Between social media algorithms and the onslaught of fashion influencers herding their followers toward a handful of trends, it can be difficult to figure out how we actually want to look.
What, really, is so-called personal style? What do we like, and what is merely a product of so many brands and influencers trying to sway our tastes and make a dollar?
“Real Style: Dressing With Intention & Expressing Yourself Through Style” is a book of essays by forever style icons and designers like Chloë Sevigny, Janicza Bravo and Isaac Mizrahi, accompanied by prompts for readers to ponder and respond to, like: “Who do you want to totally copy?”
“What catches your eye?”
“What makes you pause?”
“What causes a visceral reaction?”
It is like a self-help workbook a therapist might give you to reframe your thinking — except it’s to save you from a fashion morass.
Some might say that confusing swirl around clothes is magnified by platforms not unlike the RealReal, an online marketplace for authenticated, consigned luxury goods, but the book is an attempt to push back on the religion of amassing items.
“We were very interested in helping people move through a process where they created a relationship with their style that was deeper and connected to who they are, what they’re about in the world, and helping them connect the dots between,” said Kristen Naiman, who landed at the RealReal as chief brand officer by way of the Gap, Isaac Mizrahi, Kate Spade and a handful of editorial positions at Condé Nast, Nylon and Paper magazine.
She worked alongside Cait Munro, an editor formerly of Refinery 29, and Sarah Leon, the editorial director at the RealReal, to formulate questions they hope can help readers develop their inner voice and thus their taste. The book is out this week.
“One of the problems we were trying to solve was how to help people in this incredible sea of choice in the world and this endless inundation of things being marketed to you,” Naiman said.
“That is why the first line of the book is: ‘It’s going to sound weird coming from us, but don’t buy anything’,” she added, paraphrasing. “Not for three months, not for six months, not for 12 months — not until you can actually hear that voice inside your head.”
That might strike some people as odd indeed coming from a company that says it has sold, as of August, 50 million items since its founding 15 years ago. A simple search query can yield thousands of results from designers all over the fashion map, making for a mélange of prep, punk and quiet luxury on a single page.
For the designer Isaac Mizrahi, a recent guest on the Real Real’s podcast, this is where curation comes in.
“That word, curation, it’s annoying because it’s being used to death, but it’s really important to think like a curator now,” Mizrahi said. “What is great is that every single person is born with their kind of innate version of a curator.”
Still, sharpening one’s judgment is a skill that comes with experience — and occasionally expensive, wasteful mistakes.
“The thing that you learn as an older person too, is that you really don’t love that many things,” Mizrahi, said. “You think you do, but you don’t. You find that out when it’s too late. By that point you have passed up so many of the great things that you wish you had and you accumulated all this stuff that is absolutely worthless.”
Falling into an abyss of consumption is something that can happen to anyone today who spends time online, including Lena Dunham, who says she too has succumbed to a “conspicuous consumption wormhole” in the past.
Lately, though, Dunham is more focused. She’s been hunting for “O.G. Jil Sander” and Diotima pieces that speak to her wider cultural interests.
“It allows me to be in a dialogue with my clothing that references film, literature, art history and cultural moments I am obsessed with,” Dunham said in an email, “and it makes shopping feel like just a part of creating a life that makes sense to me.”
In this sense, “personal style” may be just a trendy way of talking about an eternal idea — that our interests and experiences accumulate over a lifetime, shaping the way we present ourselves to the world.
Some have suggested the term itself is an oxymoron: Style may be unavoidably personal, even in these algorithmic times.
The post A New Guide on the Endless Quest for Personal Style appeared first on New York Times.
