Everyone has one of those friends who has an incredibly distinct personal style. It might not even be something that you consciously notice regularly, but one day you might walk past an item of clothing in a store and go, “Wow, that looks a lot like something Hugo would wear!”
But what is a personal style? What is it specifically about someone’s wardrobe that gives them style that’s uniquely, distinctly and inventively theirs? And how can we curate our social media feeds—from Pinterest to TikTok to Rednote (or Xiaohongshu) to Instagram—so that we can learn what our own personal style is and how we can upgrade our own wardrobes?
Why is personal style important?
But first, you might be asking, why is it important that we all have a style anyways? Aren’t we allowed to be different on a daily basis? For example, what if I want to wear something more professional and business-like on one day, but something more casual and sporty on another day?
A personal style doesn’t mean that you can’t do this. Personal style is important because we are all different, and clothing looks and wears differently on every person. From the proportions of your limbs, to the undertones of your skin and hair, to the kind of persona that you want to portray—every aspect of your personhood impacts the clothes that you wear. While we are all allowed to change and show different faces to different people, finding and being able to define what feels most authentic allows you to understand your own identity, and therefore take steps towards expressing that in your clothing.
How do I start?
The first step is to let your algorithm do the work for you. If you have brands that you frequently like to wear, find those brands’ pages and start to interact with their posts. You don’t need to do this publicly (e.g. through liking or commenting); you can often just click the “share” button, and copy the link. This will let the algorithm know that you liked the content, and will allow other recommended material to show up. If you also know any key words or trends that appeal to you (e.g., “preppy”, “winter coats”, “Japanese autumn outfits”), you can search these and interact with posts that appeal to you to give the algorithm another boost.
When your algorithm is frequently showing you more examples of clothes that you like, start curating them in saved folders. On Pinterest, this would be a separate board. On Instagram, you can save to different “collections”. Then, once you’ve got a curated board or collection with a number of posts that you like, it’s time for analysis.
Analysing your personal style
When it comes to clothes and style, there are a couple of parameters you should be able to define based on your curated collection. They are as follows:
Colour
Do your preferred colours skew cool (blue, green, grey) or warm (red, yellow, brown)? Do your outfits typically feature a tonal colour with some complimentary accents, or are they colourful all-round? For example, I wear mostly earthy tones (brown, army green, grey, black, cream) because it suits my warmer undertone, and my hair is normally dyed a warm brown.
Fit and Proportion
How close fitting or baggy is your clothing? For example, I almost exclusively wear baggy pants because my legs are quite long, but my friends who have longer torsos typically prefer slimmer-fitting pants. What about the proportion between clothing—e.g. small shirt with baggy pants, or baggy shirt with baggy pants, or fitted shirt with fitted pants…the list goes on. How long are your preferred coats? Or do you only see jackets in your curated boards?
Material
Material affects the structure of your clothing. Natural fibres like cotton or wool typically give more structure and warmth, whereas synthetic fibres like polyester or spandex can be better suited to active-wear and looser clothing.
Formality
Speaking of active-wear—how formal is your style? Do you like to wear blazers and trousers and evening dresses, or do you like shorts and a T-shirt with a cardigan if it’s cold? Of course, no one ever wears the same level of formality every day, and there’s no reason to wear a blazer to the gym, but on a normal day, if you were to get lunch with a friend, what would you want to wear?
Experimentality
Finally, there’s experimentality, or uniqueness—how much do you want to stand out? Do you like bold patterns and interesting graphics and colours, or do you just want a neutral black trouser with a white shirt?
While it can feel impossible to nail down your personal style, it all comes down to recognising what you’re interested in based on a gut instinct, before going in with more depth and analysing the parameters that make up your style. In today’s day and age, social media algorithms are powerful—take advantage of this. At the end of the day, style is all about self-expression. Trust your instincts, have fun with it all, and wear what makes you feel like the best version of yourself.
