I've been blogging for 6 years, at times more regularly than now. When I started I posted lots of outfit photos, as that was what my blog was about mostly - a sort of fashion diary. I used to spend an afternoon every few weeks just creating outfits with my clothes, trying out things, and if I liked them I'd take a picture. Basically a styling exercise. The act of taking a picture helped me remember an outfit, and posting it to my blog enabled me to quickly search through the outfit tag whenever I didn't know what to wear.

After a few years of blogging, at the end of 2011, I became a little obsessed with the idea of a wardrobe planning computer program or app, but back then none existed. I wanted to have a way to scan through my wardrobe while I was shopping, to make sure I didn't buy things that don't work with anything. So I made a private tumblr, uploaded pictures of my clothes and tagged them, so I could search by color, style, season etc. I got some use out of that, but I soon lost motivation to photograph and upload every single thing I owned.

When I started blogging in 2009, during my exchange year in the states, my style was a bit "unfocused" I think. I just wore stuff I liked, things that made me feel a certain way, but I didn't really think much about "outfit building", which isn't surprising, as I was just 17. Only through documenting what I wore and writing about it on a blog (a very small one) did I become more aware of what kind of feeling I wanted my clothes to evoke in me. I started wearing dresses, lots of them! I fell in love with vintage fashion, and because I'd see vintage clothes (and new ones too) on other blogs that I could never own (one of a kind or way too expensive), I started sewing.

Sewing vintage inspired clothes (mostly late 50s and early 60s, Mad Men era I guess :)) taught me so much about sewing and fashion (like how fit is important! And that certain store bought clothes don't fit right on my short-waisted torso). I loved the dress-up aspect of it and learning about fashion history, I liked that the clothes made me feel feminine and grown-up, but in an elegant way and not super sexualized. I guess from the age of 18 to 21 that was what I wanted from my clothes, that's how I wanted to feel and be perceived. Of course I also wore "normal" modern clothes, I wasn't at all super strict about always dressing vintage. I wore lots of jeans and tank tops, but the outfits I carefully picked out and loved the most all had a vintage vibe to them I think.

But most of the dresses I sewed during that time are not very comfortable, as they all had tight waists. I suffer from chronic back pain, and many of the dresses would make the pain worse. I also stopped wearing high heels regularly, because they too worsened the pain.

In 2013, a few months before my 22nd birthday I finally got my hair dyed white, after thinking about it for about 2 years. This changed a lot for me, fashion wise! I went from having dark brown hair to this very flashy haircolor (white, light blonde, pastel pink and purple), and suddenly many colors in my wardrobe just didn't work on me anymore. I think this started my "style transition". Shortly after that I went through a break-up, sold or got rid of many of my clothes and a few months later I went from working at a jewelry store to studying an art foundation course, where practicality became important (I didn't want my dresses to get dirty). So basically a whole lot changed for me.

During the entire art foundation course I felt kind of lost fashion wise. I was suffering from "I have a closet and many boxes full of clothes and nothing to wear" - luxury problem I know. I started sewing things that were very different from the vintage style dresses I used to make (like the Armor Jacket). I stopped documenting my outfits (well, really that started in late 2012), mostly because I didn't think they were that special. I introduced new things into my wardrobe, like black (I rarely wore black when I had dark hair), leggings, crop tops, jersey and other modern fabrics, and in general more casual, modern items. I still loved vintage fashion, but I didn't necessarily want to dress like that all the time anymore, and it started to feel like a costume, something I hadn't felt until then.

My old clothes also felt too "nice". I had started to become more secure myself, and more vocal about how I wanted and didn't want to be treated by others. I wanted to be taken seriously, something I have always wanted, but I suddenly felt like my clothes were holding me back from that, they felt too "pretty", too cutesy and too harmless. That was not how I wanted to feel about myself, I wanted to channel a different kind of energy or attitude through my clothes. I still like cute, and happy and pretty, I just needed a different "dosage" of those things.

Well, I finally went about rethinking how I want to dress. I loosely followed tips from Into Mind, a blog about wardrobe building, to create a "style concept". She has a ton of articles, and reading through them really motivated me to do this. It is work, in a way, it takes time but it was so worth it. I think my concept is self explanatory, if you want to make one of these for yourself, definitely check out Into Mind! It's basically collecting inspiration and then culling every unnecessary image and organizing/analyzing the rest.

Most of the "basic pieces" are things I own and love to wear. I think there's still a lot of vintage influence in there, but it's split up, it might be just a silhouette or a color combination or material. I think I've also shifted more towards the late 60s early 70s for inspiration, and I'm pretty sure Megan Draper has a lot to do with that :)

I've already sewn an elastic harness (to hold my phone while I work, because I often have no pockets), and I plan on experimenting with making jewerly. I've also finally found a wardrobe app for my iPhone that I love! I might post about it soon. I've just finished my first semesterproject, so I have time to update the blog a bit and share stuff from school (like a bag/backpack I made!).

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