Dress For Success: How to be inspired
When you’ve asked me how to gather inspiration for your wardrobe, I have always given the same generic responses: Pinterest, watch movies, observe good art. But I have always been unsatisfied with this response. After sending the last newsletter on editing your wardrobe I felt a heightened urgency to address the topic.
Some of us are more seasoned than others at dressing up, but we all need inspiration. This guide is for everyone regardless of your experience with dressing up. The next newsletter will discuss how to apply these sources of inspiration when you get dressed.
Inspiration vs. Aspiration
During styling appointments, I want to achieve several things but creating outfits that absolutely delight me is at the top of the list. I do not mean to create outfits that no one’s ever seen before — that is not why my clients hire me. I am good enough at my job that my clients are delighted. While delighting myself isn’t more important than the client’s satisfaction, I still want to be inspired to push the limits of what is obvious. And because styling is intuitive, I must be mindful of rehearsing the same outfit formulas with the same garments. So my job is to remain inspired in-between appointments to find inspiration and hone how we use and when to use them.
Days before leaving my final in-person styling appointment with my Seattle client, I grew increasingly discontent with the outfits we were making. I took a break to look at her mood boards but continued feeling uninspired. We continued creating outfits and the answer emerged: We had outgrown the mood board we curated over a year ago. We’d created this mood board at the start of our work together and I consciously chose people and images that were a step or two up from what already existed in her wardrobe with plans to upgrade these images as our work progressed. I had saved a couple photos of Tracee Ellis Ross for her but after our second styling session, it became apparent we needed less ambitious inspiration until I was familiar with her wardrobe and certain of the direction for her wardrobe — we saved those for later. Doing so prevented us from excessively buying new things and making outfits she was not ready to wear. But now it was time to revisit them. This practice — separating what works for you now from where you’d eventually like to end up — is the difference between aspiration and inspiration.
To be inspired means to stimulate as a creative effort or to arouse a feeling. Inspiration is creation — you must cultivate it. On the other hand, to aspire means to be ambitious. If you keep saving images to your mood board that are too ambitious for your current wardrobe, it won’t be helpful to you when you’re thinking about how to get dressed — you won’t have the items you need to make use of those reference images, or you’ll buy items that never translate into outfits you want to wear. While creating a mood board for inspiration, you should be titillated by whatever you choose (Inspire), not intimidated (Aspire). It’s common to assume intimidation is a good thing but oftentimes it signifies we are not yet ready. Of course, sometimes, we need courage and a little push but the contents of your inspiration should stimulate ideas for what you already own, not scare you into panic shopping. An aspirational mood board is not only intimidating but pretentious. It’s as a result of hoping your clothes will make you more interesting than you are, which is too much pressure on yourself and clothes. The end result is outfits you feel like a poser in and clothes you never reach for. Aspiration causes excess — it might be why you have a closet filled with clothes and nothing to wear. Your mood board should help fine tune who you are right now, not who you hope to be.