on style clarity

feeling it but not looking it and looking it but not feeling it

This week I’ve felt tired in my bones. I feel this way every year at the start of summer. It’s not just the heat, it’s processing the prominence of everything. There’s a sexy run-up to it (the last letter’s spring zoomies) in which I feel spry and energized on 60 degree evenings, booking train tickets and Venmoing friends for shared AirBnBs, gearing up for tan shoulders in strapless outfits and dancing and iced Mezcal with a salt rim, then the unforgiving heat makes its appearance, leaving me with a specific sort of clarity. There’s what inspires us, what we hope for, what we plan for, and then there’s what is.

Despite the performance and pretense of curated vacation outfits and content of lavish trips to second homes, summer, to me, feels like the most honest season. The heat makes me lazy, and it’s ensuing nakedness makes it harder for me to hide from incongruence. You can’t sneak a so-so tomato into a two-ingredient tomato basil salad. I take my eye bags a little more seriously when it’s too hot to properly conceal them, so I’ll sleep in or take that afternoon nap. I actually hit my water drinking goals. My hair is flat and stringy.

Summer style feels the same. My outfits are so pared down that I actually find them more complex, more challenging to get right. It’s too hot to fake my feelings about anything. Ah, this t-shirt actually doesn’t fit me quite right when I can’t hide it under a sweater. Perhaps the decidedly “effortless” denim cutoffs are not so, as I eschew them most mornings in favor of a tent dress.

A DM came in just in time to marry this Summer Clarity with some thoughts on Style Clarity:

“Heather, do you have any advice on how to feel more feminine or alluring in one’s style? I feel that I’m drawn to feminine things, I save quite feminine inspo pics and I want to feel sexier/more alluring/more feminine in my clothes, but when I see pics of myself, I don’t see that translating. Maybe it’s also the pic not capturing the outfit, or me being critical, but how I feel in the outfit/mirror vs. how I see it in pics isn’t connecting always.”

SEEING OURSELVES

This letter isn’t about how to dress more feminine specifically, but this idea of feeling disconnected to or disillusioned with one’s style stands out to me. Many would label our current society as more narcissistic, vain, and individualistic than ever, but I actually don’t think most of us pay enough attention to ourselves. I wonder to what extent our constant consumption of inspiration from external sources has eroded our ability to see and tend to ourselves without the lingering influence of mental (and emotional) attachments to reference images and “-cores” and virality and the energy of a convincing campaign. It’s like taking a beach vacation because it sounds relaxing, then figuring out you’re more of a lake person after all. Through what lens do we see ourselves? How do we begin to align what we see, what we feel, how we want to feel, and what we want to see? Here are two things I do to hone this in the shopping and dressing processes.

Write It Down

Ive taken to writing down inspiration instead of screenshotting. I stow them in a simple note on my phone called “CLOSET IDEAS”. Yes, sometimes I revisit this note and have no idea what I was talking about, but I will say this note has never led me to buy anything. I’ll either get on Indyx and make some outfits, get my ass up and play with a new idea, or decide that the same idea I already had is just as good, and read a book or something else instead.