4 Ways to Determine Your Personal Fashion Style

How a person looks at any given time says a lot about who they are and how they want people to see them. Their personal fashion style also helps them define how they see themselves in relation to their appearance and personality when they look in the mirror or at a selfie. Many people have difficulty creating a positive self-image in their minds if the clothing and accessories they wear fail to reflect their personalities or make them feel comfortable. Yet, people’s tastes change throughout their lives. As a result, you might find as you age that you prefer more than one style. To find your current personal fashion style, follow these four tips:

Photograph Your Closet

Your closet at this exact moment holds the key to your current fashion style. You likely have pieces within it that you wear a lot, intermittently and never at all. Clothing that a person wears a lot outside of required work attire is usually the clothing that they prefer for style and comfort. Pieces that they wear intermittently are often for certain venues, special occasions or personal moods. Pieces that they rarely or never remove from a closet are typically impulse buys that lost appeal for some reason not long after purchase or dream style pieces that they imagine wearing someday if they reach a certain physical or lifestyle goal. Focus primarily on the first and third categories when trying to determine your personal style.

Check out Retailers

Once you understand the types of fashions that you like, you need to check out similar clothing and accessories sold by offline and online retailers to better understand the designs available to you. If you like retro clothing, for example, you might check out thrift and vintage clothing stores. If you like a more rural look, you might check out retailers that offer ranch-style clothing brands like the Cowboy up apparel retailer brand. As you explore different available retail designs based on those first and third categories of fashions that you found in your closet, take photographs or print out copies of the individual pieces and collections that you like the most. Additionally, label the images with designer and brand descriptions for future reference.

Try Different Designs

It’s important that you try on clothing while attempting to determine your personal fashion style. A single piece of clothing that looks great on a rack, model or website might look terrible on you because it fails to flatter your physical appearance or match the other pieces in your closet. Trying on different designs can also help you figure out if you want to continue wearing the same types of fashions or branch out. While trying on clothing, you might find designs that take you into a completely different direction style-wise. This process can also help you find the right accessories to fit your style. If you can’t go to offline stores to use fitting rooms, always purchase online from retailers who allow you to try on clothing at home and return any pieces that don’t work. Take photographs of yourself wearing any clothing that looks great for future reference.

Create a Look Book

A fashion designer uses a look book filled with images, fabric swatches and descriptions to tell a story about the theme of their current collection. You can actually determine your personal style over time and create a style reference for the future with a similar book. All you need is a thick, blank scrapbook and the photographs and copies that you created while trying to narrow down your style. These images as a whole represent your personal fashion style. These are the pieces that you felt matched your personality and how you want people to see you. A look book also makes it possible for you to recreate in the future on your own or with the help of a seamstress a design from your past that you can’t find in stores any longer.

As you determine your personal style, you also need to keep in mind popular trends and public perception. Some fashions from past decades can make you stand out too much. In fact, certain outdated fashion designs can actually make you the subject of ridicule. Pick a happy medium that takes into account not only the types of clothing and accessories that you feel comfortable wearing and boost your self-esteem, but also the ones that look fashionable and fit in with the times.