Neha Neelwarne

After having some intense experiences over the last few years, I’m on a mission to commit myself to my life and to give it all I’ve got. How I show up everyday is crucial to this. I’ve found myself caring about style in a different way than I have in the past, and I’d like to share what I’ve learned so far.

It’s impossible to be connected to the internet today without being inundated with content that try to sell you some sort of aesthetic. Aesthetics that need you to buy that dress, that bag, that house, that car, that belt, style your hair in a certain way, curate a 12 step skincare routine, walk in a specific type of boot, and so on.

But the age old question remains…what is your style?

Do you have a style? Who are you? Questions that are much more interesting to me when I meet someone than the brand of handbag they’re carrying, or the skincare products they swear by.

Lots of people describe their style by drawing parallels with other well-known figures. “My style icon is Rihanna”, “I love the Hailey Bieber look”. I think this is fair, all art references something. But don’t stop there. Go deeper. You emulate others when you don’t know yet who you are. Once you do, you blend the influences and make your own magic, have your own point of view.

Rihanna and Hailey Bieber are out there living their lives with style. But you’ve also got your own life that probably has different dimensions and feels different to theirs… and your style will try to reflect those different flavors. Allow it to.

It’s easy to get swept up in neatly curated boxes and try to make ourselves fit.

Into the “e-girl” aesthetic, “the mob wife” aesthetic and countless other trends. But that’s what they are…trends. You might look back at yourself 10 years from now and realize you were just trying to play another part and not really doing the hard work of figuring out what magic lies within you and bringing it to the surface daily as an offering to the world.

Now I’m not saying don’t have fun, but I’m saying have a core foundation and do the work it takes to get there. So that when all the cool shoes and bags are stripped away, you’ve still got you.

Style is intrinsically tied to character.

When you know who you are, what values you hold dear, what you’re willing to trade off…you carry yourself differently and you make different choices.

Joan Didion (the author I turn to for comfort and soothing) described Character as:

“…the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs. Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts.”

Which then leads me to the crucial connection between character and action.

If character is the backbone of style and is built by action…then style is comprised of looking and doing.

You’ve got to do things in your fits. Go, get dressed up and live your life. Your clothes will have a lot more meaning because of the memories you made in them, doing fun things, new things, scary things, kind things, things you’re not proud of, things that make you cringe when you look back at them. But that’s the beautiful and messy part of life that you’ve got to live.

Doing something because a lot of others are doing them may be comforting for a while, and it does feel good to be part of a group. But strike a balance – all icing and no cake feels yucky and sick in the end.

Which leads me to come full circle back to the ads and aesthetic content.

I can’t help but attribute, at least partly, the fact that we’re all too distracted to look inward to these highly curated, beautiful images that inundate us. If it looks so good, then it must make us feel good as well. But how many times have you thought buying a thing was going to make you feel fulfilled and then lo and behold it turns out to not be the case? Yet we continue down this path because…it’s easy. At least easier than reading, journaling, therapy-ing, meditating, exercising, cooking, mastering an art/skill etc.