The Highs and Lows of Seasonal Dressing and Instagram 'Themes' | 9th Day of Christmas
Jumper- & Other Stories
Skirt- Miss Selfridge (Old-similar here)
Boots- & Other Stories (I bought these in store for 70% off but they’re full price on the website, so definitely check your local store before making an online purchase)
Seasonal dressing is something I’ve got into this year, specifically this autumn. And, no, by seasonal dressing I don’t mean wearing a coat in winter and dresses in summer (i.e. dressing according to the weather), I mean wearing colours, prints, textures and shapes that are specific to whatever season it is.
I think I got into it this autumn because the high street came up with such a wide array of those beautiful autumnal colours, you know, the rusts, the camels, the chocolate browns. Speaking of chocolate brown, I think it was THAT Topshop satin skirt that really made me step into the ballpark of seasonal dressing. I became obsessed with the colour of it and most of my purchases were shaped by looking for colours that would look best with it, and most of them happened to be part of autumn fashion’s colour palette.
In some ways, sticking to specific colours worked really well for me. It ensured that my shopping was focussed and that I thought a lot more about things would fit into my wardrobe, meaning I made less impulse purchases. It also made it easier to get dressed in the morning as most of the clothes at the front of my wardrobe were part of the same colour palette, so looked good paired together. I’d actually kind of started building my own capsule wardrobe based on each season.
However, after about a month or two of almost exclusively wearing shades of brown and red, the novelty wore off a little bit and I began to feel a little bit trapped by my own wardrobe, the one thing that is usually super freeing for me. So I was glad when December hit and the season’s colours changed to red, green and anything a little bit sparkly. I mean… I was glad for the first week. Then I realised that I don’t own that many red, green or sparkly things (which is why I’m wearing this & Other Stories jumper in these photos for the 100th time in the past fortnight). So, again, I'm feeling a little bit trapped.
I can hear you shouting at your screen, ‘Why, just wear some different colours then! Nobody’s holding a knife to your throat!’ But unfortunately, logical reader, my Instagram grid sometimes makes it feels like they are. The idea of a themed Instagram grid is something that I’ve never really been very good at, mostly because I don’t always use the same camera, I live in a different place during the week than I do on the weekend, I generally wear lots of different colours and I’m not very good at editing.
So I kind of just accepted that an Instagram theme wasn’t for me. But when I started to dress seasonally during Autumn, an Instagram theme started to develop through my outfit shots. Seemingly because of this, my following grew and I was really happy with the appearance of my Instagram for the first time ever! But whilst I was happy with how my social media looked, I still wanted to change the way I was dressing. So I had/have a few choices, 1. abandon the theme, dress how I want and share it to Instagram, 2. stick with the theme and only wear ‘seasonal’ clothes, 3. stick with the theme and only post photos when your clothes work for it.
I know this may seem trivial to many but how I dress and Instagram are two of the main ways in which I use my creativity so they’re important to me! But at the end of the day, I think my personal style is a better and more important creative outlet for me than my Instagram so, despite the fact that all of these choices require some sort of compromise, the first one seems like the best option for me.
After getting into these habits of seasonal dressing and having an Instagram ‘theme’, I’m finding them kind of difficult to step out of. But I think once we get into the months of January-March when the only way I could dress seasonally is by wearing black and grey all the time to match the weather, it will be a lot easier and I can make the most of all the textures and colours in my wardrobe.
Although dressing in this way has been testing at times, it’s got me thinking more and more about a capsule wardrobe. I love the way The Anna Edit does her capsule wardrobes seasonally and it seems to be an environmentally and purse-friendly way of making getting dressed easier. But, in all honesty, I think I just love buying new clothes and coming up with new outfits all the time too much to have any sense of uniform so maybe this isn’t the best option for me after all!
Who knows? Maybe after reading Anna’s new book that comes out in January, I’ll feel even more confident about the idea of a capsule wardrobe. But right now, as you can probably tell, my thoughts on seasonal dressing, capsule wardrobes and Instagram ‘themes’ are seriously conflicting. I’d love to know how you feel about these things in the comments or on social media so please do let me know! Until then, you probably will see me wearing mostly red and glitter until New Years Day, that is when I’m not exclusively wearing pyjamas.
