The 'Mrs Baggins' Style Challenge

As you'll know from last week's post, I was beginning to think of style as a kind of scam to encourage us to feel dissatisfied with our selves and our clothes. You might think that this feeling would lead to a sense of liberation, but instead I found myself a little despondent: "You mean, this is it? Get used to feeling slightly uncomfortable in my skin, all the time, forever? I never get to changing-room-movie-montage my way out of this?" 

Then, in a rather timely manner I received a newsletter from Jill Chivers at Shop Your Wardrobe which contained a link to this post, which contains references to lots of studies about how the way we dress can affect our mood, confidence and self-image. I couldn't help but think back to how I'd felt all day in my jeans, which were just slightly too short to look right with my shoes. I'd wanted to work on accepting myself, but was I just stifling myself instead? Why didn't I just change the damn shoes?

This has been a year of many challenges, from several months of no-buy to a big rewilding plan, walking across hot coals and wearing everything in my 100+ item wardrobe. So I started to think, perhaps it was time to set myself some more.

I recently came across a piece of wisdom that suggests we give ourselves three years to work towards a chosen goal. At the end of that time, we have either succeeded, made progress, or perhaps learned that it's time to peacefully let go. But I've been working on this no-buy for three years, and to be honest I didn't fancy spending another three obsessing over the contents of my wardrobe.

So I decided, okay. Three months. For three months, I would lean into this whole style thing. I would do my best to learn whatever lessons it had to teach. I would shop my wardrobe. I would not leave the house in an outfit I did not like. I would take copious notes on how I felt and how it affected me. However, I would not shop. I would either make outfits with my own clothes or borrow from friends. Adding new clothes seemed like a thing that would only compound my state of identity crisis and confusion. 

At first I thought I should get some style guides and try to enact their advice, perhaps challenge myself with a different book for each month, but then I wondered if maybe I was looking at the whole thing wrong. The point wasn't to become stylish, it was to find my style. I feel fairly certain that my style is not to be found in someone else's list of essential basics or defined by which fruit or vegetable I most resemble. So I decided to start really, really simple, by just putting together outfits that I actually like when I get dressed in the mornings.

I know, right, it's hardly revolutionary. Usually when we are encouraged to discover our style, the suggestion is that style is 'out there somewhere', possibly still hanging on the rail in H&M, waiting for us to go and catch it in our fashion-y net. This is the kind of talk that makes me wary, makes me start thinking fashion is a con game. Comparatively, consider the wisdom of Leena Norms: 

 "When it comes to showing who you are through your clothes, I think that isn't a misguided idea, but if clothes are supposed to speak about who we are, surely where they came from is as important as, like... what colour they are. How frequently I buy them is as important as how 'me' they are, whatever that means. I also think that re-wearing clothes makes them more you. Like, you really settle in to your style when you re-wear stuff you really, really love, and people start knowing you for that. So rather than always having to reinvent the wheel and walk into New Look and be like 'Right, I've got to find an item that's 'me',' the secret might actually be already be at home in your wardrobe into looking like yourself."

I'd already learned from wearing my wardrobe that I have those things because I like them. So it's kind of ironic that I end up feeling bad when I wear them. Especially when I quite possibly have the power to... not.

Do you know what made me think twice about buying a bunch of style guides to slavishly follow their advice? (I recently flicked through one that suggested leather leggings are a must-have wardrobe staple... all I will say is, to each their own, but I cannot express how much I do not wish to wear a pair of leather leggings in this lifetime.) I was scrolling on Pinterest, because although I know it's a total waste of time it sometimes feels like I'm doing something productive and if I can just find the right image it will magically solve all my fashion conundrums forever, and I found myself looking at a picture of Emma Orbach.

I deeply admire Emma Orbach. She lives in a self-built hobbit house on the slopes of a mountain in Pembrokeshire, off the grid, where she lives off the land, tends horses and plays the harp. And has done, without running water or electricity, for over twenty years.

In this photograph, Emma Orbach was wearing a crystal pendant necklace and a stripy v-neck jumper. And I thought, for heaven's sake, this woman lives in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere, presumably without a mirror, milking goats and communing with her spirit guides, she obviously knows there are WAY more important things than her appearance, and she can still be bothered to put on a nice necklace that she likes. So why the hell can't I?

I wanted to wear my equivalent of Emma Orbach's necklace. Nice things, that I like, in a combination that I enjoy. 

So I'm calling it The Mrs Baggins Style Challenge. I give myself three months to see if a little bit of style really can change my life, or even just my mood. I'll keep you posted.

This week, this blog is also two years old! Does it feel like two years to you?!