Are you suffering a loss of confidence and identity? If so, focusing on defining your personal style can help. Here are my favourites books to guide you.
Are you looking to define your personal style? If so, books can be a valuable resource. In this blog post I’m going to suggest eight books that I think can really help you. My list includes four style and shopping guides that offer practical advice, and four ‘picture’ books that supply the inspirational visuals. These are not just random books I’ve plucked from the internet. I own a well thumbed copy of seven of these books and have the eighth on pre-order. I’ve used them all over the past year to help me to redefine my own personal style. Doing so has helped me to regain my confidence and sense of identity. I really hope that they will do the same for you.
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Why is Defining Your Style important?
I strongly believe that defining your style is more than just a superficial exercise in fashion or aesthetics. It plays a crucial role in personal growth. By understanding and articulating your unique preferences, values and individuality, you gain self-assurance, confidence and authenticity. Here’s how:
- Self-Expression: Your style is a reflection of who you are. It allows you to express your personality, values, and emotions without uttering a single word. Taking the time to define and refine your style helps you develop a stronger sense of self-identity and authenticity.
- Boosts Confidence: When you feel good about how you look and present yourself, it makes you feel good. Knowing that you have a well-defined style that aligns with your personality gives you self-assurance and empowers you to do and be more.
- Enhances Self-Awareness: Defining your style requires introspection and self-awareness. It encourages you to examine your likes, dislikes, and what makes you feel most comfortable and confident. This can lead to a deeper understanding of your own desires, strengths, and weaknesses.
- Cultivates Individuality: Embracing your unique style helps you stand out from the crowd. It allows you to embrace your individuality and celebrate what makes you different.
So, without further ado, lets start on the books…
My 4 Favourite Style & Shopping Guides
1. Get Changed: Finding the new you through fashion
This is my favourite personal style guide because it’s aimed at older women who are feeling a loss of identity following significant life changes. This is definitely me, and I suspect a lot of other women in my age bracket.
Author and professional stylist Kat Farmer, draws heavily on her own experience of using fashion to help her to get out of a major life rut. In her chatty down to earth style, she explains how she regenerated her life and rediscovered her confidence by reconnecting with her love of clothes. Her openness and humorous style of writing makes it seem like you’re getting advice from a friend over coffee, rather than a set of rigid style rules.
This book covers all the basics – identifying your style, working out what works for your body type, selecting key wardrobe pieces that will work together, and how to shop successfully for what you actually need. There’s also a nice chapter on ‘the elephant in the room’, age-appropriate dressing. (Spoiler – there aren’t any rules!).
In Kat’s own words: –
“this is a true and honest, tried and tested guide to how you can not only rediscover yourself but also reinvent yourself using fashion, especially if you feel you have lost your way in life and your sense of self. It’s a guide that works. It isn’t difficult to do, but sometimes it’s so much easier to see the wood from the trees if you have someone pointing it out – and decoding the fashion myths, expelling out of date suffocating ‘rules’ and taking you on a journey, step by step, to discover the you you’ve always wanted to be’.
You can see Kat’s book on Amazon here.
You should also check out Kat’s Instagram, doesmybumlook40
2. I Love Your Style: How to define and Refine Your Personal Style
This is another great style guide. The key message of this one, is that finding your personal style is really about discovering yourself.
For the author Amanda Brooks, personal style is all about engaging in a constant creative process and her emphasis is on looking different rather than just ‘good’. For her, there are no rules except the ones you set yourself.
The book starts with an outline of Amanda’s personal style history and then moves on to considering the different style types. She breaks these down into two classes: Definable style (i.e., classic, bohemian, and minimal) and indefinable (high fashion, street, and eclectic).
However, whilst she explains each of these style types in detail, she is at pains to emphasise that the most interesting personal styles often combine a core of one style type combined with one or more elements of the others. The last section of the book focuses on shopping, with sections on shopping for basics, cheap chic, designer, and vintage.
There are lots of great photographs to illustrate the narrative and I love Amanda’s emphasis on getting dressed as a creative act. Published in 2009, this book can be a bit harder to get hold of, but I do think it’s worth the effort. A great book for helping you in defining your style.
You can get the book on Amazon here.
3. UnShopping: Recovery Solutions from an Ex-Shopaholic
This is a short kindle ebook, written by self-confessed ex-shopaholic Debbie Roes. It contains an amalgam of all of the best advice and tools from her blog “Recovering Shopaholic”.
Even if you don’t consider yourself any sort of shopaholic, Debbie’s book still offers great advice to those of us who can get carried away while shopping. For me it’s that beautiful item that goes with nothing in my wardrobe and fits nowhere in my lifestyle. Let’s face it, we all, at one time or another, overspend and end up with unworn stuff in our wardrobe, the tags still on, several years after we bought it.
Topics includes general shopping strategies, tips for before you shop as well as for while you’re in the store. It also includes advice on shopping the sales and shopping with friends; times of maximum temptation!
You can get the ebook here.
4. Cheap Chic: 40th Anniversary Edition
I’m adding this book in, not just because of its sheer nostalgia factor (although that is major!) but also because it’s still astonishingly relevant today
I first encountered this book in 1975 at the age of 16. Remember, back then there was no social media and no style blogs. Other than high-end fashion mags like Vogue, there was no way to get real advice about wardrobe strategy, what to buy or where to buy it, for an ordinary girl like me. I sat in my bedroom and devoured this book, poring over every word.
I remember being particularly struck by the section on Ingeborg Day‘s capsule wardrobe which was worked around a money saving program called “Cost Per Wear“. This was a completely new concept then. The forerunner to today’s minimalist capsule wardrobe. The idea that you could put together a wardrobe of a few key pieces and always look stylish was the start of my ‘less is more’ wardrobe philosophy.
My one negative on this book is the rather poor quality paper it is printed on. Perhaps it’s part of the retro vibe, but I would have preferred nicer paper. 🙁
You can get the paperback or kindle edition from Amazon here
My Favourite 4 ‘Picture’ Books
These are books that, for me, are all about studying the images rather than reading the text. I get great pleasure from flipping through the pages, and they inspire me to dress more creatively. Use them to help you to refine and define your personal style.
1. Chanel: The Vocabulary of style
I will never be wealthy enough to own a garment from Chanel, but leafing through this book gives me the opportunity to dream and to revel in the beauty, simplicity, and timelessness of Coco’s inimitable craft. For those who love the best of fashion design and photography, this book is an absolute treat for the senses.
Coco Chanel was probably the most influential designer of the 20th century. This book honours that influence and celebrates the key elements that defined her style. Fashion photographs from Chanel’s time are paired with more recent ones from Karl Lagerfeld’s tenure at Chanel. This emphasises the timeless elegance of her designs and their continued relevance in today’s world.
A great book to have on your shelf or a thoughtful gift for anyone who loves fashion.
You can get it from Amazon here.
2. The Sartorialists (Volumes 1-3)
Scott Schuman is a street photographer who has been taking pictures of real people on the streets of major cities all around the world for many years. Some of those photographed are fashion insiders, but many are just ordinary people whose diverse personal styles inspire Scott to take their photo. They were originally posted on his blog, but nowadays he posts them for his 1.1million Instagram followers.
The Sartorialist is the first collection of Scott’s favourite images and was first published back in 2009. Volume 2, The Sartorialist: Closer, came out in 2012, and The Sartorialist X in 2015. The books are small, about paperback sized, but are as thick as a brick! The format is one photo to a page with very little text and there are just over 500 pages in volume 1.
Although these books are several years old now, I still thumb through them on a regular basis, looking for ideas and inspiration. After all, great style just doesn’t date. Many of the photos are of elegant men, and many are of much younger women than me, yet there is something in each to learn from. Every time I look through the photos I see something new, some combination of colours or textures that suggest ideas for my own wardrobe. I flip through the pages and somehow the sheer panache and creativity of the subjects just makes me smile. Hopefully you will enjoy them too.
The books are sadly no longer in print, but you can pick up a good used copy from Amazon sellers, or you can still get the kindle editions. I personally prefer flipping through the paperback, but the choice is yours. You should also check out Scott’s Instagram to see his more recent photos.
Find the books at Amazon here.
3. CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, a life in fashion
Full disclosure: I haven’t actually read this book yet, because it’s not released in the UK until November 23rd. BUT, since Carolyn is one of my favourite style icons, I’ve had it on pre-order for ages and can’t wait to browse through it.
It’s billed as the first book to focus on Carolyn’s inimitable style. This is from the marketing blurb:-
“Featuring spectacular photography and design, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion gathers the greats in the fashion world to speak of her timeless style and presents never-before-published personal anecdotes from friends and family“
Personally, I’m looking forward to having all of the photographs of my style heroine together in one place, rather than focusing on the text, but I’m sure that will be interesting too.
You can find the book on Amazon here.
4. Advanced Style
And last but by no means least, a book of photographs of amazing older women.
Seth Cohen is another street photographer who has taken the best of his blog and put it into a wonderful book. The difference here is that Seth photographs older, glamorous ladies, celebrating their life and style. As Seth says in the introduction:-
“The fashion these women display is merely a reflection of the care and thought they put into every aspect of their lives. These photos offer proof that the secret of remaining vital in our later years is to never stop being curious, never stop creating, and never stop having fun.”
This is truly an inspirational and uplifting book that every woman over 50 should take a look through. The incredible and diverse styles of the women portrayed are amazing, as is the quality of the full page colour photographs. You can get a flavour of Seth’s work from his instagram page advanced style.
You can see this book on Amazon here.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I strongly believe that defining your style is a crucial step towards developing a strong sense of self. If you look good, you feel good, and if you feel good you will be capable of so much more. I hope that the books listed above will serve as powerful tools to inspire and inform your style journey. Remember, your style is a reflection of your personality, so embrace it confidently and let your authentic self shine through. Happy reading and happy styling!
As ever, thank you for reading this post. I would love to hear so don’t be shy about commenting in the space below.
Sian. x
Some great books here! I’m definitely an over shopper and I could do with a style update. Thanks for the inspiration. 🙂
Your welcome.
Let me know how you get on. x