Issue 102: Forget formulas
Less instructions, more references
“Revaaaaa I need my summer formula!”
Clients ask me for a formula all the time.
I understand the impulse. A set of rules that makes getting dressed easier. Something to repeat. It’s become a buzzword. And everyone thinks they need one.
But the second we start talking about formulas, getting dressed starts to sound like math. Routine. Something we’re trying to short cut.
The goal isn’t to find three pieces that always go together and wear some version of that for the foreseeable future.
It’s to understand yourself well enough that you wear something because it feels like you. Not because you’re following a formula.
The more you do that, the less you need one to follow. You just know.
The other day I was staring at my closet. I wanted to put something new on. Not new like I had just bought it. A new creation. Something adventurous.
I was working from home, running errands, seeing nobody. Those are actually my favorite days to try something new. The times where getting dressed is entirely for me.
They’re the ‘low stakes days’. The days you can wear something outside your comfort zone and get used to it.
As I’m having this conversation with myself, I look down and I’m staring at this royal blue lobster brooch.
I got the brooch as a gift from Turn Paris. But as a testament to my own philosophy, I never mentioned it or linked it. Because I didn’t see myself wearing it.
Alix and Clara, the founders of Turn, have a strong POV. So when the brooch arrived, I knew they were seeing something in it that I wasn’t. I put it aside and assumed its time would come.
Every now and then I’d see it sitting on my counter and think it was beautiful. Funny. Interesting. But not me at all.
Then, standing there in my tank and pants, I suddenly remembered this image. Not consciously. More like it floated back up.
I had screenshotted it a year ago. Maybe two. A shell with pearls pinned to a white tank. Something simple. Made into something interesting.
I didn’t remember it because I wanted to recreate it. I remembered it because it had expanded my idea of what a white tank could be.
It was a reference.
Not a formula.
So I pinned the lobster onto the strap of my tank I was wearing. And I loved it
It isn’t delicate. It’s not jewelry. It’s not precious. It’s just this unexpected thing you attach to whatever you’re already wearing.
That’s what makes it fun.
Later I messaged Alix and Clara to ask about the inspiration behind it.
Because for me, it’s always the story. The context. The why.
They told me the inspiration came from studying abroad. Being in a foreign classroom. Being far from home. School feeling like a place of rules and structure, and very little magic.
The lobster was imagined as something improbable and joyful. Something colorful and unexpected that could crawl anywhere on your outfit. Something that makes you smile when you look down at it.
And of course, something to add interest to an otherwise serious outfit. A great conversation starter too
I loved that.
Sure, I’ve seen people wear brooches on tank tops before. I am not inventing this.
But the way I came to wear it felt personal. How you come to something matters.
A blue lobster brooch pinned to a white tank top because of a screenshot you saved two years ago, a gift from two women whose taste you admire, and a random Monday morning where you decided to question your own assumptions about what was “you”?
That’s interesting. That’s personal. The story matters.
Both my sister in law and my best friend are interior designers. And I have come to enjoy reading about homes more because of them. I find myself just as interested in the people who live there as I am in the house itself. The story changes how you see the space.
Getting dressed is the same. That’s why I’m so interested in the people behind the clothes. And why I started my series Not the Clothes.
Because stories are what make something feel personal.
