Thoughts on evolving personal style
I've been thinking about my personal style a lot recently, planning what sewing projects I'm going to take on over the next few months. In 2019 I did Love to Sew podcast's Create Your Dream Wardrobe booklet, a freebie you get when you sign up to their newsletter. It's a short (around 5 pages if I remember rightly) booklet that guides you through some simple exercises to help you identify the types of garment you want to wear and would fit into your life. It's the kind of booklet you can spend as much or as little time on as you would like, one of the steps involves creating a Pinterest board of your style influences and aspirations and that's the kind of activity that can be a real time vortex. I created mine at the time as instructed but have found it most useful for saving images as I find them in my daily browsing and it's building into a really helpful resource for me. I'm gradually honing in on the shapes and looks that will make me feel comfortable and stylish, whilst allowing me to get on with my day without thinking too much about my clothes.
The other main use I found for this booklet was identifying a colour story for my wardrobe, the core colours that I know I will reach for over and over and will go interchangeably with everything else. This has been incredibly useful for me to realise what fabrics I'll wear and love (jersey in greens and blues, you are my friends) and what will become a wardrobe orphan (purple. I've had so many failed experiments with purple over the years. See the above and below photos as evidence from around 2012).
With Me Made May around the corner, I'm looking at my wardrobe and thinking about the handmade items that don't get regular wear. My Meliliot shirt is probably the saddest languishing item, given that it was my birthday present to myself and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. It feels quite dressy for hanging out at home but I'm planning a few more versions in the short sleeves and I think that might help make it feel more casual, whilst still retaining that cute button-up collar look that I love. I'm also realising that most of my knitwear is quite long, often stopping below the hip and making me feel overwhelmed and fussy when I wear a sweater with a button-up. I'm planning a few knitted sweater projects that will purposefully stop at the hip, with a neckline chosen to wear with a shirt.
The perfectionist side of me wants to know what styles and colours work for me and wear them and only them, never experimenting for fear of wearing something that I'll regret in the future. I have so many outfits that I consider in retrospect and cringe, wondering what past Amy was thinking. Browsing my Google photos for this newsletter, looking back on photos from nearly a decade ago, has made me realise both how far my personal style has come and also how many surprise hits I have had over the years. In my anxious brain, it sometimes feels like every old photo of myself I'm looking a mess by one metric or another, but sitting here calmly and objectively looking at images of my past self, I can see what baby Amy was striving for and although I often miss the mark, I can see that each mistake has brought me closer to my ultimate goal.
Past Amy, I applaud you for trying and I will try to take that message forward. I don't have to be perfect, I just have to keep trying and make peace with mistakes being part of any learning process. This is about sewing. This is not about sewing.