Find your personal style: Make a Look Book

So what the hell are Look Books?

Essentially, they’re collections of images. 

You can use them to figure out your personal style if you don’t know what it is that you like and you feel that your closet is a big mish mash of things that just don’t go together. (Maybe that’s a style? Eclectic?)

How do I create one?

And there are many ways to think about creating one, or gathering inspiration from around the web, or in everyday life, magazines, photos, movies… even TV series such as Lipstick Jungle, Cashmere Mafia, Gossip Girl, Sex and the City.. to name a few. 

This is my quick Look Book I whipped up of interesting outfits that I liked from around the web:

You can make your own digital or paper look book (either a vision board like the one I’ve created) or a folder of collected images from the internet, or pictures cut out from magazines and pasted on a big board. 

From there, you can figure out what the major themes are in what you’ve picked.

For the above, I can see the following:

• Unaffected, casual loose draping of fabric that is pinned or belted together to give some shape
• Pearls wrapped over and over again in an eclectic way
• Decadence in lace, fabric with very Victorian ladylike femininity but not overly frilly
• Simple but outstanding blazers with jeans paired with knee-high boots
• Tough leather jackets paired with feminine floaty dresses – a nice contrast
• Bright accented colours with my favourites being emerald green, canary yellow as bright touches
• Casual simplicity

Look at other peoples’ Look Books for inspiration

Polyvore is a great resource of people who’ve done the work of creating Look Books for you! Collect THOSE look books instead, then find the theme of what you seem to gravitate towards. 

Here’s one up close 

Clearly, the deep purples mixed with the green and the floral prints really made me click on that polyvore set among the others displayed. 

I hate the shoes in the set, but it’s clear that I love that colour of purple fuschia.

And Austin Chic recently showed everyone her Inspiration Notebook!

Finally, pay attention when you go out

Look out at what other girls are wearing, what you like about their outfits, what you don’t, what you admire, are inspired by or interested in.

Then when you go shopping, don’t buy anything but just observe. What do you gravitate towards immediately? The frillier things? Plain sharp cuts? Lace? Beaded and sequined tops..?

Here are some exampels of street style if you don’t walk out often, or are in a busy enough city:

• Style Diary
• CoolHunter
• Copenhagen Street Style
• Tokyo Street Style

And there you have it.