You might find the book 'What Artists Wear' by Charlie Porter interesting; I saw it in a bookstore recently and very much enjoyed leafing through it (it features both male and female artists). I also recently unpacked my books and I found my old copy of 'The Fashionable Selby', and it was actually inspiring, to see personal style documented before the current era of the digital influencer. It feels much less perfect, much more personal, more a feeling, less a "look".
So much of what you write here resonates with me...perhaps we are so interested in personal style because modern life is so concerned with image and we are bombarded by imagery at a pace that leaves little time for reflection.
I reckon Georgia O Keeffe had her "off" moments when it came to dressing herself, I only wish I knew what she thought of them!
Looking forward to more of your style thoughts, and thank you for launching this newsletter!
Both of the books you mentioned sound wonderful, I will look them up! I think my favorite personal style book is 'Women in Clothes'. It's a beautiful investigation as to how and why clothes are so deeply personal to us.
I think you are absolutely right: the pace of us consuming imagery is messing with our style. We become alienated from taking the time to engage with our feelings, and we look at ourselves through the idea of an image, rather than really looking into who we are.
I, too, would love to know how O'Keeffe felt on her "off" days, how she tackled them!
Thanks for recommending “The Fashionable Selby”! Seems like such an innocent time, life before algos. I had almost forgotten. I really enjoyed “What Artists Wear.”
So much richness here...thank you. I could spend hours overthinking my clothes but you managed to touch upon some perennial introspection around work as well. :-) When I travel some countries will ask in those immigrations cards for "profession" and I always say to myself--Ach! I have no metier!! Which of course is odd since I have spent more hours working than doing anything else since graduating college. GULP. But of course the simplicity of the metier extends to the sartorial. Would love to see the images from that book. I could picture them in my head.
We can bring baggage to everything we do. In my case I wore a very ugly school uniform for nine years in a very conformist school but at the same time growing up in New York at a time of wonderful creativity and almost no uniformity. As a child I was very aware of this dichotomy and leaned in to the latter and was repelled by the former. For this reason "uniforms" never resonate with me and committing to a style feels like an extension of that, for me. Yet I love that O'Keefe and others have a consistent element of style. (Although I never liked the black turtleneck and jeans on Jobs, even if the turtleneck was Issey Miyake's. It always looked blah to me.) But for me, personally, clothing means self expression and experimentation. Serendipity. The unexpected.
The feeling you describe for the Yohji jacket is a powerful one. When you discover a hero piece like that, it can change everything for you. I have never been able to predict that or 100% identify it while shopping. But I crave it and I mourn those articles that played that role for me but are now expired. Yet, I wonder if it's impossible to only have hero pieces. The presence of less pivotal garments (but still great choices) might be necessary to let the hero piece shine and do it's thing?
I've wondered the same thing re: the hero pieces. It might not be possible to have a wardrobe full of hero pieces. They are really difficult to recognize. I think I have only two: the Yohji jacket and my olive green Dries Van Noten trousers -- and I've been buying clothes for decades!
I personally struggle with the idea of uniform dressing, too, and I don't quite know how to find balance between wanting to experiment but also craving consistency. Thinking of O'Keeffe's clothes, there's a consistent style throughout her wardrobe but there's also variation with silhouettes and fabrics... She had quite a lot of clothes for someone with a clear, distinct style, and a ton of shoes. I wonder if it's possible to really know your style and still experiment, but within a slightly narrower playing field? I find that there's just so much product out there that experimentation becomes exhausting.
This was a fabulous piece! I am so excited to read more from you. Thank you for sharing O'Keeffe's wardrobe. Was a treasure to look through. The color palette was almost predictable...as I clicked through looking for the lone red pieces. Much of it reflects the color palette of her paintings, those colors being the ones that resonated deeply with her. Within my own wardrobe, I find myself drawn to the colors I connect most deeply with, red, blues, chartreuse, deeper yellows, and whites. My closet consists of mostly vintage(probably over 90%), and many of the pieces have been gifts from an older friend who used to have her clothing made by a seamstress in 1950s Israel. The pieces with these older kinds of stories are the ones I feel most comforted in. I often look in my closet and ask what could be parted with(mind you I don't have a massive wardrobe), and it is the modern clothing with poor construction and fabrics that always make the cut. I've since stopped buying pieces made of poor fabric, and it has helped how I feel day to day. One last note, I believe our true personal style very much connects with our childhood. What was it as a child that you wore that didn't make you think much about your body and could just be? Mine was this 90s gauzy sundress with a mauve and purple and black print that felt like nothing. It had buttons, and eventually tore because it was gentle fabric, but that was the one. Understanding what I wore back then, I can connect why certain pieces I have in my closet today resonate with me. I am ever collecting vibrant, patterned, and outrageous pieces as a way to connect with my inner child. My wardrobe will never look like the minimalist and calm pattern of Georgia's, but that is ok. I hope that someone might find as much joy looking through the contents of my wardrobe when I am passed.
I feel the same way about materials. I have no trouble culling modern clothes if the material is cheap. It's like poor fabric doesn't have a soul.
It's interesting that you mentioned childhood. In 'Notebook on Cities and Clothes', in the early section where Wim Wenders discusses his first experience with Yohji Yamamoto's clothes, he tracks his feeling so strongly about them back to his childhood and his father. The clothes reminded him of his father, and took him back to that emotion of being with his father as a child. I'm trying to remember the clothes from my childhood... I mostly wore my sister's hand-me-downs. I wonder if I search for my personal style so intensely because my childhood clothes weren't really mine, they were someone else's... I will have to think about this! Thank you for your lovely comment!
Ensinnäkin: Onnea uutiskirjeestä! Tämä on ehdottomasti parasta, mitä somessani on ikuisuuksiin tapahtunut!
Ja sitten siihen tyyliin! Minäkin olen pohtinut viimeisten 13 vuoden aikana lukuisia kertoja, millainen minun tyylini on ja mistä elementeistä se koostuu.
Tähän olen pohdinnoissani päätynyt: mitä useammin pukeudun siihen tiettyyn tummansiniseen - tai sammaleenvihreään, suklaanruskeaan, harmaaseen tai mustaan - kašmirneuleeseen tai silkkipaitaan tai tweedhousuihin tai -bleiseriin, sitä todennäköisemmin kyse on minun tyylistäni. Samasta asiasta on kyse, kun haluan pukeutua yhä uudelleen ja uudelleen johonkin tiettyyn asuun.
On ollut huojentavaa havaita, että tyyliään ei tarvitse keksiä uudelleen joka päivä, vaan ne omat lempivaateparret tekevät tyylini. Ja minut.
Niinpä, loppujen lopuksi tyyli on kai vain niiden kaikista eniten omilta tuntuvien vaatteiden pukemista ja yhdistelemistä, kerta toisensa jälkeen. Ei sen kummempaa. Suosikkivaatteet kestävät käyttöä ja joskus ne jopa paranevat vuosien saatossa. Ne sulautuvat osaksi omaa kehoa ja omaa itseä.
One of my favourite exhibitions I ever saw was Georgia O’Keefe’s clothes at the Brooklyn Museum in 2017. She wore and mended and cared for clothes she had for 60 years! It was incredible to see. She also said she wore a palette of black and white {she introduced a little colour later} so as not to distract from her work. She loved colour so much if she were to dress in it she’d take all day thinking about what to wear and never do any work!!
You might find the book 'What Artists Wear' by Charlie Porter interesting; I saw it in a bookstore recently and very much enjoyed leafing through it (it features both male and female artists). I also recently unpacked my books and I found my old copy of 'The Fashionable Selby', and it was actually inspiring, to see personal style documented before the current era of the digital influencer. It feels much less perfect, much more personal, more a feeling, less a "look".
So much of what you write here resonates with me...perhaps we are so interested in personal style because modern life is so concerned with image and we are bombarded by imagery at a pace that leaves little time for reflection.
I reckon Georgia O Keeffe had her "off" moments when it came to dressing herself, I only wish I knew what she thought of them!
Looking forward to more of your style thoughts, and thank you for launching this newsletter!
Both of the books you mentioned sound wonderful, I will look them up! I think my favorite personal style book is 'Women in Clothes'. It's a beautiful investigation as to how and why clothes are so deeply personal to us.
I think you are absolutely right: the pace of us consuming imagery is messing with our style. We become alienated from taking the time to engage with our feelings, and we look at ourselves through the idea of an image, rather than really looking into who we are.
I, too, would love to know how O'Keeffe felt on her "off" days, how she tackled them!
Love that book too! I like that they kept the website and you can see the replies from women to their survey.
Thanks for recommending “The Fashionable Selby”! Seems like such an innocent time, life before algos. I had almost forgotten. I really enjoyed “What Artists Wear.”
Now that’s an inaugural newsletter ! Bravo
Thank you so much!
So much richness here...thank you. I could spend hours overthinking my clothes but you managed to touch upon some perennial introspection around work as well. :-) When I travel some countries will ask in those immigrations cards for "profession" and I always say to myself--Ach! I have no metier!! Which of course is odd since I have spent more hours working than doing anything else since graduating college. GULP. But of course the simplicity of the metier extends to the sartorial. Would love to see the images from that book. I could picture them in my head.
We can bring baggage to everything we do. In my case I wore a very ugly school uniform for nine years in a very conformist school but at the same time growing up in New York at a time of wonderful creativity and almost no uniformity. As a child I was very aware of this dichotomy and leaned in to the latter and was repelled by the former. For this reason "uniforms" never resonate with me and committing to a style feels like an extension of that, for me. Yet I love that O'Keefe and others have a consistent element of style. (Although I never liked the black turtleneck and jeans on Jobs, even if the turtleneck was Issey Miyake's. It always looked blah to me.) But for me, personally, clothing means self expression and experimentation. Serendipity. The unexpected.
The feeling you describe for the Yohji jacket is a powerful one. When you discover a hero piece like that, it can change everything for you. I have never been able to predict that or 100% identify it while shopping. But I crave it and I mourn those articles that played that role for me but are now expired. Yet, I wonder if it's impossible to only have hero pieces. The presence of less pivotal garments (but still great choices) might be necessary to let the hero piece shine and do it's thing?
Thank you for starting this newsletter!!
I've wondered the same thing re: the hero pieces. It might not be possible to have a wardrobe full of hero pieces. They are really difficult to recognize. I think I have only two: the Yohji jacket and my olive green Dries Van Noten trousers -- and I've been buying clothes for decades!
I personally struggle with the idea of uniform dressing, too, and I don't quite know how to find balance between wanting to experiment but also craving consistency. Thinking of O'Keeffe's clothes, there's a consistent style throughout her wardrobe but there's also variation with silhouettes and fabrics... She had quite a lot of clothes for someone with a clear, distinct style, and a ton of shoes. I wonder if it's possible to really know your style and still experiment, but within a slightly narrower playing field? I find that there's just so much product out there that experimentation becomes exhausting.
This was a fabulous piece! I am so excited to read more from you. Thank you for sharing O'Keeffe's wardrobe. Was a treasure to look through. The color palette was almost predictable...as I clicked through looking for the lone red pieces. Much of it reflects the color palette of her paintings, those colors being the ones that resonated deeply with her. Within my own wardrobe, I find myself drawn to the colors I connect most deeply with, red, blues, chartreuse, deeper yellows, and whites. My closet consists of mostly vintage(probably over 90%), and many of the pieces have been gifts from an older friend who used to have her clothing made by a seamstress in 1950s Israel. The pieces with these older kinds of stories are the ones I feel most comforted in. I often look in my closet and ask what could be parted with(mind you I don't have a massive wardrobe), and it is the modern clothing with poor construction and fabrics that always make the cut. I've since stopped buying pieces made of poor fabric, and it has helped how I feel day to day. One last note, I believe our true personal style very much connects with our childhood. What was it as a child that you wore that didn't make you think much about your body and could just be? Mine was this 90s gauzy sundress with a mauve and purple and black print that felt like nothing. It had buttons, and eventually tore because it was gentle fabric, but that was the one. Understanding what I wore back then, I can connect why certain pieces I have in my closet today resonate with me. I am ever collecting vibrant, patterned, and outrageous pieces as a way to connect with my inner child. My wardrobe will never look like the minimalist and calm pattern of Georgia's, but that is ok. I hope that someone might find as much joy looking through the contents of my wardrobe when I am passed.
I feel the same way about materials. I have no trouble culling modern clothes if the material is cheap. It's like poor fabric doesn't have a soul.
It's interesting that you mentioned childhood. In 'Notebook on Cities and Clothes', in the early section where Wim Wenders discusses his first experience with Yohji Yamamoto's clothes, he tracks his feeling so strongly about them back to his childhood and his father. The clothes reminded him of his father, and took him back to that emotion of being with his father as a child. I'm trying to remember the clothes from my childhood... I mostly wore my sister's hand-me-downs. I wonder if I search for my personal style so intensely because my childhood clothes weren't really mine, they were someone else's... I will have to think about this! Thank you for your lovely comment!
Ensinnäkin: Onnea uutiskirjeestä! Tämä on ehdottomasti parasta, mitä somessani on ikuisuuksiin tapahtunut!
Ja sitten siihen tyyliin! Minäkin olen pohtinut viimeisten 13 vuoden aikana lukuisia kertoja, millainen minun tyylini on ja mistä elementeistä se koostuu.
Tähän olen pohdinnoissani päätynyt: mitä useammin pukeudun siihen tiettyyn tummansiniseen - tai sammaleenvihreään, suklaanruskeaan, harmaaseen tai mustaan - kašmirneuleeseen tai silkkipaitaan tai tweedhousuihin tai -bleiseriin, sitä todennäköisemmin kyse on minun tyylistäni. Samasta asiasta on kyse, kun haluan pukeutua yhä uudelleen ja uudelleen johonkin tiettyyn asuun.
On ollut huojentavaa havaita, että tyyliään ei tarvitse keksiä uudelleen joka päivä, vaan ne omat lempivaateparret tekevät tyylini. Ja minut.
Kiitos Mira!
Niinpä, loppujen lopuksi tyyli on kai vain niiden kaikista eniten omilta tuntuvien vaatteiden pukemista ja yhdistelemistä, kerta toisensa jälkeen. Ei sen kummempaa. Suosikkivaatteet kestävät käyttöä ja joskus ne jopa paranevat vuosien saatossa. Ne sulautuvat osaksi omaa kehoa ja omaa itseä.
One of my favourite exhibitions I ever saw was Georgia O’Keefe’s clothes at the Brooklyn Museum in 2017. She wore and mended and cared for clothes she had for 60 years! It was incredible to see. She also said she wore a palette of black and white {she introduced a little colour later} so as not to distract from her work. She loved colour so much if she were to dress in it she’d take all day thinking about what to wear and never do any work!!
Great piece. Thanks for sharing xx