Authentic Style, Part 2

The Illustrated Discovery Journal: Creating a Visual Autobiography of Your Authentic Self
by Sarah Ban Breathnach

(Page 2 of 2)

A good place to start looking for authentic fashion clues is to pull out your photo albums and find the pictures that reveal what you believe is the essential you. You'll recognize her authentic gleam by a twinkle in the eye, a buoyant smile, the confident angle of the girl's chin. Is she sassy? That's the one. Look for photographs from when you were a child, a teen, and an adult. Make copies of them and paste them into a collage. What were you wearing? What does that indicate about who you were at the time? What were you doing? A friend's favorite picture of herself shows her just after she decided to undertake a project that had previously frightened her. After having announced that momentous and exhilarating decision at a dinner party, she looked up to find someone taking her picture. The photograph now hangs on her refrigerator so she can see her powerful, beautiful Authentic Self staring back at her.

Does this sound familiar? Don't you long to revel in your own sense of majesty and importance? Don't you hunger to rekindle that deeply felt desire for stopping traffic? Why shouldn't you reclaim it?

Before your next shopping trip, this is what I want you to do. Remember the glimmer in your six- or seven- or eighteen-year-old eye, and make a collage of the type of outfits you'd love to wear if you were sure that all you'd hear would be fabulous compliments about how great you look. You're after something different, offbeat, or dramatic. After you've completed this collage, prop the book up so that you can become familiar with this showstopping woman. Now head to a thrift or vintage clothing shop and pick out one piece of clothing or an accessory that captures this secret you. For example, I adore vintage hats, especially veiled ones, and I've collected quite a few. But I had to spend some time wearing them around the house before I could feel comfortable enough to display my splendor to the world. Even then I did it in baby steps, wearing a hat out to lunch with a good friend, or when traveling among strangers. As the writer Patricia Hampl admits, “Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste.”

Another exercise that can be very revealing is to make a collage of colors that make you smile. This is a quick collage, but very useful in rediscovering your authentic style. Cut out splashes of color from magazines, or use wallpaper samples, or try to replicate your favorite hue with colored pencils or crayons. Often the colors that please you look wonderful on you even if your color chart says they shouldn't! Colors you feel passionate about somehow manage to echo your smile. Don't shy away from bright colors because you've always thought they were too much, or too attention-grabbing. If those are the colors you love, then your Authentic Self is just as bright and fabulous as they are. It took me years to realize that gold was a color I should wear. I had ignored the fact that every time I put it on, I shined.

There are some simple questions to help you identify the external aspects of style that capture your authentic spirit. Are you wildly theatrical, or softly romantic? What patterns do you like? What textures? What fabrics? Do you have a favorite store or designer? Do you like outrageous jewelry, or small, delicate pieces? Do you enter a room quietly, but long to make a big entrance?

Okay, we're through with the warm-up collages-now you can pull out all the stops and have some fun. Create an envelope and start a collage celebrating your authentic style. Flip through catalogs and magazines and photo albums. Dress your Authentic Self in the colors and textures and style she craves. Maybe she looks sleek and elegant in black, or wildly festive in a South American print. Pick out her shoes, her jewelry, her purse. I had a fabulous time making my authentic style collage, and in the process I discovered my penchant for the glamorous clothing from the twenties, thirties, and forties. Nothing gives me as much pleasure as putting together an entire outfit-complete with hat, gloves, shoes, purse-and now I mix vintage accessories with contemporary pieces. It's become my signature style.

Now that we've created expressions of our Authentic Selves, I'm afraid it's time to get practical. We need to talk about balance, and the realities of your life, and how they will affect your authentic style. Because if you've found that your clothing of choice is sequined evening gowns and Manolo Blahnik shoes and you're a working mother of two young children, you're going to have to learn to compromise. Just a little bit. I had to compromise too. The fringe on my favorite black flapper-style dress just seems to get in the way when I'm at home writing and isn't appropriate garb for business meetings.

The essence of discovering your authentic style, which is the external, visual expression of your Authentic Self, is finding the point of balance between how you want to look and how you do look. You have to create harmony between the reality of your daily round and your visions of grandeur. If you love the details of fashion and grooming, you are betraying your Authentic Self by running around in dirty sweatpants, no matter how little time you have in the morning. On the other hand, it is not a betrayal if you find putting on makeup boring and can't bring yourself to do it, no matter how much you admire it on others.

Ultimately, your new ideal may be your “best viable” look. For example, I have a friend who looks great with her hair cut in an intricate layered look, but it took too much attention to style it each morning. Now she has a one-length, easy-to-manage style that looks almost as good. Even better, she manages to do that one well every day, whereas the other one was hit or miss on the days she didn't have time to devote to it.

Final collage: a realistic depiction of your authentic style. Start slowly, gathering images that project your Authentic Self at every point during the day. What you wear when you play with the kids. When you're at the office. When you're taking a walk. When you're having dinner out at a nice restaurant. When you're dancing. Even when you're sleeping. I think you'll find making this collage incredibly freeing. Within the limits of your real daily life, you are showing how fabulous you are. At every turn, in every moment. You'll see that your style is a portrait of your Authentic Self. You are truth, inside and out.

“Truth is the vital breath of Beauty,” the writer Grace Aguilar wrote in 1850, “Beauty is the outward form of Truth.”

© 1999 by Sarah Ban Breathnach

About the Author

SARAH BAN BREATHNACH'S (pronounced “Bon Brannock”) work celebrates quiet joys, simple pleasures and everyday epiphanies. The wisdom, warmth, compassion and disarming candor of her No. 1 New York Times bestsellers, SIMPLE ABUNDANCE: A DAYBOOK OF COMFORT AND JOY and SOMETHING MORE have made her a trusted voice to millions of women.