How would you define your “style”? This word follows us all the time and makes us wonder why we dress the way we do.
“Style”. In the fashion world we talk a lot about style. It’s a word we hear and read very often. We can say, in a nutshell, that it is the very essence of fashion.
For many years, countless designers, couturiers, creatives, dressmakers and creative directors have talked about style. For example, Yves Saint Laurent once said: “Fashions fade, style is eternal”, giving us, with this short sentence, a broad understanding of what lies behind these five letters.
For Dian Vreeland, style was a way of living life: “It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning,” she said. “Without it, you’re nobody. I’m not talking about lots of clothes.” I completely agree (how could I disagree with her): style goes beyond the blouses you own or how many shoes you keep in your closet. Actually, speaking more broadly, style is not only and exclusively linked to this industry we love so much (although it’s the one I want to focus on today). You can have style for cooking, for dancing, for writing, for… ufff, for everything. You can even fall with style. It’s simply your way of doing things.
Personally, I find Lauren Hutton’s words very enlightening to understand more concretely what I’m trying to get at: “Fashion is what you’re offered four times a year by designers. And style is what you choose.” It’s as simple as that. To talk about style is to talk about personality, individuality and also transformation. Your style grows with you and adapts and molds to how you feel, what you do, what you don’t do. There aren’t right or wrong styles: those terms don’t fit here.
“Style is something each of us already has, all we need to do is find it,” said, quite rightly, Dian von Furstenberg. As we grow up, we develop our own style, our own way of dressing, from what our parents buy us, from seeing what our favorite singers wear, through what our friends wear. I mean, we feed our style with everything that surrounds us: this approach can be quite experimental at first, but that’s the fun part: haven’t you ever seen a picture of yourself when you were younger and wondered why you decided to combine that skirt with those boots? Or, conversely, sometimes you wish you could go back to dressing like you did a few years ago. That’s what I mean when I say that style grows and develops with us. It’s a reflection of who we are, or sometimes who we want to be. It’s a secret language that shouts out what we sometimes keep silent about, as well as reinforces everything we actually say.
If you saw me in the office, you’d realize that my style adapts to the situation I’m in: I go from glamorous Instagram looks, ideal for red carpets and cocktails, to more discreet outfits, suitable for meetings and to impose a certain presence, because that’s what I want in the instant. The same goes for my mom style: it’s much more practical, efortless, than any of the others, because that’s where I dress just for me and my kids. Even so, although each outfit is different in silhouette and colors, there’s a Big Style that surrounds every one of them; a Style that defines why, when I buy a blazer and an evening dress and a basic blouse, I choose one piece over the other. It’s, shall we say, like a personal artistic movement, one that makes us painters of our day-to-day. Just as, for a time, cubism constituted all of
Picasso’s works, our style takes over our different faces: sportswoman, teacher, entrepreneur, sister. All of them.
If you feel you don’t have a style of your own, maybe you simply haven’t been able to define it: even following established trends is a style in itself, I dare say. Take a look at your closet, how you combine what you have, which colors you like more and which less, which cuts in your clothes you prefer to wear, which ones you avoid. If in this exploration you find that you love what you see, how beautiful! If not, no one says you can’t experiment and have a great time in the process (a personal recommendation on a very unique and daring style, based 100% on self-confidence, is Miranda Lorenzo’s, @mirandalaquemirayanda on TikTok).
I think I’m getting long-winded this time, right? To help you build your style, or reinforce the one you already have, I selected different pieces that I loved, without a particular thread (as I sometimes tend to do), for you to take a look at (and if you like them, add them to your cart). Who knows, maybe you’ll discover something that surprises you (both in the clothes and in yourself).
