Who Are Your Style Influences?
Amelia Earhart, Paintings, Gold Jewelry
Today is our first Big Undies Open Thread!
On Wednesday I’m going to send out our first Style Questionnaire. It will feature someone I’ve admired and respected for a long time answering questions about their closet. This person is an influential voice in the fashion and sustainability world and I am beyond excited to share her answers with you.
My goal with these interviews is to hear from not only fashion luminaries we know and love, but also people with jobs and careers and hobbies that are hard on clothes or have specific clothing requirements. Can we get a plumber style questionnaire?? What about one from someone who cooks? Who else do you want to hear from?
In anticipation of Wednesday’s interview I want to know: Who are your style influences right now? Who are you googling (or Instagram stalking) when you need some inspiration? Are there people in your everyday life whose styles you admire? Historical figures? Inanimate objects? I don’t know! Tell me in the comments!
Here are a few of mine:
Marquis has incredible style—great colors, aspirational layering—and also their “get dressed with me” dancing videos bring me SO. MUCH. JOY. They also remind me that part of the fun of clothes can be movement.
Amelia Earhart
I think Amelia Earhart may have been forced into her cute, slightly masculine style due to the fact that no one was making flying clothes for women (although she tried!!) but I love the result. She looks cute and comfortable and no nonsense in a very appealing (and perhaps slightly gay) way.
I don’t know how it came to be that so many people I follow are suddenly and simultaneously obsessed with jewelry, but here we are. I love Okay Fine’s color choices and her obsession with tiny things that move and I love the jangling of the charms and I especially love her voice overs. One of my goals post-style challenge was to get better at accessorizing, and when it comes to jewelry Okay Fine is my north star.
I’m obsessed with Pooja’s style and her dedication to thrifting and secondhand. Her takes on wearing skirts, Jacob Elordi’s accessorizing, and Pinterest are very compelling to me. Watching her TikToks always leave me with a fresh perspective.
Matty Matheson
Matty’s boisterous charm could probably sell me anything, but I love his worn in workwear looks. His tattoos and belly only add fuel to the charisma fire, in my opinion. I’m super curious about his line of clothes—has anyone tried them??
Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings
Whenever I need color inspiration I look at Helen Frankenthaler painitngs. Even on a computer screen, they’re beautiful and the abstract expressionist shapes and lines and tones always give me something to think about. Who wouldn’t want to walk around looking like a painting?
I’m so inspired by Emma’s thoughts and writings on Frump:
The way of Frump is not in terms of attractiveness but in terms of freedom, comfort, and self-delight. It can be observed in objects, structures, and people of any sex, but because it was born of the machine of patriarchy and male domination as a way to shame the feminine for failing to subscribe to SAW values, it is a sensibility most fundamentally of and for the feminine.
(P.S. — Don’t miss Emma’s new novel Housemates out tomorrow! I’m dying to read it. She’ll also be on the
podcast later this week!)
I had a big revelation on this recently and decided to completely overhaul my entire sense of style, because I looked at my clothes and they were cute and nice etc but didn't actually make me feel like myself. My new key questions when picking something are "do I think this is cool?" and "does it make me feel like me?" and that's led me to a defining style statement, which is as follows. I don't necessarily want people to look at me and think I'm a witch, because that feels like it requires something a bit too costumey, but I want to look in a way where if someone leaned over and whispered to you, "Hey, did you know she's a witch?", you'd look at me and think "Oh, that makes sense".
This has led to my obsession with the brand Disturbia (they do not go high enough in plus sizes let's be real, but at least they have the decency to not do a separate less-interesting Plus section and instead make everything available as high as they go), @luanna on instagram, and searching "goth cottagecore" on Pinterest. Also 95% of all-black items fit this style which makes it easy.
I’ve been wearing a lot of black and white shirtdresses with graphic patterns (mostly stripes and chevrons). I had a weird realization that I’m dressing like Moira Rose if she was really into second wave ska.