I just thought I'd recap some of the things I've learned about my style and my personality, since joining YLF last summer. I'm writing this down because I find it helps me crystallize my thoughts, and forces some discipline when shopping. It's a long post, so skip to the bolded items for the cliffs-notes version.

Before I begin, I wanted to thank you to all of you who have responded to my WIWs and style-related questions over the past year. Your feedback has really helped me hone in on where I want to go in 2016.

What happened in 2015?

2015 was a good year for experimentation. I tried a whole bunch of different silhouettes, and fabrics. I think my main successes were my midi dress, striped dress, and distressed denim experiments. My main fails were t-shirts (again!), shoes (patent leather is not 'me' in the summer), the use of black in the summer (again, just not me), and a beige scarf (the wrong colour).

2015 winter was a bit of a fail. I had plans to buy a number of dresses, but this didn't materialize due to lack of interest in winter dressing.

The plan for 2016:

2016 will be less about silhouettes, and more about accessories!

1. My 2016 summer moniker is "Simple boho". Basically, it's boho with less detailing. I want to wear distressed leathers, mostly cotton or linen clothing, and boho jewelry. No blazers this year White, watery blues, denim blues, heather greys, and cognac leathers will be the backdrop. I find that my appearance lends itself to this type of dressing...Kind of the same way Alasse's look lends itself to her more romantic looks.

2. My 2016 moniker will likely be "urban oversized". This is a terrible-sounding moniker. "Urban" because I'm in the city all winter, and I want to feel modern on the streets (I guess this affects mostly outerwear). "oversized" because I want to stick to a uniform of

interesting skinny jeans and chunky sweaters. Footwear is irrelevant as i only wear winter boots outside and ballet flats at the office.

3. My favourite outfits still involve jeans, despite lots of experimenting with different things. I was disappointed in myself for reverting back to the old standby, but based on some feedback from this forum, I'm going to try and think of jeans as a 'framework' within which there are tons of possibilities. I'm going to focus on getting a diverse set of jeans.

4. Although I've had zero success so far, I'm going to keep trying to find an oversized white dress shirt.

5. It's all about scarves, jewelry, bags, and shoes. I realize that these things provide significantly higher happiness than clothes these days. Is that bad? Have I given up? Anybody in the same boat?

I'm going to follow Joy's lead, I'll use scarves and jewelry as the color in an all-neutral outfit.

6. Following up on 5, I want to purchase all locally-made jewelry, since it just seems a little nicer to me, and there's a high happiness factor.


7. My HEWI is a pair of sneakers to wear to the park, sitting in stands, or casual bike rides. I'm not sure what to get. Do the Converse-Lite shoes work with 'simple boho'? Also considering Stan Smiths for durability.

Anyway, that's it for now. Thanks for reading! Hopefully I've got all the numbering correct on the points above.