For most of my life, I didn’t give my clothes much thought. I picked up the first thing I saw in my closet, regardless of what type of sweater it was. But for the last years I have found a lot of joy in dressing better.
In this blog, I will present four things that I wish I had known when I started my clothing journey!
Tidy up your closet
“Tidy up your closet!” You most likely read that sentence in the voice of your mom or dad. We can all remember parents constantly reminding us to tidy up our rooms and closets when we were kids. And they had a good point, but they didn’t actually know how to tidy. “Didn’t know how to tidy?” Everyone knows how to tidy, you may think to yourself. And that was what I thought as well. But after reading Marie Kondo’s book, I understood that I had tidied in the wrong way my entire life.
If I were to pick out the one book that has changed my life the most, I think I would pick out Marie Kondo’s. And yes, it has a cliche kind of name – “life-changing magic of tidying up”. The book promises that if you have a huge tidying session where you tidy after Kondo’s special method, you will never need to tidy again. And in my experience, that claim is true.
So what does tidying have to do with dressing more confidently? This tidying method is all about keeping the items that spark joy in you. For clothes, this is done by laying all the clothes you own (and then I mean every single clothing item) in a pile on your bed. And then you should pick up one item at a time and see if the item sparks joy in you when you touch and hold it. If it doesn’t, then you discard the item from your wardrobe.
By taking one item at a time and asking yourself if that item brings you joy, you suddenly start to understand what kind of clothes you like. You discover your own style without buying new clothes, but by “shopping” in your own closet and only keeping the items that spark joy in you.
After this exercise, you will probably end up keeping less than half of the clothes you had in your wardrobe. This is great, because it makes it a lot easier to dress in the morning and a lot more fun. After all, now every item you look at in your closet is an item that you enjoy.
Stick to neutral colours
The next thing that helped me on my own clothing journey was to start wearing neutral colored items. After discarding a lot of clothes with loud colours and patterns when tidying my closet, it was obvious to me that I liked more muted colours. If you tidy and end up keeping only the clothes with loud colours, then you should keep wearing those colours! I guess that if you read this blog post, that’s not you.
Neutral colours like beige, white and black give you a great starting point for experimenting. The beauty of neutral colours is that they all combine, so you don’t need to be afraid that your colours will clash.
I don’t say that you should never wear colours in your outfits. I’m saying that the base of your wardrobe and the base of your outfits should consist of neutral colours. This helped me a lot when I didn’t have that much knowledge and confidence in my own personal style.
After starting to wear more neutral colours in my outfits, I, out of the blue, started to get compliments on my clothes. Couldn’t even remember that happening once in the prior 10 years. Most likely it had something to do with the huge contrast to my earlier clothes who consisted of loud colours with stripes all over.
Experiment with accessories
Accessories sometimes sound like something scary. Or it at least sounded like that to me. I pictured earrings, lots of rings, bandanas, loud sunglasses and so on. If you are like I was – a bit scared to incorporate accessories into your outfits, I tell you to get over it. Get over the fear, not get over ever trying to wear accessories with your clothing.
The first time I wore a ring, it gave me a weird feeling. It felt like I did something that I shouldn’t be doing. I actually remember taking it off and putting it in my pocket before meeting some friends. It was uncomfortable to wear it because it pushed me to the other side of my comfort zone. But guess what, wearing it three or four times, my mind stopped worrying.
We need to remember that accessories don’t have to be this grandiose thing. It could be as simple as putting on a watch before going to town.
Have fun, and don’t be afraid
If there is a moral to this blog post, it’s this: don’t be afraid and have fun. Clothing is fun, accessories are fun, and even tidying is fun if you follow the KonMari method.
The don’t be afraid part is a bit misleading. When going on a journey of developing your own personal style, some chapters are a bit scary. That’s how it should be. It should be scary the first time you change out your go-to to sneakers for a leather penny loafer.
I remember using a black penny loafer for the first time, and I met my next-door neighbour outside the house, and the first thing he said to me was: “Have you put on dress shoes for going to the grocery store?”. Two feelings immediately started to occur inside me, the first was that I was a bit embarrassed to be seen in shoes other than my usual sneakers. The other feeling was that I got an urge to explain to him the difference between a casual penny loafer and a typical Oxford dress shoe. To not come across as a douchebag, I resisted the urge to tell him the historical difference between a dress shoe and a penny loafer. And good was that, as I am sure that there are a few things that interest him less than classic footwear.
Take on the clothes you love, smile at your friends who tell you that your outfit is outside the norm, and then keep going. No comment can stop you from developing your own personal style! Because the alternative is to end up dressing like every other guy (and that’s not your goal, is it?)
