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If you follow any fashion accounts on social media, your feed is likely filled with images and videos of the latest and greatest trends that you need to add to your wardrobe ASAP. When it comes to defining and owning your personal style, all of that #content can distract you from discovering what you actually want to wear.
Who What Wear’s Ana Escalante explored what it means to truly have an individual sense of style in the digital age. Escalante spoke with influencers and content creators Heather Hurst and Jalil Johnson to learn how they define their personal style and cut out the social media noise.
For the latest episode of Who What Wear With Hillary Kerr, Who What Wear’s editor in chief, Kat Collings, sat down with Escalante to discuss common personal style themes, the creators who make meaningful fashion content, and more. Plus, Escalante sat down with Hurst and Johnson to discuss what personal style means to them.
For excerpts from these conversations, scroll below.
Ana Escalante: Personal style is so limitless, but if you could describe it in any way, how would you?
Jalil Johnson: Allison Bornstein—who is fantastic and amazing—she actually did a three-word on me, which I was like, Oh my gosh, Allison, thank you. Thank you.
Her three words that she used for me [were] eclectic, joyful, and Americana.
I do see myself as an eclectic dresser because I’m pulling from so many different areas and references. I’m mixing it together.
And joyful: I love getting dressed up. Then Americana, I am a history minor.
I have been a history lover from the day I was born, and my particular interest has been in American history.
We have a very fraught history, as we’re seeing day by day, but this country in itself is eclectic.
It’s a hodgepodge of so many identities, and that’s also what makes its fashion really interesting and amazing.
Kat Collings: After speaking with several people who have a deep understanding of their personal style, were there any commonalities across the board, attitudes, or perspectives that stood out as like, Oh, this is something that people who have very developed personal style agree on?
Ana Escalante: I think just being unafraid to experiment—whether that comes to shopping in your closet or trying out trends that you wouldn’t necessarily imagine you first gravitate toward.
As much as we’d wish that we could buy all of the right things and wear all of these items a certain way, the reality of the fact is that personal style comes not only with time but so much with trial and error.
You don’t really know what you like until you wear what you hate.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Kat Collings: Are there any stylists, influencers, content creators who you think are making meaningful fashion content?
Ana Escalante: Immediately, one of the first follows that comes to mind is Jenny Walton as someone who really just knows her gusto and her taste and sticks to that.
I think that’s so admirable. The incredible Rachel Tashjian Wise of The Washington Post is just absolutely so thoughtful when it comes to wardrobe curation and just even the fashion industry in general and rethinking those boundaries.
I think there’s overall so many creators and editors who have really forced us to reckon with what we think is cool and trendy or what we look “good in” versus what serves a purpose to us.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Ana Escalante: Sometimes it can feel quite easy to fall into this style fatigue. What do you do to lift yourself out of that?
Heather Hurst: I show a lot of boring outfits. I’ll show a lot of outfits that I’ve worn before—which shouldn’t be boring—but, alas, in our dopamine-driven algorithm, it is.
A lot of people were saying, like, “Oh, I need to see a recap video of what you wore on vacation.” I was like, “I’m going to show it to you, and you’re going to be like, ‘That’s lame and stinky. She wore the same thing every single day: navy blue sweater and a skirt.'” That’s real life.
I think that we’ve sort of been sold this fantasy that we can optimize our closet into something that just grows legs and works for us. That if you carry it the right way and if you buy the right things, then you will have effortless style for life.
I think that it’s easier to get dressed if you have curated a good wardrobe. It’s easier to get dressed if you have things that fit you well and things you like, but it’s not going to work for you your whole life.
I think style fatigue is natural, and I think that is something that should be embraced. The easiest tidbit that I would want people to take away from anything that I say about style is that it’s meant to be enjoyed.
It’s not a project to be completed or something that needs to be packaged to be consumed by other people or something to be deemed worthy by the powers that be. It just kind of is.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Next, check out our editor sharing 2024 spring/summer denim trends.