Are you interested in style, but don’t want to subscribe blindly to the often touted fashion rules and messages thrown out in social and mainstream media about how we should look and what we should wear? Are you on a quest to be authentically stylish, on your own terms?
If you are, you’re in the right place! It is one of the key reasons we developed 16 Style Types, and it’s one of our core motivators to continue to deliver quality products and programs for women who wish to find the missing piece to understanding their style, and to traveling their style journey authentically.
We believe that understanding your personality is the key to becoming authentically stylish. Far from being shallow or skin deep, style cuts right through to the heart, soul and mind of who we are.
Watch The Video
In this video, the three 16 Style Types founders – Imogen, Jane and Jill – discuss how important personality is to discovering your authentic style.
Early in Imogen‘s image consulting career, she picked up on the importance of personality in the choices her clients were making and leaning toward when assessing the colors they prefer, the styles and silhouettes of clothing they were drawn to, whether and what kind of patterns and prints factor into their ideal style, and other important factors about how to express their style.
She knew that personality and style were connected – she just didn’t have an intelligent system that had married style with personality to use in her work. Nobody had ever linked a trusted, reliable system of personality, such as psychological type, to style. (this is also one of the reasons Imogen wanted to be part of developing 16 Style Types – to bring such an innovative and needed system to the world).
Why Fashion Advice Fails
This is also why generic fashion (and some style) advice, such as every woman needs a little black dress or a plain white dress shirt, often falls flat or simply fails for so many women. It simply doesn’t factor in the individual and idiosyncratic needs that each woman requires to make her style truly her own.
This is why, when it comes to clothing and style, some women feel that they are:
- wearing a costume – it feels like playing dress up and they’re wearing someone else’s clothes
- bored – their clothing choices are uninteresting to them
- leery of making big style steps – they’re concerned about making an ‘expensive’ (in money or confidence) style mistake
- jaded – they find so much mainstream fashion advice fluffy, unintelligent, bland, generic
… to name just a few of the “turned off” states that women can quite reasonably find themselves in when faced with style advice that simply does not apply (either at all, or in some significant yet possibly undefined way) to them.
Do You Feel Great?
When you understand your style essence, you are given the “keys to the (style) kingdom”. You are given a style roadmap on what to pay attention to, and what to ignore, when it comes to your style.
Your style essence gives you ways in which you can feel great, in your own individual and unique way. It gives you permission or reasons to legitimately ignore certain fashion advice that simply doesn’t apply to you.
It also gives you a roadmap of what to pay attention to, because when your Style Type truly feels like you and reflects your innate personality preferences, you can rest confidently knowing that your Style Type Report is written for you, for women of your Style Type, and therefore it’s tailored specifically for a women of your psychological makeup.
For women who have never felt great, never felt stylish, never felt truly themselves, this can be a gift of enormous proportions. You can stop looking at other stylish women and thinking “Oh, she’s stylish – I should look like her”.
You may continue to pay attention to other women whom you find stylish, but you can appreciate, analyze, and affirm that what other women are wearing as right for them – but it doesn’t have to apply to you.
You can be stylish in your own way. In fact, not only can you be stylish in your own way – you are at your most stylish when you can embrace your personality for its innate beauty — when you define for yourself what style is, and express your style from that foundation of knowing your style essence.
This is also where charting and traveling your self-defined style journey comes into play. When you understand what is driving your style choices, you can relax into your style journey, knowing it is perfect for you.
Questions to Ponder
Here are 16 style questions for you to ponder.
Feel free to write your answers down, pop them in the Comments, or simply think about them!
- What does style mean to you?
- What does an authentic style journey mean to you?
- What do you other people know you for, when it comes to your style?
- If you had to teach other women about style, and authentic, style, what would be your #1 piece of advice?
- Do you feel you have an authentic style right now?
- If you have an authentic style now, how have you made that happen?
- If you don’t believe you have an authentic style right now, what do you believe has prevented that from occurring?
- How could you develop a more authentic style?
- What do you like about what you see when you look in the mirror?
- Who do you know that has an authentic style and/or is travelling an authentic style journey? What are they doing to manifest it / how are they making that happen?
- How do you know when your style is working? How does it make you feel?
- How do you know when your style isn’t working? What impact does that have on you?
- What do you wish you’d learned earlier when it comes to your style? When it comes to travelling your unique, and authentic style journey?
- What style advice would you always want to follow? When/from whom did you learn this? Why is it so important to you?
- What style advice or principles would you never follow? Why not?
- If you picked one thing to start doing right now (today, tomorrow, this week) that would put you in closer touch with your authentic style, what would that be for you?
Tuning into these questions and allowing the answers to be known to you can be extremely powerful. Style is a very potent ingredient in our lives, and getting more closely in touch with our own style is what leads to developing an authentic style and to travelling your authentic style pathway.
Reflecting on and responding to these questions can have real impact, so take a moment now to give these questions a moment to work some magic for you!
Other Resources
7 Steps to Style System
Imogen Lamport has developed 7 Steps to Style where you are provided with the foundations of style expression, including a supportive private Facebook Group community.
3-Part Article Series – Authenticity and Style
We explore authenticity and style in a 3-part articles series, starting here.
Style Profile
A resource to help you bridge the gap between your style essence/DNA and your style expression. You get this when you Discover Your Style Type (or Download your Style Report if you already know your four-letters).
