The Key to Confidence

A Few of My Favorite Style Tips

a street style photo by The Sartorialist, whose work I have loved since I was a teen.

Ever since I was a teenager, I have loved fashion. I loved to look at celebrities and fashion bloggers and tried to imitate their options on my nonexistent budget and hand-me-down clothes. I’ll give you the spoiler—it usually didn’t work. I still have certain style inspirations that I turn to for most of my outfit building, but in the last few years, I’ve also developed a series of tips that have helped me find things that fit my aesthetic and also my body and complexion.

Some images that pop up when you google search “french street style”

One of these is that of the French capsule wardrobe, which I think all of us women have been besotted with at one time or another. There is a set of wardrobe staples that supposedly every French woman has in her wardrobe: tailored pants, a blue and white striped shirt, a trench coat, a black dress, some basic tees. There are, of course, cultural expectations and fashion don’ts in France that also make them appear put together. It is considered bad luck to leave the house with wet hair, considered unseemly to wear activewear in public, and considered law to have your clothes properly tailored.

From this I’ve begun to aim for having a few, well-fitted wardrobe staples that look put together no matter your body type: a basic white tee with well-fitting jeans, a trench coat over a sweater and skirt, a striped button down worn open over a black dress.

My biggest struggle in translating my tastes to my wardrobe is that I am not built like most of the celebrities whose fashion I respect, so translating that taste into something flattering on me has not been an intuitive process. Enter Ellie-Jean Royden, a British personal stylist. Although she has ample videos to help you determine your color season, your Kibbe body-type, and the other standard fashion guides, she has developed her own concept which she calls Style Roots. These style roots are purely a means of defining your taste in clothing, and once you identify your three core style roots, it becomes much easier to shop for clothing that you will actually like and wear. Here is her introduction to those style roots.

Through this, I discovered that my style roots are Mountain, Mushroom, and Fire. I love clothing that looks tailored, or that has defining shapes, and that is simplistic, structured, and eye catching. You can see this in some of my favorite outfits:

Finally, through some of the other videos that Royden produces, I have been able to find the defining characteristics of my body type and how they translate into clothing. I have a wide, long, and round body type, so the clothing that fits me best will have length, width, and/or curve to it. It is so much easier to shop for clothing with these guides: I look for length, width, or curve in the shape of anything I plan to buy, and I make sure the look of the garment matches my Mushroom, Mountain, or Fire tastes. This has made it much easier to rule out impulse buys, and to buy clothing I will like and continue to gravitate toward for years (of those inspiration photographs I shared, only two of them are new and the others I’ve loved for over five years). I am also far more partial to this system for personal style because it entirely removes the expectation that you be any particular shape in order to look nice. It instead takes the foundations of your body that will not change (I will have a wide body, a long body, and certainly a round body in any and all stages of motherhood), and it allows you to still express yourself in any aesthetic style you most prefer. If I ever have daughters, this is how I hope to talk to them about shopping for clothing and finding things that fit, in hopes that it provides them with confidence and the right tools to find clothing they will love and look nice in.

I highly recommend you check out Royden’s videos, and determine your style roots for yourself. I love to talk about them, so please share via a comment or a message what you’ve discovered and whether this helps you find good pieces to fill your wardrobe.