"Styling vs Wearing" - how do you think about this when you put together outfits?
There's an Instagram fad where everyone is posting the same template of "styling vs. wearing", where they wear an outfit on the left side of the reel without any modifications (accessories, sleeves rolled, etc) and on the right side they claim to have styled it, but it's almost always the same thing: they tuck in their shirt, wear a belt, and wear some accessory to hold their keys off of their belt loops.
I'm guilty of not styling - or not really knowing how to style - different outfits, so I just wear them pretty plainly. But it got me wondering: how do people in this community accent or actively style their outfits? What extra steps do you take to look good outside of just putting something on?
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Hi @papa! For better answers, include:
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Ignore shit like that in insta. Most of the time it’s phrased like that to drive engagement
fair enough!
styling is when I unbutton the bottom button of my shirt
Take a look in #waywt and #waywt-highlights to see how people accessorise and ‘style’ outfits. Another thing you can do is share your fits and ask for feedback on what you’re wearing
Accessories like bandanas, carabiners, ties, rings, necklaces etc. can go a long way in moving from just ‘putting clothes on’, along with putting thought into the fit and construction of garments
Yeah really it’s not a bad thing to think through even if the origin is engagement slop, I am also known to just “wear normal clothes in normal ways” and recently I’m trying to break out of that. Accessorizing is a big part of it, in some cases it’s just a matter of acquiring stuff to wear and then wearing it, like jewelry. For more flexible accessories (bandanas, scarves)I like to try and push myself to invent new ways to wear them whenever I can, or not just reuse the same methods I fall back to regularly. For things like tucks, undone buttons, rolled cuffs, it really just entirely depends on the fit and it’s hard to give generic advice there. You just gotta play around I think, figure out what you like, and also of course notice what other people do in their fits that you like. Make a deliberate effort to not just let yourself wear the clothes in the normal ways, check after you got everything on to see if you can find any changes you could make to how you’re wearing it.
I think a lot of this stuff also just comes with practice after trying a lot of shit out
and consuming inspo to tie it to your other qna
At least for myself, I'm not super intentional with the decisions i make in my fits, i just kinda put things on and if i notice spots that look unusual or bare i'll try to address it, but im never really making active decisions before putting the clothes on i dont think
yeah I’m very similar in that I’ll usually have an idea for what i want to wear, but I never necessarily approach it thinking I need to do xyz to accessorise
exactly, im certain theres a skill ceiling and a lot of the incredibly dressed people here are a lot more actively intentional, but for me on a day-to-day its a process largely from the subconscious
I feel like even this automatic decision making and pattern matching gets better with experience though
yea thats exactly what im trying to say i guess
if I’m going somewhere I might be a bit more intentional, but also I’m not sure I’d say I dress in anything to write home about
you absolutely do pick up on stuff over time. i’ve got an actual example for this. lemme find the pics
im almost certain all my decisions are informed on some level but its come more from trying out things, bricking fits here and there, and taking styling cues from inspo subliminally
which is why im a fan of putting all my inspo in one big album, i feel like it helps that sorta subliminal absorption vs having heavily categorized inspo that might pigeonhole my thinking
interesting idea
definitely no silver bullet, unless you could organize by both I guess? Like, if you could have a view of everything but then also filter by tags
Yea I think more or less it just comes from practice
i do find myself combing thru my inspo for specific motifs that might have sprung up and interest me, its fun to see things pop up in retrospect where you didnt expect them if that makes sense
more or less the exact same looks, six months apart but by adding a bandana, a ring and a watch it looks more intentional and ‘better’
there have been times where i lean more or less into styling items vs just putting them on, as intended, untucked, with no modifications. i think it's just another variable that u learn to control over time and can then use it as a form of communication about your style. but, it was very important for me to realize that a lot of the proportions and shapes i found in some of the runway looks that i looked up to could be achieved or approximated by fucking with clothing you already own or stuff that is otherwise much easier to source
these are choices you can make to, in the language of those instagram posts, style instead of wearing. it’s just a learning thing
i.e. this was an ankle-length cardigan i tucked into my pants and a bag strap i doubled around my waist (approximating ann demeulemeester). right is a mesh tank i had pinned up weirdly (approximating rick owens). both are 4 years old and i don't really do stuff like that anymore, but it was important to how i think about articles of clothing
I just don't think it's real hot take
Tucking in a shirt is not styling
99% of the time that's what it is on those stupid trends
Ok it's real but like I've only seen lee do it
And ebarto the one time he wore pants as a vest
99% of the insta content is people like tucking in a shirt or putting on a necklace and acting like they did something amazing
Or undoing a button
Like those matter but they aren't doing anything that's our of the ordinary
intention drives a lot of my styling choices - i lean towards menswear but tend to be lighthearted about it, which can manifest in bolder colors/pairings or more exaggerated shapes/ways to convey shape (dangly belt, untucked shirt w suit) or unexpected ways to wear certain clothes as sam suggested. like the others I find it's easiest to find a bunch of references and then copy them vs trying to do something new, and as you keep doing it you'll naturally gravitate to certain ways of doing it
the biggest hurdle imo is the mental one in intentionally attempting something different; the more often you attempt it the easier it becomes.
I think we sort of got to this point, but to just reinforce
Styling can be as much in interesting items that aren't accessories as they can be with accessories or choosing interesting ways of wearing things
See the drape of these clothes as an example with the super wide shoes
which is probably more interesting than this fit with much more normal proportions with the same pants and an accessory
there is a lot more that you can put into how you dress if you think in 3 dimensions, wear interesting pieces of clothing that fit your body how you want/like, and then accessorize on top of that however much you want
look to your peers who dress well rather than engagement bait
not to say there isn't good inspo on instagram (there is)
but find people you consistently like the style of and take cues from them
at the end of the day, getting dressed is design
and design is an interative process
you can go back into my waywt history and see a lot of bricks
another example of thinking with shapes.
what is the difference between these two outfits without visible tucks or accessories
both are denim top + bottom
with a white tshirt
This to me is the biggest and most important piece, and one that a lot of newbies tend to overlook imo.
Accessories, tucks, weird buttoning and wearing shit where it wasnt really made to be worn is fine but a lot of people would be served better with just buying different cuts to begin with.
yeah one has swag the other has class 😎
please say sike
It’s wearing if you take a picture with a phone and styling if you take a picture with a dslr