Why is personal style so hard?

0:01Yeah, how about pants that fit? This is a journey we're like all taking as a culture. This is Explain It To Me. I'm John Glyn Hill, and we recently asked you what you want to know about personal style. And man, so many of you called in to tell us. I have had a lot of trouble, I think, growing up trying to find clothes that fit me well and that I feel comfortable in. I'm 21. I feel like it's been a journey to figure out what I like to wear and what I feel comfortable in. And it's taken me probably like three years. I don't know, throughout college, my style changed a lot. I did not know how to address or figure out what looked good or understand what worked for me, what I liked, and felt like it was just such a frustrating process.

0:48All this frustration makes sense. It feels like the trend cycle has gone from a season to 24 hours. Also, there were once rules for what to wear. Not anymore. We're supposed to wear what we want now, but what do you do if you don't know what you want to wear? My colleague Constance Grady tried to figure this out. This is something that I spent most of my life not thinking about at all. I'm pretty normie when it comes to clothes. I'm just like, I will wear my jeans and a t-shirt. Tell me what width the jeans are supposed to be and I am good to go. So after lockdown, once I was vaccinated and starting to get out into the world again, I felt like none of my clothes felt right for me anymore.

1:33You know, I had all of these like business casual dresses and leftover skinny jeans. And I just looked at them and I was like, this doesn't seem quite right anymore. Now that I've had this year of not dressing for other people, I've changed who I am and my clothes haven't changed in a way that will keep up with that. and it was so weird to try to think about getting a whole year's worth of changes done to my wardrobe in one fell swoop that I ended up feeling like maybe it was time to be more intentional and figure out what I wanted from my clothes but when I thought about it I had all these really contradictory desires you know I wanted to look thin and also not care about looking thin.

2:18I wanted to buy really high quality things and not spend all that much money. I had a lot of desires from my clothes that realistically I didn't think could actually be met by them. You had a lot of goals. Where did you start? Well, once I had decided that this was something I was going to try to be more intentional about, I kept poking through the personal style universe. And that's when I fell way down the David Kibbe rabbit hole. I love to help a person transform. He's this personal stylist who was very big in the 80s and kind of had a renaissance in social media. So on TikTok, there's been a trend going around of women talking about their Kibbe body types.

3:05Find your Kibbe body type in two minutes. We'll start with bone structure. Let's talk about Kibbe style IDs and how they relate to the costumes of Ever After. And getting into his work is like getting into astrology. Like you have to learn this really esoteric system with all these weird rules. It's all about the shapes that fabric makes when it's draped over your body and figuring out how to buy clothes that will suit those shapes best and then what kind of style vibe that leads to. which is very fun for a certain type of personality, which includes me, but does also, I think, get a little exhausting and also leads to fixating on your body in maybe kind of weird ways.

3:55You, like me, are a millennial, so is it safe to assume that you grew up mainlining Stacey and Clinton on what not to wear also? And I just want to know, like, do you want our help? Or do you really like playing dress up? Those jeans are ugly. Yeah, how about pants that fit? I don't know, call me crazy, but it feels like that's an option. I did watch What Not To Wear religiously. And I think a big part of the appeal was that it was telling you, yeah, there are very strict clothing rules. Here's what they are. And if you follow them, you'll look great. And if you don't follow them, you'll look like an idiot and we'll all make fun of you on hidden cameras.

4:32Right? It really teaches you that there's a correct way to wear like your sensible wrap dress and your blazer. And we are going to walk you through what that is. So the pendulum has swung. Why has it swung so much? You know, we went from these cinch waists and blazers to wearing, you know, business casual at the club to, you know, I mean, if I go into the office, there is like a dress up sweat pant that I will wear on occasion. You know, I will wear a pair of jeans. How did we change so much in the span of like a couple decades? Yeah, this is also something where you and I working in digital media is a blessing and a curse for us because I have definitely taken meetings with people who are barefoot at our mutual office.

5:21I talked to a bunch of fashion experts about this. I was so fascinated by this question, in part because Clinton and Stacey have swung the other way too, right? They're reuniting for a new show and it's called Wear Whatever the F You Want. I wouldn't necessarily do that show the way we did it back then. I don't think it would work. It's also not who I am as a human being. This is a journey we're like all taking as a culture. So I talked to a bunch of fashion experts about this and I have three reasons for this swing. One that is cultural, one that is economic, and one that is more material. So culturally, over the past 10-15 years, there's been a lot more space on the internet for the movements of body positivity, body neutrality, and fat acceptance.

6:11I used to be self-conscious about my legs, but I've recently realized it's none of my business what people think I look like. You can be who you are, and you can be a fat person, and you can live a full, fulfilling life while being fat. Do you know what? I've just accepted I'm a big girl. All of which I think has kind of helped make space for people to think, okay, maybe the point of clothes isn't always to make me look as thin as they possibly can. You know, maybe this can be a place for more joyful self-expression that doesn't involve trying to conform to a very specific standard of beauty. economically as fast fashion has taken off the trend cycle has sped up so much that it is actually kind of impossible now to keep pace with trends the way you might have been able to 10 or 20 years before so the idea of finding your personal style becomes really attractive in that situation because it's a way of releasing yourself from the trend cycle and from the textile waste that goes along with it.

7:21The final reason I have is more materials-based. This is one that comes from Kibbe himself, who I cannot escape, which is that around the 1980s, 80s, we started to put a lot more elastic in clothing than we used to before. And this has fundamentally changed the way fabric looks on our bodies. So what Kibbe says is that with elastic in our clothing, the silhouette stops being about the externally imposed shape of the clothes on our bodies and starts being about the way our bodies are shaping the clothes we wear. And that means that there's suddenly this huge possibility of what clothes can look like on us that has totally shifted the way that we can even let ourselves think about fashion.

8:15Okay, Constance, you learned a lot during this whole process about the new rules or the lack of rules we have now. But did you do it? Did you figure out your personal style? I don't really know that I found my personal style. I learned a lot about the kinds of shapes and colors and fabrics that I like. I think the main thing that I figured out was what fantasy the idea of finding your personal style is serving. for me I think that fantasy is the idea of having some control over your individuality because fashion is a space where the ways in which we lack control over our lives become really clear in such an intimate way you know there are all these billionaires deciding what you should wear there are all these marketers deciding how you should feel about your one human body.

9:14There are all these people who will see you every day and make their assumptions about you based on how you look. So I think when we talk about finding our personal style, we're talking about this kind of dream of finding ways to steal control away from those people and back towards ourselves.

9:40So that's Constance's fashion journey. But what about all those outside forces dictating our style choices? Who's doing that? And why are they doing it? We'll find out after we pay a few bills.

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12:43Okay, how would you introduce yourself at like a party? Oh, well, I certainly wouldn't say I'm a podcaster. That's like the most embarrassing thing you could possibly say. But it is the truth. That's Avery Truffleman. She's a fashion writer. And yes, she's also a podcaster. She hosts a show called Articles of Interest. It's about what we wear and also why we wear it, how trends happen and who dictates them. Avery tackles all this and more on her podcast. why we either talk about it in this really frivolous way or we talk about it in this super bummer way that's just like, oh, there are piles of clothes, you know, in the middle of the desert piling up.

13:28And, you know, we either talk about like waste and labor and the horrible historical roots of clothing manufacture or we talk about the frivolous superficial part of it. And I really was like, oh, there's something in the middle. I think there's a way to look at clothing and look at fashion and look at our desires in the same way we look at food trends or design trends. So I think it's all come from skepticism and curiosity. And then the more I learn about it, the more sort of in love with it I fall. It's endlessly fascinating. I think something that's been a big through line is trends, where they come from, how one emerges over the other.

14:07Can you tell us a little bit about that pipeline? How does that happen? I mean, well, that's a secret sauce, right? Like, if I knew how that worked, I wouldn't be working in podcasting, honey. No, I mean, it's sort of this, like, alchemical process that people love to wax poetic about. Most high-end fashion brands are owned by, like, three companies. You know, it's either Kering or LVMH or Richemont. It's not this, like, ragtag assemblage of designers kind of doing their own thing. So the fashion space has gotten very, very corporate. And even among whatever mainstream mall brands, a lot of them have these like parent companies that are traded on the stock market that are looking to just move as many units as they possibly can.

14:55And the best way to make sure they move a lot of units is to make stuff that is, to put it indelicately, sort of boring. Like stuff that is not too weird. Stuff that people will actually want to wear. Stuff that people are interested in. And there are huge livelihoods at stake. This really took off in the 80s. Designers pushed this movement called frou-frou, like mini skirts, big shoulders, sort of like very Dallas. Oh, yeah. Yeah, very like power office wear. And it was peddled out to women and they were like, no, what? Are you kidding me? Like, I go to an office. I'm not going to wear this. I'm not going to wear this like little mini skirt and these big padded shoulders.

15:42I need to be taken seriously at board meetings. No, thanks. And so they just didn't buy. And it was this huge moment. A lot of companies, like the bottom fell out of a lot of companies. They lost a lot of sales. And so when people aren't buying, it's a death sentence. It's really, really terrible. So it was this moment where fashion companies are sort of like, well, shit. I guess we have to ask people what they want or like figure out. We can't dictate to them what to wear. We have to figure out what they want. And it was the rise of the trend forecasting company where they could pay a service to make something of a guarantee like, okay, in two years, this is what people will want.

16:26and whether or not they obey those tips, I would say most companies consult, at least, a trend forecasting company because if nothing else, it's a great way to hedge your bets. You know, if a unit doesn't sell, you can turn to your boss and be like, well, I was following what WGSN said. You know, I was like making the best, most educated guess I possibly could, which leads us to this new sort of layer of the trend question, which is like, are they actually giving us what we want? Or are we just buying what's there? Because if WGSN says like, this shade of green is in, and that's what's in all the shops, and we just buy it, are they dictating the trend to us?

17:09Yeah, that seems like such a bummer. It seems like there's this growing number of people who are refusing to keep up with trends. Does that resistance feel new? Or has that been there kind of the whole time? I mean, yeah, and it's part of the push and pull of fashion, right? That people will say something is in and then a group of people will be like, no, I resist. And so that's the thing. In this dialectic, you can't win. Like you're going to be, if you're resisting the fashion, you're still part of, you know, the movement against it. I think it's hard to be too dogmatic. And I also think there's a bit of ignorance in saying like, I don't follow trends.

17:44It's like, come on, honey, you do a little bit, you know, even in the way you wear your hair, in the way, you know, there's just like your skin care. whatever. There's no escape. You live in your time. Yeah, there's no escape. And that's a beautiful thing. You live in your time. You live in your world. You live in your community. You can't pretend that you're just a body in a jar not living in the world. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think, yeah, this is part of the difference between shopping and fashion. I think you can observe fashion. I think you can, like, change the clothes you already have to be more in fashion.

18:17You know, you can cut off your shorts. You can embroider a shirt. You can do things that make clothes keep up with fashion without shopping. And you can observe fashion and know what's in fashion without having to go out and, like, buy it. How do economic realities factor into the fashion industry and predictions about what's going to be new? You know, I mean, I can't even fathom what tariff fashion is about to be. Well, I think it'll be interesting. I think a lot of companies, you know, again, because they're these big institutions that have to move a lot of product. I think someone who I talked to at sort of a mid-tier mainstream fashion company was telling me that their lines are going to have to be a lot smaller.

18:59They can't just make these huge dumps of seasons. They have to start editing and be really specific. And I think to make one brand stand out for another, this might mean that the clothes will have to start being more signature, more interesting. That's like a best-case scenario, which would be nice. Who knows? Maybe they just lean into trends and basics and whatever they know will actually move product. I mean, ultimately, it's going to hurt small designers, which is the sad thing. The most interesting creators committed to high quality are probably going to suffer. But it's going to make a huge change.

19:35It's going to be massive. Okay, so we've learned where style comes from. But now, what do we do with it? How to dress yourself after the break.

19:57Does this look good on me? And do I feel good wearing this? So we know finding our personal style is hard. A lot of it isn't even in our hands. But some of it is. That's what we went to our next two guests about. Two very stylish and very online people who think about this for a living. I'm Laken Carlton. I go by the Ethical Stylist. I am a stylist with a focus on, obviously, ethics, sustainability, but also kind of unlearning all of those rules that we've kind of been indoctrinated with. And I'm Brian Sakawa, founder of He Spoke Style, all about classic style with a modern sensibility. started in 2013, and our mission is to help guys look and feel their best every single day.

20:43Okay, so Lagan, I want to start with you. I want to ask you about your clients. So you're a personal stylist. Are there themes that come up when you're talking with a new client who's looking for your services? Most of my clients have been, let's say, fast fashion pilled. Mm, say more about that. And they're trying to kind of unpack that. I have a lot of clients that have these huge closets full of just like the most terrible clothes that they will agree are now just terrible bought impulsively or, you know, chasing some trend or just all of these things that just add up to this closet full of nothing.

21:27and they want to improve their shopping habits, but also make the most of what they do have. What about you, Brian? What's the number one thing guys are asking you about? Probably the biggest thing that people ask me is they come looking for basic advice. And along the same lines of what Lakin is saying about building a sustainable wardrobe and getting rid of some things you don't need, I really believe that for guys, building a classic menswear wardrobe is one of the most sustainable practices that they could have because we talk about these foundational pieces. They're simple things that can be styled in many different ways, so lots of versatility.

22:10And once you get those pieces in your wardrobe, there's any number of things that you can do with them, including adding your own personal spin on things. Lakin, what's the first thing you tell someone who's like, oh my gosh, how do I figure out what to wear. Yeah, I have so many clients who just kind of default to black, you know, either it's black jeans, black shoes, black purse. I tell them to try to stop wearing black for a little bit. Just try it, you know. You mentioned, Brian, like the foundational pieces. I actually kind of push back against foundational pieces. I don't think they look the same for everybody, even my own foundation for my wardrobe like I don't wear jeans I don't wear pants so like what does the average capsule wardrobe advice usually look like it's not very helpful to me and I have a lot of clients that find that to be true for themselves as well I'm just curious Laken what do you tell them how to start developing a different type of style or experimenting with stuff?

23:17You know, the first thing I do is, if they have a lot of graphic tees, right, is say, okay, what other than jeans can we pair this with? And once they see, oh, that's a great idea, then they can move into, okay, well, if I can wear it with this, then why can't I wear it with this? You know, just kind of like, kind of giving them permission to try something else. I want to pose a question to y 'all that we got from a listener. So someone sent in a voicemail, and it's from a caller and it's about dressing curvy bodies. Hi, my name is Janelle. My question is, as a plus-size girly, how do you know where to shop?

23:58And when you are shopping, especially online, how do your measurements play into what you are going to buy? Like, how do you know it's going to look good on you, especially if it's online? What's the best way to go about that? Should we be taking measurements and using that to shop? Or yeah, how do you navigate that? 100%. I think it's actually wild that we have normalized online shopping to the point that we have and not normalized knowing our basic measurements. Because people are just guessing at it, right? And then reading reviews and it's like, okay, you've got their height and weight, but what does that mean?

24:38Where do they carry their weight? Is it in the same place as you? I think having those numbers and knowing the measurements of the things you like to wear and the shapes that you like and the shapes that you want to create, having that in mind as you shop rather than just depending on a couple of pictures and a description, it makes a world of difference. I would also say in terms of sizing, size is just a number. There's been a lot of people just get so wrapped up in, oh, I should be a size whatever, you know, myself included until, you know, recently. I don't care whether I'm wearing a 30 waist or a 32 or a 35.

25:20All brands are different. It doesn't matter. The first, the question you should ask yourself is, does this look good on me? And do I feel good wearing this? Don't worry about the size. Worry about how it looks on your body and then you'll feel much better and more confident wearing that. Yeah. Okay. I want to do a rapid fire with you all. This will be really quick. Say the first word or answer that pops up in your mind. Okay, desert island piece of clothing. So the thing you can't live without. A silk blouse. White linen shirt. Favorite brand. Diane von Furstenberg. He Spoke Style by Michael Andrews Bespoke.

26:03Wait, can I change my answer? Can you wear black with navy? Yeah. Yes. Okay. And what is the longest you've held on to one piece of clothing? I have a blouse that I actually wore to my very first job interview. That was my grandmother's. It was huge on me then. Now it's a little too small on me now. But I have had it for about 15 years. 31 years. It's a t-shirt that my band in high school made. And we wore it. That's not fair. I'm only 32.

26:43It's a vintage item. I'm curious how you all feel about how the internet has changed your relationship with fashion. Y 'all are both very online. I mean, that complimentary. I am too. Do you think the internet has made it easier or harder to figure out what your own style actually is? I think if you're still a fast fashion pill, then it can make it a lot harder. because it's very much the trends are moving. I have to keep up. But if you are already kind of in this idea of wanting to build something long-lasting and that you really love, then it can make it easier but also overwhelming. I think the amount of content and people, different types of people, different types of styles, different platforms that speak to different demographics, I think it's fantastic because there's so much out there now, and you can really find what you gravitate towards, and you can find your tribe in a way, your style tribe, and say, I like that.

27:51I like these people. And then what I've found, at least in menswear, is people are generally very, very supportive. The amount of stuff available on the internet and the way we can kind of section it off for ourselves and curate it to our own tastes is a real positive. All right. Thanks for explaining this to us, y 'all. Thank you for listening. My pleasure. Everybody out there.