Wow, what a great thread this is turning out to be!! Thanks for starting it, Astrid. I hope some others will hop on.
Thanks for all the compliments, people, but honestly, it's all Angie's doing. She said "cut your hair and the rest will follow immediately" (or words to that effect, and she was 100% correct.
I didn't really have a "style" when I joined YLF, to be honest. I hadn't been paying any attention to fashion for decades and was literally wearing hand-me-downs. So that partly explains the "stepford wives" quality -- it wasn't really "me" in the photos.
Also, I had ALWAYS worn my hair short,apart for a few blips (once per decade I would grow it out for a year or two and then chop it) and I joined YLF in the middle of one of those blips. But it truly was a blip, not "me," and that comes across in the pics. And with longer hair, a lot of the clothes that had looked good on me in the past didn't work, and I didn't know what to replace them with.
That's why Sharan's right -- #2 is an outfit that -- while it includes dated pieces and worn out items -- is much much closer to my current aesthetic. Once I cut my hair I had an easier time remembering/ finding what I really liked at my core.
Astrid, I like those boots in #2 also and I still have them! But unfortunately, they are really uncomfortable, so I have to pass them along.