How to develop your own personal style

I know so many people who don’t know their own personal style. They end up borrowing their homes, their fashion, their esthetic from someone else. And, while this seems strange when you think about it, I get how this happened.

We are really not taught to find our own unique expression. We are continually pressured by individuals, by social media or by culture to blend in, from the earliest age imaginable.

In practice this looks like people picking art based on what they’ve seen in other people’s homes on Instagram, for example. It looks like people fitting themselves within trends, as opposed to really finding what style excites them, and celebrates them.

So… let’s say you struggle with this. How do you find your style now? How do you figure out what you really like, and not what the culture tells you to like?

I think so much of this has to be a practice of unlearning.

I’m going to talk about art now, surprise surprise, but you can apply this to other relevant areas of esthetic. When I work with a client who is really unclear about their personal style, the first thing we do is become acquainted with their reactions to a piece of art. Sifting through a reaction to figure out what you like and do not like in something visual can take a while, but eventually you begin to clarify what works for you and what doesn’t.

It’s kind of exposure therapy.

We look at a lot of art. Like, a LOT. And really get into the components of it. We make it complex and specific. Most people cannot say anything broad about their tastes.

You may think you do not like the color red for example. But with enough precision you might find you actually do, of a certain tone, or only when paired with a softening color, or never with paint, but you like it a lot with ink.

The more you look at, the more refined your understanding is of what works for you, and why, and what doesn’t, and why.

Once you’re there, once you know what you like and do not in a piece of art, and can articulate that, even just to yourself, you can go a step deeper and determine whether it speaks to who you are, and what you care about.

There is a lot of art that I really love. But it’s not my style, I don’t want to own it or look at it every day. I can appreciate the beauty and meaning of it. But it’s not my taste. It doesn’t actually move me or illuminate anything about me or my life.

So to go from understanding what you like in art, to a deeper understanding of what your personal style is requires you to abstract your life a little bit. What symbolism, metaphors, tones, textures, emotions represent you? What degree of complexity or simplicity speaks to you?

Knowing your personal style is an essential step in truly becoming an art collector—in your own way. I am all about subverting what that term even means. And bring you authentically into it is key.

Answering all these questions and reversing probably decades of learning to follow trends can be hard.

If you’d like to do it with someone my services include an extensive understanding of what you like, how to articulate it, and how to build your interior design to tell the story of your life, and select art that speaks to who you are.

I invite you to take the first step and fill out an application to work with me.