Start Embracing Your Authenticity And Express Yourself With Your Style

 Wearing clothes you want to wear and using your style as a way to express yourself is a beautiful way to tell the world who you are. Why conform, when you could stand out? If you’re ready to start embracing your authenticity and express yourself with your style, read on for some advice! 

1. Cultivate Self Awareness

Before you can embrace your authenticity and begin expressing yourself with your style, you need to know exactly who you are. Look within and aim to do some introspection. Are you hiding from the world in some way? What do you wish people knew about you? If you were more confident, what would you wear? Knowing how you fit into the world and how you would like to fit into the world can help, too. You should even consider where you came from. All of these things can help you to cultivate more self awareness and help inspire your style choices. You'll know when you are making decisions based on the real you, rather than decisions based on other people. 

2. Feel The Fear - Do It Anyway

Stepping out of your style comfort zone can be scary. The key here is to feel the fear and do it anyway. Take that leap into the unknown and your life will appear. Prove to yourself that you can do anything! It might seem like a small deal compared to so many other changes and decisions, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Too often we hide behind clothes we don’t really like, and a style that does not reflect who we truly are just to avoid being seen. Let people see you in all of your glory! 

3. Dress With Intention

When you get dressed, do it with intention. Try not to base it on whatever is clean and ironed. How do you want to feel today? What sort of things are you going to be doing, and what sort of clothes will help you achieve that? You’d be surprised at how an outfit can completely change your mindset and mood. Your clothes can help you get to where you want to be just by changing your outlook. 

4. Practice Clashing 

Clashing patterns and colors can be so much fun and help you to stand out even more. Monochrome prints go with pretty much any other pattern, so see if you can start out with this until you’re more confident. Not everything you wear has to ‘match’. Think of your look as a work of art. Be an artist and just go with it! 

5. Buy Clothing From Companies You Believe In 

If you’re going to express yourself with your style, you need to think about more than just wearing clothes you really love. You need to be prepared to buy clothing from companies you believe in. If you want to do more for the planet, but you’re buying from fast fashion companies, your look is not going to reflect the kind of person you are. See if you can purchase clothing that will help support certain causes. Make it clear what you’re all about by giving your money to companies you love and believe in. It all makes a big difference and stops those huge corporations from exploiting their workers! 

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6. Find A Style Inspiration 

If you’ve never really experimented with your style before, then all of this can be daunting. See if you can find a style inspiration. This could be a person, or even people, whose style you really admire. See how they piece items together and style them. Put your own spin on their outfits! By starting a mood board, you can see which pieces seem to crop up the most and get a better idea of the sort of items you would likely get a lot of wear out of. It’s easy to do this using Pinterest, but Instagram can be a great place to do this, too. 

7. Experiment With Other Aspects of Your Style 

Don’t stop at your clothes. Express yourself and experiment with other aspects of your style. Could you try something new with your hair? Trying out different shades, such as bronde hair or even a bright fashion dye could make things interesting. Hair accessories can add a little more interest to your look, too. Try head scarfs, headbands, and anything else you like the look of. Then, you have your accessories to play around with. Large earrings always help you to enhance your outfit and make a statement, as well as chunky jewelry. Building a great accessory collection can be just as beneficial as building a solid closet. You’ll be able to bring various pieces together and add even more interest to your look. 

8. Don’t Limit Yourself

You might like a specific style, but don’t feel like you have to stick with it forever. Try out different styles, and if you feel confident, you can wear the one you feel most like expressing that day. Don’t limit yourself! There are no rules when it comes to clothes and style. 

9. Ignore Misogynistic Fashion Advice

Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of outdated, misogynistic fashion advice out there. Why should we only wear clothes that a magazine says ‘suits our body type?’ Newsflash: you can’t put every body in the world into four fruit categories. Your body is unique, period. Appreciate your body for all it does for you. Get comfortable with the parts of your body that you have tried to hide, or been told you should hide. You can show off your body and enhance it as you please. No matter your body type, if you love what you wear and feel confident, it will absolutely show. Confidence is extremely attractive! 

10. Ignore Trends 

Don’t be tempted to buy into trends. Trends come and go far too quickly, so you’ll often get very few wears out of a trend before it is no longer stylish. Plus, trends are often another product of fast fashion. Instead, spend your money on pieces that you know you will want to wear for a long time. If you do want to wear a trend, see if you can find a vintage original - trends have been coming and going for years, so there will nearly always be something out there that you can buy that has less of an impact on the planet. Plus, it’ll be unique compared to what everybody else is wearing. Stepping away from fast fashion can be hard, especially when they release so many new collections. However, it’s important to remember that not only is it bad for the planet and exploitative to the people making the clothes, these pieces often rip off small designers. Fast fashion companies are endlessly bold because they know that they can afford big lawyers and small designers can’t. They also know that they are unlikely to lose a lot of custom, because most people don’t care about the little guys. Following people like Aja Barber on Instagram can help you to understand why investing in pieces, rather than buying fast fashion is important. 

11. Just Have Fun 

Don’t take yourself so seriously. If you make a mistake, don’t fret. Everybody makes fashion faux pas, but that’s how we learn. If your ultimate goal is to have fun with your look, then you can’t go wrong. Don’t forget to document your favorite looks so you can emulate them again and again, or even add new twists to them. Always take pictures of your outfits when you feel your best, and this will help you to create the same feeling in future outfits.