I have a Pinterest board, well several, where I collect everything and anything I like.  Most of my pinning evolves around clothes and shoes.  As a YouTube subscriber, I have heard from many influencers to use Pinterest as a way to guide you on defining your style. Now as always it sounds easy, and it might be for some.  But for me it was hard.

It has always been hard for me to define my identity.  Who I want to be or how I want to dress or what I want to be.  It always seems to take me more time or effort.  At times I am not willing to give.  I know this.  I know people that know their own identity as soon as they are born.  Or so that’s what I perceive.  Ultimately, it’s my responsibility and I should care.  Honestly, I don’t care at times.  But when I do decide to care I have to take advantage of this time.

As far as style identity it turns out there is a pattern for what I pin on Pinterest.  So, all in all YouTube did not let me down.  It has taken hours, even years of collecting pretty pictures of outfits.  Over time trends change and silhouettes evolve.  But I always seem to pin the same combination of pieces.  Identifying this pattern has taken me more time to figure out than I want to admit.

The style identity pattern I pin has helped me create my style formula.  Now I feel more comfortable and confident in my clothes.  The way I dress has become a way to express my creativity.  I work a corporate job and sometimes in this environment being creative can be hard.  Unless you are in Marketing, which I am not, the amount of creativity in my daily job is taken away by process. 

The first pattern I identified on my boards was color.  The colors tend to stay the same over the years.  I love brown all shades of brown.  Now (2023) is the time to buy everything and anything brown.  The color is on trend with the whole beige movement.  But hurry as it’s only a trend and soon we might start seeing bright highlighter colors.  Those are not part of my color palette.

My dress code is conservative business casual when I go to work.  Most of my closet consists of that style.  I can’t say that my office dress code is my style identity, but it does factor in the whole equation.  Weirdly enough, I am unconsciously using process to create my style formula to express my creativity.  Maybe I’ll use Visio to capture decision points.   

I’m still working on identifying my style identity outside of work.  Or maybe blend work with non-work.   Whenever decide to care about it, I’ll take advantage.  But for now, my work outfits these days have been better than ever.  I feel comfortable and confident which is always my goal.