It’s a brand new year and though you may not necessarily have the “new year, new me mindset” with every calendar year that rolls around there are always a few things that we wish to build on. For 2023, that my be your personal style and the overall image you’d like to communicate to the world. Whether your making a dramatic style shift due to new career goals, starting over completely, or a making more subtle change due to your personal style evolution, we’ve put together a quick guide on how you can create for very own style vision board to use whenever you feel like switching it up.
ACCESS YOUR GOALS
Before diving into the actual making of your vision board take some times to think about and list your goals for the year. Next, list your personal style goals and how you want those two to coexist. The idea is that your personal style will align with your current lifestyle and or the one you aspire to live. After all they say dress for the life you want right?. When listing these goals make it more personal and think about why you’d like to improve or shift your style. Some questions that may be helpful to ask yourself are: What are my main 2023 goals? What are my style goals? What are my current style struggles and what do I want to change? How will my style help improve my lifestyle and overall wellbeing? What positive impact will it have? After collating the answers to your questions, list them all in one place so that you can refer back to it during or after the process.
PINPOINT HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL AND COMMUNICATE THROUGH STYLE
Once you’re set on your style goals, envision how you’d like to feel in your new wardrobe and personal style. Sit with the feeling for a little bit, then list out some keywords or descriptors of what comes to mine. Next, describe what you’d like your new personal style to communicate to the world on first glance. For example, if your starting a new position or you’re an executive you may want your personal style to give the impression that you are confident yet approachable, assertive, modern, and sleek. If you’re an entrepreneur, you may want your style to communicate that you’re professional yet stylish, playful and on trend. The mix of communicators are endless but you can always customize it to fit your personal lifestyle and personality.
PICK A STYLE PERSONA
After choosing your style descriptors, it’s time to move on to choosing a style persona. A style persona is essentially a style identity that communicates your dominant style personality. In other words, it’s how to define your style. Some of the common style personas or ways you my describe your style are classic, romantic, modern, edgy, minimal, bohemian, feminine and so on. But be mindful that you may even have a mix of these. So don’t panic if you find yourself going towards more than one. The way to pin point your style persona is by noticing the style and types of pieces you naturally gravitate to. Once you do so, you can decide which direction you like to go in. For example, you may realize that you’re more of a romantic dresser but you’d like to shift into being more minimal and modern. Or maybe you are satisfied you your current style persona and you’d just like to double down on that style. Either way works because after all you make the rules. Once you’ve decided list your style persona(s) and keep them in view with your pervious lists.
CHOOSE BRANDS THAT ALIGN WITH YOUR STYLE PERSONAl
Now that you’ve decided on your style persona, it’s time to choose brands that align with that vision. When doing so you’d want to look for brands that have the same descriptors or embodies the same vibe as you do. Similar to people, brands also have identities and personas so choosing the one that fits yours is crucial when it comes to deciding where you’d like to shop for your new look and pieces. For example, if your style is classic you may want to shop brands like Ralph Lauren, Michale Kors, or even Uniqlo that has a lot of great basics. If you have a more modern clean style brands like Zara and Mango may be a great fit. Create a list of brands that you think is suitable for your persona and keep it handy for your next shopping trip. Also, you may want to look to these brands’ campaigns for imagery for your vision board.
TIE IT ALL TOGETHER IN A VISION BOARD
After gathering all the pieces to the puzzle- your life and style goals, your style communicators, style personas, and aligning brands – it’s time to tie it all together into a cohesive vision board. Your board will give you the overall and specific vision for your personal style moving forward. And act as a guide that you can always refer back to when you need to be reminded of your style goals, places to shop, the overall feeling you’d like to have about your personal style, and most importantly, how you’d like to dress currently. To create your vision board decide if you’d like to do so digitally or physically. If digitally, using Pinterest to create your board is a great place to start because you can simply create a board within the platform and pin all your ideas together in one place.
Milanote as well as Canva are also great places to digitally create a board. On these platforms you’d have to gather your own inspiration photos from the internet, upload then to the site and create your board from there. This option is best if you’d like to customize your board with different layouts and fonts which isn’t available on Pinterest. If you wish to create a physical vision board, gather inspiration images, quotes, landscapes, scenes from your favorite movies and shows from magazines or print out your images from online. Next, decide how you’d like to lay out the images and quotes you’ve gathered on your board. I usually like to do a mock up of the layout before attaching it to my board. This way adjustments can be easily made without starting over completely if I’d like to change something. My advice would be to try a few different layouts before deciding on the final version and adjust accordingly. Once you’re satisfied, you will now have your personally curated vision board that can be used as a spring board and roadmap to creating your new improved style in 2023 and beyond that’s empowering and inspiring. And the best part is you can always repeat this process when your style evolves again. How divine!
