People have a lot of interests. Interests vary, of course, but typically people have at least two or three. Take me for example: I love to roller skate, but I also like to exchange letters with pen pals, but I also like makeup and fashion. People are meant to contain multitudes, but when we talk about fashion, people try to put us in a single category of how we like to dress.
Online media often puts pressure on us for finding a specific aesthetic. You are either Dark Academia or Vsco, but never both! But if humans are so complex, why do we feel the need to put ourselves inside a small, labelled box? The world is our oyster, and it’s okay to explore it.
Being in the social distancing age allowed me to really reconsider the way I like to dress. Before it was always just jeans and a hoodie, but exploring different aesthetics really allowed me to fall in love with fashion and even myself. Clothes allow me to express how I am feeling every day.
And let me tell you, my mood changes a lot, and by extension, so do my clothes. So why am I going to dress in a Dark Academia outfit when I feel like a colorful flower that day? To please my Instagram feed? I don’t think so.
A concept that encompases this idea better than I ever could is “style personas.” When people ask about our preferred fashion trends, they tend to ask us what our fashion style is. But what if we don’t fit into a specific fashion “trend” or “style”? Style Persona is the idea of your overall style, combining all the little aspects that you like into one coherent idea. Rather than saying, “I am a total Vsco girl,” you can say, “my style persona changes according to my mood.”
Your style persona can change according to your mood, or it can just encompass two or three aesthetics you like. Take me for example. Some days, I love to dress in a Dark Academia mood. I wear my trousers, and my sweater vests, and keep my color palette of browns and neutrals. Other days, I feel so funky that I want to wear all the colors in the world. I put on my favorite colorful platform shoes, bright yellow pants, and butterfly clips in my hair. These outfits are so different, and they make me look like completely different people, but at the end of the day, they are both very me.
What I am trying to say is that humans contain multitudes. You are so much more than just an aesthetic Instagram feed. Wear what makes you feel happy and confident. Don’t feel like you have to label yourself a style and can’t step out of it.
Life is short, wear that outfit.