Systems for style

Hello there friends! It must be the chill in the air because all of a sudden my head’s been turned and I spend my time daydreaming about cozy knits and sensible footwear. So since the changing season has me all creatively abuzz in terms of my wardrobe, I thought we could explore some frameworks for putting together fashionably authentic outfits this autumn.

The material is the message

Fashion has always been something that I enjoy. As a kid I wanted to be a fashion designer and would spend days designing collections inspired by rock-a-billy aesthetics and Japanese streetwear. Later in high school my interest changed and I decided I wanted to be a fashion historian and curator, the kind who puts on beautiful shows at the MET in NYC. Then, in university, I studied semiotics aka “the science of the life of signs in society” (Ferdinand de Saussure) and this helped me understand what kind of fashion I was interested in. It wasn’t haute couture nor was it the latest designs coming down the runway at fashion weeks—I was interested in personal style! Thankfully it was the 2010s aka the heyday of personal style blogs and Tumbler, so there were examples all over the internet of how people expressed themselves through their daily outfits. Now I won’t stay in semiotics-land for too long but a core idea of this discipline is the signifier and the signified. From a linguistics perspective, a signifier is a word and the signified is the idea or meaning represented by said word. But this idea of a signifier and a signified can be extended to pretty much anything, including fashion. Take a box-pleated skirt for example, make it black or dark grey and suddenly its signifying academia and uniforms. Make it white though, and its tennis… or maybe American Apparel-era indie sleaze. The beautiful thing about semiotics is it provides a framework for understanding how our internal and collective histories and memories create the layers of meaning that are applied throughout society.

So how does this understanding of semiotics help us understand personal style? Well, it makes the personal part make sense! Since we are inevitably always signifying something with how we dress, whether we want to or not, we are constructing an analyzable version of ourselves with every outfit! Like everything societally-based there’s a bunch of classism etc. that plays a part in how society perceives us based on what we are wearing, that’s why cringy sayings like “dress for the job you want” have power behind them. But also we have the power to say something about ourselves to others with how we choose to present ourselves, and that’s exciting!

Frameworks for dressing

With that idea that items of clothing are signifiers that have societal connotations attached to them, we can play around with a really core idea in design which is tension. Tension is that feeling when things don’t quite go together, that sense of intrigue when you’re taking a second look at someones outfit. When I was growing up, I convinced my parents to buy me a relatively expensive (for a 9 year old) Phaidon book called Fruits. It’s an anthology of street fashion portraits from the magazine Fruits, taken by photographer Shoichi Aoki in the 90s in Harajuku, Tokyo. The outfits I liked the most exemplified this idea of tension, think floor-length cottage-core dresses with technical hiking shoes or a red snoopy sweater, turned inside out, and paired with a red kilt and a leopard cowboy hat. All these signifiers clashed with each other in the most delicious way to create these ephemeral forms of self-expression that seemed creatively intangible… except they actually aren’t. Without reproducing an outfit piece by piece, we can use our understanding of that semiotics principle to create tension and interest in our own outfits.

The 3-word method

Allison Bornstein’s 3 word method is one of my favourite systematic ways for bringing tension into your wardrobe. This method involves choosing three words for describing your style, one practical, one emotional, one aspirational. You can then use these words to check your outfits as you’re putting them together to make sure that they are achieving that tension. My words are: minimal, romantic, and tomboy. See the tension? Romance, to me, means frills and embellishments, contrasting starkly with minimalism’s clean lines. Tomboy is sporty, practical, baggy, and that’s pretty incongruous with romantic too. Using these words to abstract the tension helps us take a more objective look at our outfits, and when things are feeling off you can swap a piece that evokes one word for another.

To find my words I:

1. Looked at what I currently owned

2. Looked at what I’d liked wearing when I was a kid

3. Thought about my current life and the situations that I’m frequently in.

For example:

1. What do I currently own? Lots of basics, clean lines, very normcore

2. What did I like wearing as a kid? Two outfits stood out to me, a pleated dress with frilly socks and a bow that I wore for a parade in elementary school, and a pair of super wide leg, loose Evisu jeans I had in high school.

3. What does my current life look like? Work (relaxed dress code), walks, bars and restaurants

Take a second and try figuring out your own words, and if you’re keen I’d love to hear what they are (just hit reply ☺️).

75 Hard style challenge

Now with your words in hand (or mind, or your Notes app), I’d recommend getting more familiar with what you already own instead of running out to buy a whole new wardrobe. Too much newness at once can be overwhelming, and can make it hard to discern what you like because you like it versus what you like because its ✨ new ✨ . Mandy Lee created the 75 Hard style challenge and it’s a great way to play around with styling what you already own to learn the nuances of what fits, fabrics, and colours you like before identifying and filling any gaps with a shopping spree. The rules are:

1. Get dressed and document each outfit for 75 days

2. Don’t buy any clothing (new or secondhand) for 75 days

Something that I love about this challenge is that in reinforces the idea that your personal style is what you actually wear everyday, not some idealized future dream wardrobe following some restrictive aesthetic core. When putting together outfits, think about which pieces are signifiers for your words and use that to bring that tension into your outfits by combining different items together.

Uniform dressing

So now that you have all this data about what’s in your closet, what you like to wear and how you feel in an outfit it’s time to think about personal uniforms. Uniform dressing helps me prevent decision fatigue overall by making it easy for me to put together what I own on those days when I don’t have much bandwidth. A uniform could be a specific silhouette, like big on bottom and small on top, or it could be a colour combination, or a specific piece that you always feel great in. Whatever it is, your uniform not only makes it easy to get dressed but also reinforces the personal bit of your personal style as your unique combination of clothing pieces used for your uniform are what builds you a signature look as you wear it over and over again.

A digital wardrobe

Now, you can totally stop here and keep all of this in your brain, but I’ve chosen to make a digital wardrobe for myself in Notion (it’s the only thing I use Notion for now) and maybe that’s something you want to do to. You don’t have to use Notion of course, I’ve seen people use folders in their phone and I’ve also heard good things about an app called Indyx, but I use Notion because I like to have a variety of data, such as:

• Photos of each item

• Category (top, pants, sunglasses, etc.)

• It’s status (own, ordered, out of season, etc.)

• Brand

• Year of purchase

• Which of my 3 words it signifies.

When I’m putting together outfits for the week or planning what I’m going to pack for a trip, this database helps me make sure that I’m going to feel that tension in each outfit, and that it resonates with my authentic style. Tracking my clothes also helps me be mindful of not buying duplicates (because how many cream cardigans do I really need?) and helps me make sure that I’m not over-consuming in a year. You could set up your own database to track other things you find valuable too, like how many times you’ve worn a piece to do some cost-per-wear analysis, or you could track which uniforms it can be a part of to make getting dressed super simple. If you choose to build yourself a digital wardrobe, experiment and take an iterative approach to it so that the data you’re collective and tracking is valuable to the current you.

Try out these frameworks for personal style and see where it takes you, and if you fancy it, let me know how your experimentation goes!

xx Alex