I’ve referenced this in passing in recent posts, but I thought it would be worthwhile writing in greater depth about my current sources of style inspiration. My style obsessions, if you will. While you may not share them exactly, you may be interested in my process for adapting/incorporating inspiration into my outfit planning.
First up, Jo March.
Y’all know about my mixed feelings about the new Little Women movie but one thing that I unabashedly loved about it was the costuming, especially for Jo. The first time we see her onscreen – in her “independent lady writer in New York” mode – I turned to my best friend and said “I need her entire wardrobe”. Something about the silhouette and proportions – voluminous long skirts, waistcoats, and tailored little jackets – just spoke to me.
Apart from the waistcoats, which have become my #1 thrift goal, I already have a lot of pieces that fit the Jo aesthetic. This is a sign. To me, inspiration doesn’t mean copying, nor does it mean buying a whole new wardrobe. If I had to do that to be able to put together an “inspired by” outfit, I would have to rethink whether that particular inspiration really suited me or not. Sometimes, it’s okay to admire someone’s style without making it yours. My goal is to hone in on the mood/essence/vibe of an outfit that attracts my eye, and figure out how to infuse that into my own outfits as filtered through my personal style preferences. That way, when I wear that outfit, I’m expressing a particular mood not simply cos-playing.
Jo’s style dovetails nicely with my Adventurer (and, to a lesser extent, Prince) avatar and represents a direction I had been wanting to explore – i.e. doing more of a “19th century lady explorer” thing than a “Indiana Jones in professor mode” thing (think skirts instead of pants and slightly less tweed).
My other current style obsession is The Witcher.
I found the show highly entertaining in spite (or maybe because) of my extremely low expectations. To put it bluntly, I started watching it as a joke because I thought it would be terrible … and got sucked into its (pretty formulaic, let’s not pretend) storyline and charmed by its main protagonists. The best part is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously and it’s a huge amount of fun. I love Geralt, bad wig and all, because he’s reliably deadpan in a world full of ridiculous propositions – monsters! dragons! enchantments! curses! surprise children! evil armies on the march! – and has a way with monosyllabic words of the expletive variety. I also enjoy powerful witches, so I guess I was predisposed to like Yennefer (even though her “crisis of identity” plotline kinda bored me, tbh). She happens to have a killer wardrobe, which helps – very much a Prince aesthetic, with maybe a little Artist thrown in.
My main takeaways from The Witcher are: all-black and black-and-white outfits (for which, of course, I need little encouragement); long, streamlined silhouettes with nipped-in waists; and LOTS of texture. I have been incorporating leather into my outfits whenever I can for a while now, and The Witcher is giving me some new ideas.
What’s inspiring you at the moment?