Honing your updating strategies

I keep working on "fit awareness" to help me be in the happy zone that combines modernizing with preferred fits. For example, I mostly like pants that fit looser in the low hip and thigh, but within that, I like and can potentially get decent fit in several different styles/fits--pleated pants, track pants, slightly tapered slouchy pants, fitted waist/wide leg pants, tailored straight pants. Some may be more flattering than others and tolerate flatter/comfy-er footwear better, but these are some major “categories” that are easy for me to visualize (the list could be expanded, of course, and also, not saying no to experimentation outside the comfort zone).

So, improving my awareness of how these are showing up and “trending” and being re-interpreted, and then kind of ebbing and flowing amongst the “new” versions of these styles, seems a good way to achieve happy + updating. Then, still using Gaylene as my guru, if I can manage not to gobble up loads of dupes in any one year, I would have flexibility to add/toss to allow for subtle or fun re-interpretations .

So of course footwear is another typical analogy—I benefit from lace-ups, roomier toe boxes, lower/chunky heels and so on (and sometimes one aspect helps mitigate another—e.g., flat shoe can tolerate slightly less toe room), but I still don’t want to always look like I’m wearing a comfort shoe, and so am trying to be more aware of when those features are being promoted in one of the year’s updates or trends.

Other YLF’ers have expressed similar concepts before—“which of my favorite (styles, colors) are trending now?” and “how to dress my body type,” or, “wear what I like until it comes back in style”--but I’m slow, so I’m connecting the dots more, on how to stay more aware of when the planets align for style trend + personal style preferences. The distinction is, not just going, yay, bootcuts forever, but being more intentional in recognizing that one type of “favorite fit” may be better than another for achieving the degree of desired update.

11 years ago

Suz

(website)

Veteran

Sounds like you're on a good path! One advantage of age is that we can often look back and remember how we felt in a particular style when it was trending in the past. We might feel different now (our bodies, our style personae, or our lifestyles might have changed, as might fabrics) but how we felt then in general (good or bad) is often a clue to whether a trend will work for us now.

Alassë

I'm still confused, unfortunately. Do you mean that diversifying your style allows you to look more updated than if you kept to only 1 uniform/silhouette for bottoms, or shoes, or tops?

Anonymous

I had to chuckle at, "...yay, bootcuts forever..."

I have to fight against perfecting to the point of everything in my closet being too "one note". It's nice to have a little variety to change up the vibe from time to time.

unfrumped

No, I mean that you learn to recognize which fits tend to work for you, and each year or season, it’s quite possible that some variation on that is now the “in” item. Or there is something about the item that has the features that work for you—so at first it might not look like, say, your same pants from 2 years ago, but there’s something about the fit that works similarly enough for it to be very wearable. I think that’s the key idea—what is wearable for you. So you look out for when trends or style shifts actually align with things that work for you, but you notice what tweaks have been made that make them look current and not like you shopped in your attic. The idea is used most with “modern classic” (but I don’t see why there’s not modern boho, modern romantic, etc.) so my concept is just, modern wearable fit or modern flattering fit. (Recognizing that traditionally flattering is not always the goal, as Angie has written about>)

Thank you for the explanation; I get what you're saying now.

Thistle

You make some terrific points. I wish I was there! I feel like I am still learning so much,and of course, my body keeps changing so I have to relearn it.

It does give me hope though

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