The Foundation of Personal Style
The Skills I Had to Relearn After Motherhood.
I’m going to give you one of the most helpful tools I’ve found for understanding your personal style.
Not in a “here are the five things you need to buy” kind of way. More like a way to actually see what’s happening when an outfit feels off, when your closet no longer feels like you, or when your style needs to evolve because your life has changed.
I call it The Colorist Style Triangle.
But before we get into the details of this framework, I want to give you the backstory, because this came from a season when I felt like I had completely lost my ability to get dressed. Which is wild, because if you know me, you know fashion has always been my thing. It’s what makes me feel most like myself and how I see the world.
When Getting Dressed Felt Easy
I’ve spent almost two decades learning how to see through fashion professionally: color, proportion, fit, fabric, trend cycles, production, why one version of something works and another one doesn’t.
I’ve worked with some incredible brands, training my eye and deepening my understanding of how to translate an idea into the real world and the mass market. How to make and style something that works across many different walks of life.
For a long time, I knew myself, my body, and the world around me so clearly. I loved having conversations through fashion. It felt natural and fun. I would be giddy to get up and get dressed for work, or even just to run errands, like a little kid playing dress-up or Cher in Clueless flipping through her closet. How do I want to feel today? Who am I going to show?
But then I became a mom.
My body changed (hello +40lbs and a c-section scar), my time changed (neither of my babies ever slept through the night before 12 months), my priorities changed (survival mode for 2 humans), and suddenly the skill I worked so hard on building in a career and for other people, had to become very personal.
I had to use that same eye on myself, and honestly, that part was harder because the old rules didn’t work the same way anymore. I was grieving an old version of myself while trying to recognize the new one. Talk about whiplash.
And it was more than just losing my closet, I wondered:
Who am I anymore?
What am I trying to say to the world?
I didn’t have the language or the eye to navigate this new chapter.
When the Old Formulas Stopped Working
There’s a very specific kind of disorientation that happens when your life changes but your closet hasn’t caught up yet. This also doesn’t have to just be postpartum.
There are so many seasons of life where we can feel a similar kind of disorientation: becoming a parent, becoming a dad, changing careers, aging, moving, grieving, healing, or simply realizing the version of yourself you used to dress for no longer fully fits.
You’re not starting from zero. You’re not suddenly unfashionable. But you don’t recognize yourself in the same formulas anymore.
Your outfits that used to work don’t work the same way. The shapes feel different. The proportions feel different. The amount of effort you can realistically give is different.
When I Lost My Map
At first, I blamed my body. None of my pre-baby clothes fit, which was honestly really depressing and felt so far off from where I was. I would look in the mirror and see someone I didn’t recognize and wondered if my body would ever be the same again.
Then, I thought the problem was my clothes. So at first, I tried to solve it through clothes that fit this new body better. New jeans, better basics, etc. But even when something technically fit, it still didn’t always feel like me. I could put on the right jeans, the right silhouette, the right “flattering” piece, and still feel disconnected.
And here’s the thing, I was trying to dress a changed body with an old version of myself. I was trying to bring my old fashion language into a life that had completely shifted.
Then, I thought the problem was me. After that “buying new things” phase, I completely leaned my fashion into motherhood and wore what was comfortable: think activewear and oversized T-shirts. These obviously functioned and were comfortable, but I had completely lost myself and my intent in getting dressed.
The problem was I wasn’t looking at the whole picture. My outer world knowledge was always there. I could still see what was current, what felt dated, what proportions were shifting, what colors worked together, and why one outfit felt more intentional than another. But knowing what worked in fashion was not the same as knowing what worked on me, in this body, in this life, in this season.
The real shift happened when I stopped attacking each piece separately. How does my body, my fashion eye, and my new identity work together?
The Tool That Helped Me See Again
Through self-discovery and observation, I started to notice that the people who still look like themselves through different seasons of life intuitively understand three things, even when everything around them is changing:
