Episode 217: What If The Real Style Secret Is Self-Trust

The Signature Edit Newsletter

We challenge the old style rules we’ve followed for years and explain why they were never built to help us develop real personal style. We focus on rebuilding self-trust so getting dressed feels like self-expression instead of playing it safe. 
• style rules as outdated systems designed for sameness 
• how assimilation shows up in corporate dress codes and social media aesthetics 
• why following rules slowly chips away at self-trust

We also share why closet editing matters, and how to start small without a big overhaul. The key question that changes everything: “Do I feel like myself in this?” If you’re ready to stop dressing for the masses and start dressing for you, Subscribe to The Signature Edit Newsletter 

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Transcript

The Style Rules You Inherited

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, what if the style rules that you've been following since as long as you can remember, what if they are the same rules that are holding you back from your personal style? The rules don't wear white after Labor Day, your belt and your shoes have to match, don't wear too many bright colors. And my favorite, most recent favorite, is dress your age, whatever dress your age actually means. And when you get to realize, you should begin to ask yourself, who came up with these rules? When did they come up with these rules? Why did they come up to these rules? Because I think we're trying to build something when it comes to personal style off of old rules that don't work for you. And I don't think they ever worked for anybody. And that's where now we get to break those rules and create our rules that are personal to us for when it does come to building our personal style. So let's jump into that right

Why Those Rules Exist

SPEAKER_00 1:03

now. Can I let you in on a little secret? Most of the style rules that we know and have come to utilize when we need to, they were never about us, especially not for this day and age. Of course not. They come from a different time, they come from different industries that they kind of pulled from. And often a magazine editor or a style guru at a certain point in time thought, you know what? This would be a good rule. I think we should push this out to the masses. Now, don't get me wrong, some of them can be kind of helpful, but when it comes to building your personal style, they're not. I think the rules were actually something to help do two things. One one to kind of assimilate us, to make sure everybody was dressing the same, everybody was acting the same. You can really see this in corporate America at one point when we had to wear three or four basic colors black, gray, brown, and blue. And that was it. And you had to have your hair nicely done. You couldn't have long nails like I have now. You probably couldn't wear rings the way that I do now. It was all in a way to make everybody very formal because corporate can be formal. There was another thing, too. It was a system, a system that worked. The system doesn't work anymore. And from that system and from these rules came the aesthetics to where everybody looks the same. And if you look all up and down social media, that is what you're really seeing. You're seeing a system, you're seeing something that wants us all to look the same, and they want us to assimilate to something to their standard and not our standard.

When Everyone Starts Looking Same

SPEAKER_00 2:52

I'll use um housing communities as an example. So if you've ever been into a housing community and you've gone to go look at um their different plans, they may have four or five different plans, not even that many, probably like about three floor plans that you can choose from, and that's all you see in these homes in these communities. The only difference may be on the outside, but in the inside, everything looks the same. There is nothing different. I like to use that the very same way when it comes to personal style. We are looking so much alike, and we've been conditioned, we've been conditioned to do this for as long as we can remember. So when it comes to building personal style, it becomes hard because it's easy to fall back into these systems or these rules. And now we have to come up and kind of fight through these rules so that we can create our own personal style. And next time you're out, I want you to view something. And when you're looking and people watching, see the individuals that look a little look similar, but the ones that look different. And anybody that wears their own personal style has a certain or about them and even have a certain confidence about them that you're wondering, well, why can't I have that? Or why can't I look like that? You can, but you just have to now trust yourself enough to break the style rules that we are all accustomed to, and now create your own style rules that work best for you and with nobody else.

Self-Trust And What You Want

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Now, here's what I want you to really think about, and it's taken me a while to actually get this. Each time that we follow one of these style rules, we are chipping away at our self-trust when it comes to our personal style. And you probably have never realized or even considered the fact that self-trust is a part of building your personal style. And as we do this over time and through the years, we stop trusting ourselves. And we stop trusting ourselves with our instincts of that looks good. That's what I want to wear. And the crazy thing is, you actually do it all the time. But because of the rules, instead of being a rebel, we go back to what is safe because now we're also conditioned with the thing of nobody's gonna like the way that I look. People are going to talk about me. Am I able to pull this off? Now, are you gonna have some few hit or misses? Absolutely. But taking those small risks, no matter how small it may be, will begin to bring back and rebuild your actual self-trust when it comes to your personal style. For so long, we have been conditioned with having to stay with the status quo because people don't like change. And with this, it's actually more of a hindrance because guess

Foundations Versus Personal Style

SPEAKER_00 6:09

what? They want you to rely on the rules. That's why wardrobe essentials checklists are good, and people go and download those. Creating and building capsule wardrobes, that's why those are very popular at times, and even when you're looking for the elevated basics, those are the same thing. But I do want to pause and add a little bit to this. I don't mind when people have the capsule wardrobes, I don't mind that at all because I do believe you should have a capsule wardrobe in your closet. I also believe that you should have the elevated basics in your closet. Why? Because this is your foundation, they are not your personal style, they are what I like to call your foundation that you're going to build upon. Now, when it comes to wardrobe essentials, this is where I have a little bit of a problem. Wardrobe essentials should be essential to you, they are the building blocks of your actual personal style. Actually, your personal and your signature style, but those are also two separate things, and we'll get into those in future episodes down the line. But right now, I just want you to think about personal style differently. You need to have your foundation, you need to have your personal style, and then you also will need a signature style. This is where you break the rules at your personal and signature style levels. Once we get and make that shift, now you're going to actually be rebuilding your self-trust with yourself when it comes to your style. Because we have built our self-trust in all areas of our life except this one. Because it's easy. It's easy to go into the store, and nine times out of ten, everything looks the same anyway. But we're able to go into a store and we'll go for something that's safe, even though we want to be a little unsafe. We do want to be a little daring or edgy or whatever you want to use to describe your personal style, right? But because of the rules, and it all goes back to self-trust when it comes to this, we go to what is safe, and what is safe is hurting us. I love to see the young women coming out, and even women now in their 50s and 60s really dressing for who they are and not for the rules that we've followed for the past 10, 15, 20 years. And I don't want us to lose that because with that, we're also losing a bit of ourself. And slowly and quietly, as it's kept, this will actually begin to start bleeding into other small areas of our

Closet Editing To Rebuild Trust

SPEAKER_00 9:07

life. And this is why I'm a huge proponent of editing and cleaning out your closets because it actually will start there. You have to be able to build the self-trust again with getting rid of stuff and letting go of things that you used to wear because they're safe. So once we're able to do that and do it kind of simultaneously or one-on-one, that's where your magic will begin to happen, and that is where you will be able to get your whole self back into trusting yourself to building your personal style.

Questions To Ask When Dressing

SPEAKER_00 9:45

So here is my question for you on what to do instead. This is the question I want you to ask moving forward. I don't want you to ask, Am I allowed to wear this? You can wear whatever you want to wear. I don't care. But what you want to ask yourself is, do I feel like myself in this? Because I promise you, a lot of you, me included, we don't always feel like ourselves when we get dressed because we're dressing for other people and not for us. So I want you to begin to make that decision and give you permission to give you that back. And when it comes to building your style, ask yourself, does this make me feel good? Not, am I allowed to wear this? Because even for me, and I'll use me as an example, I'm 52 years old. There are things people will probably tell me, no, that's not what a 52 should wear. So, what should I wear? Should I look old and drabby and gray? Or should I look vibrant and fun and something that I can put on and it makes me feel good about myself, makes me walk a little bit different, stand a little bit taller, and just have fun. That's how we should be when we walk around. And sometimes, as I'm beginning to really delve into this, it all looks a little bit boring at times. There is no oomph in the style anymore.

Small Experiments That Add Oomph

SPEAKER_00 11:09

And here's another thing I want you to keep in mind: you don't have to do this huge, big overhaul. This is going to take time. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You could start with something very, very small. I'll use me as an example. Right now, my hair is dark, and probably a few videos back, it was really light. Well, this is one of the few steps, first steps that I'm taking when it comes to my style. Now, what that means is that we are doing this in steps, and that is okay. That's why I want to use this as an example. So, for me, what I'm doing is I am taking my hair, we dyed it darker in the front in the roots, because I actually like when I'm blonde, but I actually like to see a bit of my roots. So, from here, what I'm going to do is next, in a couple months or a couple weeks, I'm going to go back. We're going to go back in, and we're going to take it and do the blonde all over, but just showing a little bit of my roots and in the front part here. That is big how you begin to experiment. So you don't have to experiment actually with clothes per se. You can start with things like your hair, glasses, jewelry, shoes, purses, handbag, anything of the ordinary, you can start somewhere. That is all I want you to do. I just want you to start to begin somewhere after you begin to think differently and shift how your process and your perspective of this. Now I want you to try very small things. Because even though you think or you feel or we see you need this huge overhaul, you got to come in here and clean out your closet and get rid of everything. You got to go shopping and buy a whole lot of things. You don't have to do that. Because going through and literally cleaning out your closet as you go through this process is a process in itself. So you want to be able to take your time with it. You want to be able to explore. I want you to play dress up with things that you have. I want you to have fun with it. I want you to think back to when you were younger and you were carefree and you wore all types of things and you experimented with things and you had fun with things. I want you to do that now for yourself. We are all at an age where we are changing and getting into the next phases of our life. So when we want to start with fun and different things, start here. Because who you are now and how you look now, that's not who you are anymore. You are embarking into a new chapter and a new role. And how you look and how you feel, it should reflect that. And that always goes back to trusting yourself. And this will allow you to begin to trust yourself to where now, when you look at things, you'll be like, you know what? I like this, I'm aware of this because this makes me feel good. And when people see that things make you feel good, they're not going to question, why do you have that on? Well, not to your face anyway. But they will ask and think, Wow, she can pull that off. That's how most people pull off what they wear when it comes to their personal style as it is. It's whatever makes them feel good, and not doing the opposite of that, which is always following back onto the rules.

Newsletter Invite And Closing Message

SPEAKER_00 14:47

So I want to leave you with this style rules were built for the masses. You are not the masses. And the goal was never to memorize more rules, it was to build enough trust in yourself that you don't need them anymore. And guess what? You don't need them anymore. Everything that you want when it comes to your style is literally inside of you, waiting for you to unlock it and unleash it. And as we've been going through this, I hope you have gained a new perspective. And if you feel that it's like you've had a couple, you know what, I have a few aha moments in here, then I invite you to join and subscribe to my monthly newsletter, The Signature Edit. And it is for women just like you that are learning to rebuild trust with yourself with your personal style because you want to break away from the masses. So the link is in the description box of this podcast. And I hope to see you over there. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'm trying something new. So I you are now able to see me or hear me on Apple Podcasts, and you're also able to watch the episode on YouTube. I'm trying to break free and try to build self-trust in myself when it comes to creating content and just trying to have fun and evolve. And most importantly, as I said before, trust myself. So if you like this new format, let me know. And with all that being said, I want you to remember something trust yourself first, and your style will follow. I will see you guys in the next one.