015. Stress-free styling [Part One]
You actually need clothes.
I’m a numbers person.
Considerably counterintuitive for the gal with an English Lit degree, my thought process for most decisions involves a lot of pattern-finding, — vis-à-vis 010. How to define your style [Part Three] — grouping in numbers, and counting.
It’s less math and more numerical organization that leads me to a desired result.
I thought I was alone in this but apparently there’s a name for this way of thinking “universal” to all humanity called ✨numerosity✨. Fortunately I stopped myself before going too far down that rabbit hole, but I’ve linked the text if you’re interested to learn more.
Anyway, I’m writing on the numbers side of fashion again because it plays a major role in styling yourself for success, stress-free.
My greatest tension
When I first started Very Good Style, my greatest tension was not who do I serve, but what budget do I serve
I asked myself, again and again, questions like:
“When I share clothing links or make shopping suggestions, what budget should those references fall under — high-fashion finds or thrift treasure troves?
“Do I condone spending thousands on a handbag just because the name behind it, or do I think you can find something just as good at a local retailer from which those runway designs have been filtered down to?”
“Better yet, do I write about the world of thrifting and shopping secondhand? Because after all, that’s become so trendy.”
These are just some of my daily #showerthoughts.
What I realized was that I’m willing to serve people with both “high” and “low” budgets1, as long as the endgame is authentic expression.
And truthfully — if you’ve studied fashion for long enough and have developed a keen sense of personal style, like me — you don’t actually have to spend a lot to look like you’re worth a lot.
The art of looking expensive
La Closette — a premier Toronto-based fashion consultancy firm I’m proud to call an ally — has developed a simple-yet-effective way of guiding clients of all budgets by featuring a “High / Low'“ segment of what’s trending on their Instagram stories.
Recently, they compared the same concept of leopard print loafers for two respective incomes:
Shopping retail vs designer is the most obvious way of looking expensive without breaking the bank. But there are other strategies you can utilize too:
Choice of colour combination
High quality garments in small amounts
Hanging onto “old” styles until they resurface (I’m looking at you, skinny jeans)
Having a good tailor on-hand (or learning to alter clothing yourself)
Knowing where the best and brightest consignment shops live
There’s a reason I made today’s issue a series situation…. Rest assured, this is a list I will expand upon in part two.
You actually need clothes
Whether you’re spending $5, $500, or $5,000 I want you to consider something.
How often do you feel guilty about spending money on clothes?
In other words, how do you view your need of clothing?
⚠️Full disclosure⚠️ — I grew up in an emotionally contradictory home where my love of fashion was fed with frequent shopping trips, only to be shamed days later that I had overconsumed and overspent.
I was always told that I was wasting money on clothes, then in the next moment I was being celebrated for having such great style.
At that time, I hadn’t been taught how to budget and didn’t even have a bank account I could watch to see what happened when I spent money (spoiler alert: the numbers go down!). This is a shame mindset I was conditioned to believe that I’m still actively working to rewire.
Broken down, this mindset says: a person doesn’t need clothes.
Take it a step further and it becomes: a person’s image doesn’t matter.
I honestly think a big part of this is because we don’t see clothing as a need, we see it as a want — a luxury.
Maybe we believe that if we look good, we’ve spend too much, or we’ve been selfish when we could’ve put that money “to better use.” Maybe we’re conditioned to think we just need something that will “get the job done” so we’re not walking into Subway like we’re headed to a French nude beach, en chanté.
TLDR: if you can change your perspective from viewing clothes as a want to a need — your image from just existing to thriving and actually profitable — stress evaporates.
The budget behind authenticity
The counterpart to all this is that now that I’m growing in wealth wisdom, I have a responsibility to shop well.
It makes me think of Dave Ramsey — and by extension, his business Ramsey Solutions.
Love him or leave him, the guy’s been through some challenges that have grown him in wisdom and strategy for how to save money and build wealth.
I’ve become a podcast person recently (and by podcast person I mean I enjoy listening exclusively to Theo Von). Last year, Von hosted Ramsey on the show and it’s filled with golden nuggets. Even if you only have five minutes, scroll through the ‘Chapters’ Von’s laid out and click on a topic that catches your eye.
While we’re on the Ramsey railway, Rachel Cruze — Dave’s daughter — put out a great article just recently that’s certainly worth a skim.
Of all her points, number 12, “limit social media comparison” is my favourite — and possibly, collectively, our biggest pitfall as far as buying into trends goes.
In the article, Cruze writes:
“Social media makes the comparison game even more intense. Your friend’s post about their brand-new couch with those perfect throw pillows. That popular blogger’s reel about the incredible, all-inclusive resort she went to. It can make us feel like our lives aren’t good enough and we need to spend more money to reach their level. But all that does is drain our bank accounts and steal our joy.”
To be continued
I’m not gonna lie, all through university, I struggled to stay under the word count.
I’m an interdisciplinary thinker and I’m deeply passionate about restoring people’s image. When these attributes come together, I’m a brainstorming machine. As I write, my mind continuously generates idea after idea of how things interconnect.
My husband assures me that my blogs make good sense despite how much content I try to jam-pack in each entry; my friends tell me they appreciate how much information I include in each blog.
So I’ll keep on that path. No gatekeeping here, just healing how you view yourself amidst all the noise of this world.
💌, Tess
Just like life, you can’t serve everybody. So when I reference those with a “low” budget, for me and my business as The Style Servant means the dollar value of my services as a baseline.