities between them. There's often a pop of color, you know, pop of red for example. There's often a graphic element, so graphic t-shirt, printed blouse, polka dot skirt. There's often a lot of textures going on, so embroidery with the beads, a lot of gold chains against a blouse, suede, leather, a lot of textures happening and there is always an element of polish and undone. So for us, we want to take our favorite outfits, think about the feeling that they give us and the style that it shows and then you want to take other clothing pieces you own and recreate that style and that feeling. When you can do this, you will always be dressed aligned to your style. When you can take different pieces and turn them into something that aligns with your vision. You can see through these photos though that it's often in the styling that you create your personal style. It's not usually because of the pieces. I often think to myself, how can I keep my style the same from summer to winter, from casual to elegant? How can I retain the same style? And it's usually through repetition of the same kinds of styling. So create the same feeling using different clothing pieces. We've tackled a lot of things to do with personal style today but something that's very honest is that your personal style is ultimately linked to your shopping habits. This piece of style advice is so cliched, oversaid, but it's true. So I have to say it again. It's always more impactful to buy one or two pieces that elevate you and your style as opposed to buying tons of pieces that all kind of just exist. I'm wearing a skirt today from Cezanne. I bought this three years ago and it's still one of my favorite pieces. Like I've repeatedly worn it. I've recently been wearing it even more than usual because it's basically perfect. It takes everything I could want and it really just reminds me again how impactful we can be to have a couple of amazing pieces that we style again and again and again and we build on this wardrobe so that we one day have a nice collection. Whereas the pieces I bought more on a whim, without intention, pieces I bought because I just wanted something now for holiday, whatever. Those are the pieces where it's literally stopping me from achieving my best style. Firstly, it's distracting to have pieces that we don't 100% love. Secondly, it's money that I obviously could have spent on something much better and I just really feel like if you want good personal style, it does come down to being really intentional with your resources and making sure you're getting those pieces that elevate as opposed to give you range. We of course can be creative. We can take clothes we don't love and style it in a way that we do love but wouldn't it just be easy to start off with something we love? It's easier. Something I learned the hard way is that personal style relies on your unique and cool pieces and your styling as opposed to your basics. So much content is focused around wardrobe basics. You know, what basics you need. But actually you can end up with the best basics in the world but ultimately basics are invisible pieces. They are there to support your clothes. They are there to make that sweater or that blazer or that blouse work perfectly when you style it with basics. But the items that will help you express that personal style and express it well are your key pieces. Your unique pieces. The pieces that you kind of searched for, you fell in love with. Those are the pieces that will do the most for your personal style. I didn't really realize this because I was obsessed with like having the ideal basics and they are important but to express your style, you need the key pieces as well. I've been obsessed with the idea of a wardrobe that is a mix of kind of like contemporary brands and a little bit of handmade as well. So for me, that's like knitted sweaters that I've made myself, knitted accessories and mixing that in with some of the brands I love. I also love like vintage antique jewelry. That's a big part of my style as well. Today, only like this ring is but I have some pendants that are vintage antique and I love the way they work with my style. Even minimal style. It would be deceptive to say that minimal style is just basics because that's not true. Minimal style is often a strong focus on silhouettes. It's a strong focus on fabric, very architectural with minimal detail and I used to think, oh you know, white t-shirt, blue jeans, simple minimal style. It doesn't always give you the look that you wanted. You need the pieces that will highlight the style you like. Minimal is often like cause. Those are not basics. Those are often very architectural, unique silhouettes just without too much ornamentation. Best personal style advice is that you need to repeat your outfits for them to be your best and case in point today, the other day I wore this outfit with like another white sweater. I loved it. I remembered it. So today I'm kind of wearing it again with like very few subtle changes but we build on our style over time and we build on how we style things over time. It takes us a while to get to our favorite outfits styling a piece of clothing so we don't give ourselves the opportunity to restyle that item enough times. We never actually get to that best outfit. It has made repeating outfits for me so much more enjoyable because I can see with my own eyes how my outfits improve every time I wear it. Something that was a trend on social media is glowing up like a glow-up journey, transformation. I was very inspired by that and I thought about it a lot to do with style. I want to wear my best outfit all the time and make subtle changes where I still feel inspired by the outfits. So with that being said, I'm no longer as inspired by range as I used to be. You know, I'm still a little inspired by range because ultimately like I love fashion, I love style but not anywhere near as what I used to want. That realization where I know I want to look my best rather than I want to look different every day made me shift my wardrobe habits as well. The final thing I'll wrap up on is don't buy anything that doesn't end the search for that item. So basically don't settle for less than perfect. If you're looking for a white sweater and you found the white sweater but you're kind of um like it'll do for now but you're still kind of looking, don't get that item. Wait for the perfect one because the way you'll feel in that piece, the chicness that will come through in your outfit because that piece is like more elevated, more suited to you, will make the biggest difference to your style. When you find those right pieces, get them but until then, just hold out. So many times I just purchased it because I'm looking for it and since I haven't been able to find anything else, I'll take it but I think the truth is that I always have something to wear in my wardrobe so I don't need it and until I find that perfect piece that I really really love, just to wait. That waiting game is actually doing something to enhance your personal style because you're not bringing in distractions that make you feel a little guilty when you do eventually find your best piece. Thank you so much for watching this video. I have honestly so much more to talk about but I have to cut myself off here otherwise I could be here all day. I finally finished knitting this sweater. It took me forever, a lot longer than what I was expecting but it's done. If you wanted to see the start of me making this, it's in my vlog which I'll link down below. I hope you have an amazing week. I'll see you next one. Bye.