Earlier in this series, I wrote about some of the reasons why clothes can become your disguise and how the inner critic can dominate your wardrobe choices.
They highlighted how the very things you think might be helpful can make you feel worse because both disguise and the inner critic are externally driven. They’re about trying to manage how you’re seen or judged by others. But the reality is that the disguise doesn’t bring relief, it provides a container for your heaviness. The inner critic doesn’t motivate; it just keeps you locked in comparison to others and finding fault with your body. It makes you feel less than.
Both keep you focused on reinforcing your low self-esteem and poor body image rather than creating a positive shift. They take you further away from yourself.
And so the question becomes:
What would it be like to dress in a way that honours your body and who you really are?
The pack and the quiet knowing
What I see quite widely is an instinct to blend in with the world around us. Dressing to disguise focuses on a wardrobe of camouflage. But so is dressing just like everyone else. Where I live in Cornwall, for example, there are a lot of people wearing brands associated with a more outdoorsy lifestyle. I sometimes see a group of friends together and they are all dressed virtually the same.
Perhaps, deep down you know that what you’re wearing doesn’t represent how you want to feel or your personality. However, right now it’s hard to change your patterns. It feels easier to hide in plain sight. But ask yourself – does what you wear make you feel good in your body or is it an outward display of how you’re feeling about yourself inside?
Why it’s not about an external makeover
There are a lot of articles out there that tell us ‘how to find our style’ or ‘makeover your wardrobe, makeover your life’. But the reality is that the surface-level advice they offer will deliver external tweaks rather than the internal shift you require.
Because if your relationship with your body is fractured and the inner critic is calling the shots, ‘find your style’ is just another external rule to struggle with. How can you dress in a way that honours your body and represents who you really are if you don’t believe you’re worth it?
Instead, the focus needs to turn to how to repair your self-esteem, get in tune with the marvel that is your body and dress from a place that is expressive of who you are as an individual.
What changes when you do the inner work
When you truly start to look to yourself for answers rather than rely on external sources, change can begin. Changes to your self-esteem can come from understanding why you became so self-critical in the first place and what a more supportive alternative might look like.
Improvements to your body image can happen when you disengage from sources that make you feel more uncomfortable about how you look. Reconnection to your body through listening closely to what it’s telling you and moving it in different ways can lift how you feel about your physical being. A focus on caring for your body rather than being at war with it can set the foundations for a better relationship with what you wear.
When you start doing things like building your self-esteem and finding a greater connection with your body and what’s amazing about it, it becomes easier to think about your personal style. What you find enjoyable to wear, what represents your style and personality, what you feel good in. It’s when you can touch base with your internal compass and dress from that point of view rather than looking externally for cues, opinions and influences.
Following your internal compass
When you become able to dress from the inside-out, choosing what to wear becomes less of a struggle. You are able to focus more on items you enjoy wearing, buy colours or shapes that feel good and have more headspace to think about whether they represent how you want to look.
The process doesn’t need to happen overnight. In fact it’s better if it doesn’t. Fundamentally, your personal style isn’t a problem to solve – though there’s no denying its power to make you feel better.
When you are ready to begin enjoying the body you have and focusing on feeling better about yourself, developing your style can become a reward that is both joyful and a pleasure.
You can read the first two posts in the Style and Identity Series via the links below:
