How can I find my personal style?

When you feel like you have nothing to wear!
I've always been quite interested in fashion and beauty. Being fashionable and stylish is for certain people a pleasant hobby and even a mission. It's quite easy to follow fashion trends and style advice when you have time, and some money to spend, you are in good health and don't feel exhausted. But, as soon as I became a mother, I realised how being well-dressed can be difficult.

One day you are a young woman, you’re in good shape, you like fashion, go out quite a lot with your partner and your friends and enjoy life. You feel young and love the way you look. The day after you’re a mamma of two and you don’t recognize your body anymore. Or better, your body doesn’t belong to you anymore. Your hair has a life on its own, and it’s not good news. You open your wardrobe and instantly feel the desire to burn everything because all your clothes look awful on you. You would like to do shopping, to dress elegantly and have a nice haircut, but you didn’t sleep the night before and you feel exhausted, as usual. You’re always tidying up, washing the dishes and all the house chores but the house is always full of garbage and still, people ask you if you “are working”. Does it resonate with you?

I was born in the late 70’s in Sardinia, the second biggest island of the Mediterranean Sea. I spent my childhood in a small town and the countryside during the holidays. A very quiet but happy life, in a style that today we would describe as “hygge”. I used to spend a lot of time in nature, drawing, dreaming, and travelling with my family. We didn’t watch much TV and I had my radio only when I was 15. When I was a child I had very clear ideas about myself, what I liked and what I wanted. I had my own style of dressing and my mom left me free to choose my clothes.
But in my teenage years, everything changed. I started to feel insecure and in need of approval and validation from my schoolmates and friends. I started to follow fashion trends, to be accepted. But it wasn’t enough because I always wasn’t enough. I was too short, too flatchested, too pale, not blonde enough. So I started to make plans for a total makeover. I started to draw myself as a typical California girl, with long blonde hair, tan skin, attractive body. And I began to “disguise” myself.

I had the “fashion victim period”, during which I religiously followed every fashion trend. In my 20’s and early 30’s, I used to “dress to impress”. I selected the most impressive trends that I saw in fashion magazines and I tried to imitate those looks, in order to be noticed. Since I was very shy, this was my way to say: Hey, look at me, I’m here, I’m trendy, I'm cool!”. Of course, I didn’t have any idea about my appearance, my body shape or the colours that looked better on me. My priority was being fashionable.

Then came the “glamorous period”. In my 30’s I used to think that to be noticed, I had to be sexy and show my body. This has been the most uncomfortable decade of my life. I forced my body to live in bandage dresses and mini skirts, extremely stretchy shirts and low-rise jeans. My feet were tortured all the time in uncomfortable shoes with extremely high heels. Animal prints, fake diamonds and pearls, bling everywhere. Not only I wasn’t elegant, but my back used to hurt all the time. I went to the clubs a lot but I couldn’t have fun because all my energy was concentrated on looking sexy without showing that I was feeling miserable.

In my late 30’s I started my “I want to be more comfortable” period. I used to wear flip-flops in the summer and Ugg boots in the winter, trying to find an easy but trendy and (again!) sexy style: a total mess!

When I became a mother for the first time I started to be aware of the changes in my body and above all in my mind and soul. My priorities have changed. I couldn’t recognize myself anymore. I didn’t have any time to take care of myself at first and I didn’t care because my energy was devoted to my baby. But after several months I felt the strong need to take care of my appearance again and I didn’t know how to start. Everything seemed wrong. My hair looked crazy, my body proportions were different, and everything I had in my wardrobe seemed useless and/or looked terrible. I dreamed of being one of those amazing women that I saw on social media, full of energy, elegant, and radiant. But I was a mother and almost all my days and nights were devoted to my baby, my partner and the house!
How to survive all this?

These are my thoughts after six years of being the mamma of two sons.
I have to be honest. I cannot give you the perfect solution, but I can give you some hints, to help you find your own style.

The images we see in magazines and social media can impress us, but every woman is unique and has a unique story and lifestyle. In my opinion, personal style is a mix of different ingredients:

Personal taste
Lifestyle
Appearance
Interests and values
Bonus: Beauty, elegance and simplicity of Nature serve as a great source of inspiration. Upon observing it, one can recognize that everything has a purpose and is valuable.

Our personal style is the reflection of our identity, our interests and values, and we should feel free to express our personality in every situation. Of course, in formal contexts, we have to respect certain rules, but we always can choose to add a small detail related to our personality, a small jewel for example.

Our clothes have to protect us, keep us comfortable AND make us feel happy. Life is too short to be upset because of what we wear. We should not force ourselves to buy and wear something that we don’t like, just because we fear other people’s judgement or the situation requires us to dress in a certain way. Even for formal occasions, nowadays we have many opportunities to find clothes that are acceptable and make us feel at ease and beautiful at the same time.

As an example, I've always admired and loved Iris Apfel's style, I find it marvellous, energetic, incredibly elegant, and a true work of art. But I couldn’t dress this way, because of my lifestyle. We should be aware of our proportions, body shape, and the colours that look best on us because these are very powerful tools that can help us build the structure of our style and save time and money.

 
Fashion, style, elegance: what’s the difference?
I used to be quite confused about these concepts but I’ve come to a simple explanation.
Fashion is the reflection of time, it’s the product of the evolution of societies. Fashion trends change, they come and go.

Style is something that evolves more slowly, it’s more personal, and it’s related to our lifestyle, interests, passions, and values. It can be considered more or less fashionable. It’s noticeable: when a stylish person enters a room, everybody notices it. Because style is more personal, we should choose our style carefully. Sometimes we force ourselves to wear a certain style just “because it’s cool” but it might look too much and fake on us.

Elegance has nothing to do with fashion. We could wear the most fashionable clothes and don’t look elegant. It has nothing in common with money either because we could wear the most expensive clothes and look vulgar at the same time. A certain style could be considered more or less elegant, but the main ingredient of elegance is our behaviour. True elegance is made of kindness, empathy, and respect. True elegance should be reflected in our style.

Some common misconceptions:

"Being interested in clothes and style is frivolous and superficial." Of course, other things matter in life and compulsive shopping is a disorder, but being well-dressed doesn’t mean you have to be a snob and a material person. Being interested in clothes and dressing in a stylish elegant way doesn’t have to be expensive and it shows interest in respecting ourselves and other people too. Being interested in clothes means that we choose carefully and we don’t waste resources buying too many items. The result is that we choose and buy more consciously and we save time and money.

"Who doesn’t wear stylishly is a loser." Everyone is free to wear whatever he or she wants. Sometimes people just don’t have the time and resources to devote to finding their personal style. Maybe being stylish is not their priority. We cannot forget that in our lives we have to face many difficult situations, illnesses, and losses and the last thing we think about is dressing stylishly. So, we cannot judge anyone for not being stylish.
 
In my opinion, and it’s only my opinion, personal style should be:

Easy: easy to create and easy to maintain. Affordable: everyone should have the possibility to create an elegant and stylish look with a low budget and you don’t need to have an endless wardrobe to be stylish.

Elegant: we are free to dress as we want but a good first impression is almost always determining, together with kindness and good manners.  To be elegant doesn’t mean being overdressed all the time like we are going to a wedding. It means that our look is appropriate for the occasion, formal or less formal.

What about you? Are you looking for a more personal style? What are your suggestions? Leave a comment!