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As we’re moving into 2020, many of us online are doing retrospectives.    Where were you, ten years ago?  Twenty?  And how were you dressed?

Style is a conversation that you have with the people around you, communicating to them who you are and what you’re about.

Twenty years ago, my personal style was at a nadir.  I’d just left a job where the dress code was “look like you’re at a golf resort” and where I was frequently asked to show up wearing a brown houndstooth polo shirt and khakis.   I’d chopped off most of my hair in a fit of annoyance that the first (12″) chop hadn’t been noticed.

I wasn’t happy, and it showed.   Watch your clothing communication, ladies – you are telling more than you think.   We’re all happy that the polo shirts have not been immortalized in photos.  They were worse than you’re imagining.

At the turn of the millennium, I had changed jobs and become pregnant, which meant I had better clothes, but very few.  When we were partying like it was 1999?   I was sipping apple cider.   Everything was changing… and would change in the next two years far more than I had any idea.

In 2010, I was at my most conservative.  With one child in kindergarten and one child in fourth grade, I had plenty of time to attend to keeping up my home, and I’d learned to sew.  This was my second go-round at the walk-away dress (widely known in the sewing community for being popular but not particularly well-designed – there are a lot of ladies who thought this would be a good “first dress” – including me).

During this time, I experimented with head-covering, including covering my hair with scarves nearly entirely.  That didn’t work well, either stylistically or practically, as I became so well known that small children would bring the scarves that slid out of my hair back to me on the school playground.    (I eventually settled on wearing pins and clips, and a token “covering”).

Learning to sew changed my life – and my style.   Finally I could make garments that suited me!  That fit me!  That were colors I liked, and liked me back.  My stocky 5’2″ self was no longer at the mercy of the mall.   And so, I started learning about proportion, and found out the visual difference a few inches more or less can make on the same figure.  (I still wear this skirt silhouette regularly – it balances my wide shoulders, lengthens my legs, cuts my very long torso in half, and gives me the illusion of a waistline).

Knowledge is power.

In the last year, I’ve returned to the office (having started Hearthrose Image Consulting in 2017), released my second book, seen my son start college and my daughter in her sophomore year of high school.   I put my energy into my powerlifting – and diet – and lost more than twenty pounds, as well as increasing my strength substantially.   (Adjusted for age, my backsquat and deadlift are both “elite” level lifts according to the charts).

Along the way, I noticed that knowledge is worthless without practice, and I joined Lauren Messiah’s Style Confidence Collective for accountability in dress.   There’s no shame in needing help – even if you are a professional!   Having someone to dress for pushed me to some of my best outfits of 2019, including silhouettes ( ex: red dress) I’d never have tried on my own.

Where will 2020 take me?   Where will it take this site?   I’ll be pursuing excellence in writing and sewing.   I’ll be talking about the sewing more here.   While it is possible to purchase (and have tailored) beautiful items of clothing, it is expensive.  As I’ve been shopping more and sewing less in 2019, I’ve had this shoved in my face.   Because I grew up in an era where sewing basics and/or going to the local seamstress was normal, I haven’t really internalized the fact that many of my readers might not know what a well-constructed garment should look like – or what goes into making one.

As for the rest… it’s up to God.

I have been both a person of the thimble and one of the mall.  There are pluses and minuses to both positions.  Let’s discuss.

Sewing Pros:

• If you can dream it, you can do it.   (Assuming you have the skills…)
• Fabric choice goes up dramatically, as does fabric quality.
• You get what you REALLY want.
• The pleasure of craftsmanship.

Sewing Cons:

• Time, time, time.  Time to develop skills, time to sew the clothing of your dreams.  Time to wait while your fabric arrives.  TIME.
• You’ve got to know your stuff – and that “stuff” includes your body, your best fit, the sewing nitty gritty, your colors, and the best lines for you.  Why?  Because you aren’t trying on and leaving – if you make it, you’re kinda stuck with it.

Shopping Pros:

• You have much less chance of being utterly out of touch with what’s in style this … decade.
• It’s easy and fun, a social outing with the girls.
• Great way to try things out – take that chance!
• The thrill of the hunt.

Shopping Cons:

• Quality.
• Sourcing that dream item… especially these days when so much of shopping has gone online.

So what do you do?   Well, I do both.   Sewing clothing is, while not an instant skill to have, a very handy one.   You can access amazing pieces of fabric online and get truly beautiful, one of a kind items from a pleasant occupation.  But it’s slow.   If you want – or need! – something right now, shopping is usually handier.  Well, usually – if what you want is for sale at this moment in time.  -sigh-

However, as you develop and curate your dream wardrobe, you can choose to make couture level garments – garments that are well outside most of our ability to purchase on their own.

Don’t throw baby out with the bathwater – both methods of getting clothing are valid – and fun!

** Pictures rated as free to re-use, neither of them are mine.

The overall effect of structure/soft in your outfit should match the overall effect of structure/soft in your persona.    Your outfit includes your body – those raw materials we love to fret over.   Your persona is not just your personality, it’s also the public affairs office of that personality – what you want others to think of you.

That means that if your body gets softer with age (loosened skin around the neckline, for example), you might find yourself more attracted to a lightly structured jacket, even for evening wear.    That means if you’re an athlete, you’re going to look your best in less structured clothing that moves with your body.  Your muscles already provide visual structure, you don’t need to double down with shoulder pads.

The elements of your persona (fire/air/water/earth) should be taken into account here too.   Water and air are “soft” elements with lots of movement to them.  Fire and earth are “hard” elements, that rely upon more structure.  If you take a brown tweed jacket and structure it with shoulder pads, it’s going to look quite masculine on an athletic figure – the epitome of “earth”.  Strength, reliability, solidity.   You must stay in balance for best effect.  (There are always exceptions – remember:  if you’re going to break the rules, break them in full knowledge of what you’re breaking, then do it thoroughly).

Your subconscious – the desires of your heart – will speak out through your actions (including the action of selecting clothing and accessories) unless you consciously make other statements.   This can be good, it can be bad – really depends on where you are and what you’re trying to accomplish.   It *should* be taken into account when you dress, because revealing one facet of your true self is one thing, and misrepresenting the truth is quite another.

What do you want to say about yourself to the world?

When you sort that out, don’t forget to add in the balance of soft and hard.  And if you are changing from one side of that equation to the other – what you wear must change too.

For those of you who are new to this site, I’m also writing over at hearthroseramblings.wordpress.com if you’re interested in the intersection of Christianity and style, and I just put my second book out into the world for the same audience:  Beauty Destroys the Beast.

I like David Zyla’s system of color well enough to recommend his book to my readers, and use the reference of the hands and fingertips on my clients.   In short, it tells you that the colors found in your own skin, hair, and eyes are your personal best colors, and it takes the four-season system of color a step further.  This is good stuff.

There are, however, limitations.   And the biggest one is that you have to use a little creative license with those colors!  It helps a very great deal if you’re someone who can really see color, and extrapolate corresponding “right” colors from what’s on the paper.

Here’s a picture of my eye:

According to Zyla, the ring around my iris is my “first base” – the color I should wear when I want to be most forceful, taken most seriously.  My version of black.

This is a lovely color.   Very soothing.   I wear this color… but it’s not “my black”.   That’s bright navy.

Why would I choose navy over teal?

1. Navy has a more powerful connotation for the viewer than does teal.  It’s not black – but I look terrible in black.  The cultural and emotional connotations of dark blue include reliability and professionalism – the same kind of connotations that black has.  It’s not as expected as black (which I view as a plus) but it is “understood” as a serious color, worn on serious occasions.
2. My eyes, seen from a distance, look like they have more of a dark blue ring – especially if I wear blue, which I do often.
3. Although Zyla thinks that the teal should make me feel most clarified, it just doesn’t.  That’s a great color for me to feel relaxed, like myself, and chill.

Another theory of Zyla’s is that you can find your best basic light color (aka white) from your skin.    Here’s my hand:

The color that blends everything together would be a soft golden peach.   And that’s a fine color on me – in lingerie.   In *anything* else, it looks incredibly blah.  It blends so well with my skin tone that I might as well be wearing a paper bag.  Yawn-city.    My “white” is actually ivory, preferably an ivory with a very golden or pink cast.

What’s going on here?

I think it’s that David Zyla, as a creative with an incredible eye for color, assumes that his audience has that same eye.   But in my experience, many folks just don’t.   The ability of humans to see fine variations in color varies.  (There are online color sight tests if you’re interested in this).

I learned a great deal from his book, I narrowed down my Spring color scheme and nailed a few bits of color psychology to the ground that have been extremely helpful.  (I use his “relaxing” colors quite often to pick soft greens and muted aquas, for instance).  I think others can, likewise, gain a great deal from his work.

But it’s only a piece of the puzzle.

Read his book, think it over, add it to the pile of information in your head…. what do you know about you?   What do you want to say about you?  It all works together.

We all go through changes in our lives, some voluntary and some not.   If you’re walking through a change and want to help yourself adjust to that change or make peace with it, changing your adornment can help you along.

Why?  How?

Every day you through the process of getting dressed.  You select the clothes and jewelry that seem the most “you” – from your mood (subconscious) to your mission (conscious), you’re reflecting who you are and what you’re up to today.  So the first way in which you are making clothing work for you is that you use them to reframe your choices every morning.

The second way you support yourself is in your reflection and the small bits of yourself that you can see of yourself all the time.  Even now as I type this, my peripheral vision allows me to see bits of me.  Every time I get up and pass a reflective surface, I see the rest.   Have I cared for myself today?  What have I chosen to reflect to the world?  That all comes back to me, and it reinforces the choices I’ve already made.  It tells me who I am.

Every day, you tell a story about yourself, and every day you are your most attentive listener.

Please make your choices wisely.   If you’d like to learn more about how you’re making those choices and what the language of clothes has to say about you to you, pick up my book, Wardrobe Communication.

Right now, I’m in a transitional stage.   I’ve been working hard at the gym, harder at the plate, and I’ve lost 15lb.  My next book is well on its way to completion.   I’ve been spending less time at home, more time at my office job.   I’m not where I am going – yet – but I’m not where I was.

I had to go shopping.   Half my wardrobe was hanging from me like a potato sack.   As I shopped, I decided this next self would have a name – I’m calling her Intermediate Amy.

Intermediate Amy has the skills that Old Amy did not have – she’s willing to do marketing that Old Amy avoided.   She’s stronger.   She’s looking for opportunities to exercise the gifts that God has given her in new ways.   She’s more confident.

She’s not yet New Amy, on a book tour or doing speaking engagements.   But that’s what she’s looking towards, and working towards.   She’s leaving behind what was before, and giving up the fear that it might sneak up and snatch her back to the beginning.   Intermediate Amy is the Amy who is in the process of changing her life.

It’s probably just as well that she has new clothes to remind her of that, all potato sack situations aside.

If you’d like to make a new self and need some shopping help?  You might note that Intermediate Amy got her wardrobe redone in two shopping trips, back to back.   1 nightgown, 2 yoga pants, 6 camisoles, four sweaters, five skirts, three blouses and a t-shirt, all of which go with the items that didn’t need to be purged, because she knows her colors… and since she is me, I’d love to give you the benefit of my expertise and save you time on your next shopping trip too!   Need to reveal the self hidden inside?   Need some help getting her the clothes she needs?   Drop me a line and we’ll get to work.

We are all ambassadors.

For whatever group we belong to, be that family or work, faith or hobby – we are its ambassadors.

That fact makes everyone uncomfortable.  After all, no one wants to be on display all the time, and ambassadors are held to a very high standard.   In the modern world, we tend to want to be “just us” – whatever that means.   If nothing else, one is always an ambassador for oneself!

We’ve been trained by decades of entertainment in flickering blue screens, of seeing our representatives (of faith, city, country, etc) more often on those screens than in person to think of life-as-fishbowl.  We are the observers, not the observed.   We sit outside and watch… but we are not-to-be-seen.   After all, if we’re not on camera, what we say or do is private – right?   This has led us to vastly decreased standards of personal style – and an attitude of “don’t judge me”.

When you go out in public, you *are* seen.   You’re seen by people who you might want to befriend, be employed by, or date.   You’re seen by people who learn to think of your hobby by how you treat others.   You represent your immediate family members – how many times have you heard the trope of being embarrassed by one’s mother?

And perhaps most of all, you are a representative of your faith.   Faith is contentious in these times, and stereotypes abound.    I’m a conservative Christian – what do you think of, when you hear those words?   Do you think of someone who loves clothing, who loves beauty, who loves art?   Probably not.   But I am all of those things.   And I know that I am an ambassador, whether or not I am adequate in the position, I have to walk it.

If thinking of yourself in these ways makes you uncomfortable – you’re human.  If you’d like to get better at representing and you need “how-to”, please see my book, Wardrobe Communication.   If you need a bit more “why” to get you off the couch and into your closet, my second book, Beauty Destroys the Beast will be out soon.

And as always, if you’d like a consultation, drop me a line – I’d love to work with you.