Style for me has evolved a lot from influence. Being around certain people and personalities has massively impacted my style, how I dress and my confidence to dress that way, in fact, I would go as far to say that for a large amount of my university life I dressed a lot of different ways due to the people I was around- not that there was anything wrong with that, it was something I was doing subconsciously whilst also at times trying to please the people I was around (more on that later).
Then there's inspiration, another huge part of my journey into my evolution of style, whether that be inspiring from the weather or the change in seasons and the desire to draw from darker or more richer tones in the autumn/winter whilst dipping into more tonal neutral pieces in the summer. Inspiration for me could spark from scrolling through social media seeing pieces styled in different ways by different people or seeing an advert pop up on my feed from a brand.
Not so much nowadays but for a while- at least when I used to read teen magazines I would inspire from celebrities, yes I used to layer t-shirts over long-sleeved tops for a while when I was obsessed with Avril Lavigne. Sometimes it can even be the more obscure perhaps from music or a piece of art or even food - yep Megan Ellaby was inspired to pair green and pink together from her smashed avocado and tuna bagel another reason she is style queen.
Truth is my style has changed a frequently and for a lot of different reasons, writing this now my style is still changing and evolving even now- something that I was in denial about for a while but honestly, I believe that your style will always change and that's completely normal. As people, we naturally grow out of certain tastes and trends and in time come into our own picking and choosing the pieces we really love to define our ~personal style~
The reason I started writing this post came from realising that after leaving university and having a large chunk of the year in my mind and my own head I started to begin choosing pieces that I liked and I began thinking to myself wait I really like this, is this my style?? Having a conversation with Jay- you must think poor Jay gets all these discovering myself conversations but it's true he does. I said that for the first time in years I feel as though I am buying clothes I didn't feel pressured to please anybody with, not picking to clothes for any kind of occasion or any particular style just pieces that I love/loved and want in my wardrobe. For the first time, I think I'm finally dressing for me.
So let's take it back a little shall we and go on a little style journey.
"As people, we naturally grow out of certain tastes and trends and in time come into our own picking and choosing the pieces we really love to define our ~personal style~"
For me there have been a few style notes shall we say through the years., the most notable for me being the era I dub as the 'Floral Paige Era' A time which you wouldn't be wrong in saying involved a lot of floral print. Floral playsuits, dresses, skirts even coats (I had a hideous black and white printed floral coat) Jay jokes that when we met I was this little floral girl who wore peter pan collars. I remember for a while I even had a quote written on my blog home page taken from my icon at the time Alexa Chung saying something about being old and shrivelled wearing a peter pan collar. I always envisaged myself that way when I grew older, who knows it may still come true. In fact looking back now I think Alexa Chung was a main source of inspiration for the way I dressed I tried to copy a lot of her different styles, wearing brogues with dresses, buying bags that resembled 'the mulberry Alexa' wearing smock dresses and inspiring from her festival uniform of Brenton stripes and a parka coat.
My style for a while was very cutesy, very girly at times leaning to a lot of vintage-inspired styles.
I'm not ashamed of that style at all, it was just very reflective almost a very bold reflection of my personality at the time, very quiet, timid and apologetic I would even go as far as to say romantic.
Equally as big a style would be a during the time I spent at six form we are going to call this 'fangirl' era. At the time I was going through quite a heavily influenced music style quite a cool (or at least so I thought) era. At this time I did receive an award at the end of the year for being best dressed so there is that.
I spent a lot of time at gigs, or at least so it felt. Queuing up outside for hours for a spot at the front and waiting in the cold for my dad to pick me up. I spent so much time lusting over cool girls in the line, wearing effortless cut off shorts, band tees and boots and just wanting so badly to adopt that style. A gathered a lot of band T-shirts during that time or T-shirts that resembled a band, I actually rather embarrassingly remember going to see a band called Peace wearing a T-shirt covered in peace signs all complete with a peace symbol necklace, a true fangirl.
"Looking back I think Alexa Chung was a main source of inspiration for the way I dressed I tried to copy a lot of her different styles, wearing brogues with dresses, buying bags that resembled 'the mulberry Alexa' wearing smock dresses and inspiring from her festival uniform of Brenton stripes and a parka coat."
Embarking on university I carried my floral attire with me at least for a while that was until I met my best mate. For me, his influence was huge being that I spent most days with him. After uni we would sometimes go into town and have a look round the shops and somehow he would talk me into buying things I wasn't even sure I liked. Helpfully though he did mostly give me advice on whether something would suit me or not. For a while, he really drove and directed my fashion sense. I think in a lot of ways he pushed me out my comfort zone and gave me the confidence to wear certain pieces.
I actually remember a day we skived off from a museum visit in London to go shopping, we ended up in Zara a shop that was and I think still is one of our favourite shops. I recall buying a pleated leather skirt an item I had been lusting after for a while. I came across this one that I actually wasn't sure on, colour wise it leant more towards a grey tone rather than black but I did really love it. I bought perhaps two other items that day that came to around £50-60 and at the time feeling like I would go into debt having bought the items, an exaggeration to say the least. I remember speaking the cashier ensuring that I could bring the items back if I needed to. Needless to say, I loved the pieces I bought and worn them to death, I even took the leather skirt to a trip to Paris and thanked him that I had bought it in the first place. Even one fashion memory I'm fond of was right at the beginning of my fashion course we took a trip to a designer village to try on designer clothes. The point of the trip wasn't to buy items but instead try clothes on and take lots of pictures to win a prize set by our tutors. One of Tomas's favourite brands is Versace so we headed there to experiment with some pieces as well as Burberry YSL and Dior. Whilst in Dior I tried on an incredible leather dress (I'm laughing as I'm writing this) because the saleswomen came in after I had slipped the dress on, queue both the women and Tomas cueing over how incredible I looked in it and that I simply had to have it, then queue me being very confused in that no way did I had £600 to spend on a dress. The pinnacle of it all was when the lady asked to what occasion I was wearing the dress for and I said 'a family get together' I could have died.
During the beginning of university, I also met my love, Jay. Much to he would argue he had a very small but significant influence on my style. I say small because I think my style still leaned towards me but with a hint of sports/sports-luxe aesthetic. Jay definitely dressed very sportily at the time when I met him, we aren't speaking jogging bottoms here instead more jeans and an Adidas T-shirt or a sort of zip up, stripes down the arm, jacket. So for a while, I used to try and wear his stuff, either physically wearing his clothes and adapting them to me or items that were quite sports-inspired. I wore sweaters and T-shirts with slogans on the front and bought anything with a stripe on it. This is even a style I still love and occasionally lean to every now and again.
"In a lot of ways [my best mate] pushed me out my comfort zone and gave me the confidence to wear certain pieces."
Okay then onto the 'Sass Era' which consisted of my year out spent at Bottle Blonde. During this time I wrote a post with 5 Tips for Wearing More Colour as well as my summary of my internship in 'My Year out working at Bottle Blonde' which I think you can physically see my influence from my time spent there. I have a lot of things to be grateful and thankful for about the influence Bottle Blonde had on me. Just writing the post after the year out made me emotional in looking at how much it had influenced and affected my character. Looking back either through my Instagram or my blog it was like a rainbow of colour had been painted through my wardrobe. Festival fashion was very much prominent in my choice for picking pieces, if it wasn't sequin, or iridescent I didn't want it. I guess I felt that at the time I wanted to embody the brand by working there and do my utmost best to represent the brand the best way I knew how. Honestly, that whole year gave me SO much confidence to dress with confidence. Something I still carry through to my style now. I wore my leather PVC coat to work yesterday and spent a long amount of time worrying if it was 'too much' before remembering that if I like it and I wanted to wear it then why not? That was definitely a lesson I learnt during my sass stage if you are going to wear loud clothes you have to wear them with confidence. Like now when you work in a certain place surrounded by the same clothes you begin to see them enter your wardrobe and for me, I was very grateful to have a few louder pieces from Bottle Blonde.
After that experience going into my final year, I began to tone it down, not that I was dressing crazy in the first place but more that I began to mix my own style with all the influences I've picked up along the way. And that is now the way I look at my own style.
"Looking back either through my Instagram or my blog it was like a rainbow of colour had been painted through my wardrobe. Festival fashion was very much prominent in my choice for picking pieces, if it wasn't sequin, or iridescent I didn't want it."
And so Paige what is your own style? Honestly, I still don't think if you sat me down and asked me to describe my style in 3 words I wouldn't be able to summerise, I don't suppose I have a particular style or era that I follow but I know that what I'm wearing now is what I like.
In the past few months, I've definitely leaned towards a cleaner, perhaps more tonal wardrobe, a style I've certainly leaned my tastes to over the past few months. I spoke about it in 'New Season Essentials'. Both my inspiration and influence have come from autumn and being that camel and beige tones are currently hugely on-trend has helped but that's what personal style is about right? It's about being able to pick and choose from an array of styles, colours, prints and textures to find the ones that suit you, that resonates with you. But all in all, I feel as though I have the confidence to choose something not just because I saw someone wearing it or because someone else likes it because I do, I like it. It's almost when you can't find a reason for why you like something it makes sense to like it.
Speaking of tonal colours that's not to say that's what my entire wardrobe is made up of at this moment in time, of course during the time of finding my style I've accumulated a lot of different pieces, still now I have a lot of brightly coloured pieces, louder more stand-alone pieces that I still love. Personal style isn't about putting your style into a box and picking only from that box, it's about giving yourself a few different boxes to dig into.
"Personal style isn't about putting your style into a box and picking only from that box, it's about giving yourself a few different boxes to dig into."
My favourite thing about learning to dress for myself is rediscovering and wearing pieces that I used to. Or redoing trends that I perhaps overwore and ended up hating. One of those being blazers, something I'm heavily lusting over at the moment. I used to wear them a lot but found myself growing tired of them, not to mention a lot of them were fitted, cropped or just the wrong colour. I decided to look at the pieces I used to love to wear and began looking at them in a different way. Now blazers have become a bit of a staple something that can smarten or dress up any outfit. I bought a black slightly longline one in the summer and have had a lot of fun pairing it with varying pieces.
Another thing I've found this season is jumpers and knitted pieces which have made their way back to my wardrobe, cable knit in particular, not that it's a style I'm obsessed with but a style I'm more acceptive of. I used to wear it lot and again have found myself looking back and thinking about wearing it differently. For example I went through a phase of being obsessed with emerald and Burgandy (didn't everyone??) I had cable knit jumpers in those colours and just recently I bought a cream jumper in a cable knit print and find it pairs with so many things, after watching friends and seeing Joey in a similar one I'm very happy I picked it up.
Last but not least a few things that are on my list to hunt for at the moment are leather trousers. A style I feel that have been prominent through my life being that I can never seem to find a pair I love or that I did and wore them to death (looking at you perfect leather trousers from Zara) so now I'm on the hunt to bring some back into my life to style and wear in different ways- and more than likely again wear to death.
Not only is personal style about buying pieces that you like it's also about rekindling pieces you've had all along. I also recently took a sort of dogtooth, long-sleeved top back out of a black bag I was planning on taking to the charity shop wondering why I chucked it there in the first place along with a fur gilet. Sometimes it pays to keep pieces away for a while and taking a look at them after a few months if then you decide you don't like them, get rid of you may surprise yourself and find yourself wearing it again.
What I do know however is personal style is a long journey and a long process but for now, I know that I'm dressing for me.
What's your opinion?