For the last 3-4 years, I have been very particular about only posting outfits I have actually worn, photographed on the day that I wore them. (Hence the iPhone photos, I might add.) It is too tempting, otherwise, to choose outfits solely “for the blog” and, in my experience, those don’t necessarily reflect my authentic aesthetic; once you remove the requirement of “suitable for my actual day-to-day lifestyle”, I tend to veer off into questionable stylistic directions. Ahem.
I broke my rule in this case by necessity, because this is an outfit I wore while at a conference out of town. I took the photo before leaving for the conference because (a) I wanted to make sure the outfit looked good (I wore it while presenting and, hello, I’m vain); and (b) I wanted to have a decent photo of it in case it did turn out nicely. Well … there are iPhone photos, and then there are crappy shot-in-the-blinding-sunlight iPhone photos. Sorry, peeps. Still better than mirror selfies in a dark hotel room, I say. And this outfit definitely deserved a post because it turned out quite nicely. It’s very much Peak Adina, 2017 Edition.
Now, you might be thinking: this doesn’t look very similar to stuff Adina usually wears. That’s true. I don’t always nail this vibe, and I was thinking about why that is recently. I think it comes down to the fact that I rarely repeat an outfit 100%. I know I buy a lot of clothes, but I still don’t buy enough to come up with 5 brand new outfits a week, every week, so there is a lot of mixing and matching going on. Sometimes, the mix hits just the right style note; sometimes, it’s close, sometimes, it’s not so close. I mean, the swings in style aren’t violent, but they’re definitely noticeable some days — and they become more apparent in my monthly recaps where all the outfits stand side by side. Consistency is something that’s becoming more and more important to me … slowly overtaking my love of variety and experimentation. Say, whaaa?
As much as I love playing with clothes, there is no denying that, at the end of the day, there are things I like wearing more than others, and outfits I like more than others. So I am thinking about spending less time re-mixing, and more time refining and re-wearing favourite outfits. Will that make for more boring/repetitive blog posts? I hope not. Some of my fave style Instagrammers have a very specific aesthetic that doesn’t vary much from day to day; maybe if you put all of their outfits next to each other, they might seem repetitive, but individually? On any given day, they look fantastic. In the past, I haven’t been particularly drawn to the idea of a signature look, preferring variety and the fun of trying new style personas, but I think it’s time for a new outlook.
