Style Workshop Part 4: Define

Show Notes

• 
  Style Camp Part 1: In this episode, Sarai and Haley introduce you to the new Style Workshop.


• 
  Style Camp Part 2: In this episode, you investigate your identity through your history, culture, values, and body.


• 
  Style Camp Part 3: In this episode, you examine the differences and similarities between the clothes you actually wear the most and the ones you LOVE to wear the most.


• 
  Click here to download the Sewing Camp Toolkit. It includes our sewing spaces freebie, exercises to help you upgrade your space, and a preview of our Style Workshop.


• 
  The new Style Workshop is here! It’s free for Seamwork members or just $10 without a membership.


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 1: Explore. The first episode of Space Camp.


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 2: Strategize. The second episode of Space Camp


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 3: Audit. The third episode of Space Camp.


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 4: Organize. The final episode of Space Camp.


• 
  Podcast listeners get half off an unlimited Seamwork membership when you use this link, plus you get to keep that price as long as you’re a member!


• Tell us your idea for the next icebreakers for makers!

Podcast Transcript

Sarai
I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.

Sarai
Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, where we share practical ideas for building a creative process so you can sew with intention and joy.

And welcome to the second half of Seamwork Radio Summer Sewing Camp 2023. So over the last four weeks, we've been embarking on a journey to together to examine our personal style. And in today's episode, we're going to be focusing on the last section of the Style Workshop, which is Define.

We're going to be creating our core style words. So it's going to be really fun. And if that sounds like fun to you, too, or you just want to learn some great ideas for honing your personal style, then stay tuned for this episode.

So, as we've said, discovering your personal style can be a challenging and intimidating process, and that's why we developed our new Style Workshop, which launched on July 12. But we also have a live version coming up on August 4, and we'll tell you a little bit more about that today. And this 90-minute Style Workshop is going to help you to pinpoint your style so you can fully express yourself through the clothing you make. And today we're going to be talking about that and also how you can use it after you've done the Style Workshop.

And as part of Seamwork’s Summer Camp during the month of July, we're going to be doing a condensed version of this class together. So we're in the final stretch of that, and you can get a few of the Style Workshop exercises by downloading the Seymour Summer Camp toolkit.

But be sure to check out the complete Style Workshop if you want to go through the entire thing with us, which I highly recommend. It's really fun.

Okay, so today we're focusing, as I said, on the last step, and that is to define your personal style in just a few words. So you'll take all of this work that you've done and distill it into just a few core style words, which sounds really easy, but it's actually not. It's difficult for a lot of people, I think.

Haley
I agree. I think that a lot of people really struggle to create a style statement. I'm including myself in those numbers. I think that it can be really hard to kind of distill it down into just a few words.

Sarai, do you have any tips for coming up with your style statement?

Sarai
Well, I think the workshop really breaks this down into a process that you can follow, which I think is important. I think it's really helpful to have a process to go through. Not because it's the perfect or only way to do it, but because when you have a process, I think it eliminates a lot of the questioning that you go through and second guessing of yourself that you go through and helps you to just come to a final decision about it.

And then you can always change it later. You can always adapt it. I know that for me, I've gone through this process many times and it changes a little bit every time, and now it's different from what it was when I first did this, which is probably a good ten years ago.

So I think just being open to that evolution, going through the process, and knowing that it might not be perfect, but it's still going to be really helpful no matter what.

Haley
Yeah, I think that's such an important sentiment to focus on as you do this, that it may not be perfect, but that doesn't mean that it's not useful. I would definitely encourage people to focus on that if they're feeling like their statement is lacking or if it's not good enough or not quite right. There's nothing that says you can't update this as you go along.

Why do you think it's important to distill your style down to a single statement like this?

Sarai
I don't think it's necessary. I don't think you have to do this. I think it's helpful for a lot of people, though.

And I think the reason it's helpful is that it kind of gives you a North Star. It gives you a little bit of a place to land when you're having difficulty making decisions or when you're not quite sure what direction to go.

I think having something very simple and very memorable that you can keep in mind is extremely helpful. I think it goes for a lot of things. Just having something that you can keep in mind that's very short and memorable can be really helpful. So I think when it comes to style, this is true.

I think it works best when you have some kind of visual to go with it as well, which we talk about in the Style Workshop. Putting those two things together. A mood board that expresses those words along with the words themselves helps to kind of cement them in your mind and give you a very clear direction. Because I think that's what it's all about is just giving yourself some kind of direction so that you don't feel overwhelmed by choice and you're not floundering.

Which I think is one of the difficulties with sewing because you just have so many choices to make.

Haley
Do you think that there's any particular component that makes a good style statement?

Sarai
I think it's really unique to the individual. I think you can have one that seems maybe from the outside, to be kind of generic, but if it makes sense to you and it evokes the mood that you want it to, it doesn't really matter.

I think what makes a good style statement or set of style words is that it calls up a clear picture in your mind. It doesn't have to make sense to anybody else.

In Design Your Wardrobe, for example, we've had some really fun concepts that people have come up with for their wardrobes. And some of them might be difficult to understand from the outside, but it makes sense to that person, and it recalls an image to their mind that they can stick with. So I think that's the most important thing—that it feels right to you.

Haley
I love that. So now I need to know what is your style statement style words?

Sarai
So the ones that I have right now after going through this exercise are simple, romantic, and country.

Those are my three words which you can think of as a statement together. Simple, romantic, country. Because country can be a noun, I guess, or it is a noun. You can consider it like a phrase, or you can look at the words individually and that might conjure up different things to different people.

Like, for some people, country might be big belt buckles and cowboy boots. But for me, what I mean by that, I'm thinking more of like countryside all over the world, what that looks like just something very natural and beautiful, but also evoking the need for utility that we've talked about throughout these episodes. Because I live in the country and so I do need that utility in my life.

Simple for a lot of people, could be like no frills, which is for me, what I'm trying to evoke more is like a simplicity of line and also color, having a very solid base of color to draw from.

And then romantic. I really like romantic details, romantic colors, a certain softness. So those things evoke a certain picture in my mind.

And it might be different for other people, but it doesn't matter what it is for anybody else. It only matters what it conjures up for me and what it means to me. And I think that's why it's really helpful to have a mood board to go with your style words, which, after you do the Style Workshop, one of your next steps is creating some kind of visual to go with it for you. So those are mine.

What about you? Do you have your style words?

Haley
Yeah, I have three as well. My style words are soft, intentional, and ease.

So I think I have one of those ones that could mean a whole lot of things to different people.

But what I mean by those words is soft. When I think of soft, I think of like, I don't know, that to me embodies the cuteness, the femininity that I like in my clothing. I didn't feel like using a word like cute or pretty because that wasn't quite it. It was just this very subtle femininity. That's what soft embodies within my style statement.

Intentional. This is where my love of details comes into play. Also a little bit of the function aspect of everything.

And ease is how it is all put together. I want everything to be put together in this way that never feels like overdone or stuffy, just like effortless. But I like the word ease better than effortless, because we just did a Style Workshop about our style. It wasn't like it was effortless. It was effort. I feel like that undermines all the thought you put in for me, it undermines the thought I put into it. Ease embodies it more.

Sarai
I like the word ease. I have a friend who that's one of his keywords that he tries to always keep in mind just make it easy. The tendency to overcomplicate things, including clothing. I think I think those are great. They're definitely very Haley. I think it really fits you.

Haley
Thanks.

Sarai
So those are the words that we came up with. If you go through the Style Workshop, we'll help you to come up with your own, which is kind of a process of honing in on all of the exercises that we did previously in the Style Workshop. So we've done a few of them in these episodes.

We haven't done all of them, but if you go through the workshop, you can do them. And again, it's free for Seamwork members if you'd like to do it, and it's very affordable if you're not a Seamwork member. It's only $10 if you'd like to go through that.

So as a final exercise, once you have your words, your kind of homework after the Style Workshop is to create a visual mood board that represents your core style. So that's kind of the next step afterwards.

But there are also a lot of other steps that you can take once you've done that, where you can take these style words and really use them in a lot of different ways to help you with crafting your own wardrobe. So I want to talk a little bit about what some of those steps might be if you want to continue after you've got your style words in mind.

So, number one, you can take Design Your Wardrobe. I think that is a great next step if you're really serious about designing a wardrobe that you'll actually wear and that reflects who you are. Many of you are already familiar with Design Your Wardrobe. It's one of our most popular programs, and basically, it helps you to design and craft a plan for your wardrobe for the next season. So you get a bunch of pieces designed that go together and that work together and that reflect the style that you want.

You'll start with your core, style words as a beginning point for that and walk away with, at the end, a sewing queue full of projects that you'll love to wear, which is really cool. This is a very, very popular program.

We do it twice a year. Many of you have already done it. Many of you have done it multiple times. And it's very fun because we do it all together as a group. So there are thousands of people doing it together and you get to see what other people make. We have live events that go with it. It's really cool. And again, it's free for Seamwork members. So that's one thing you can do with it.

Another thing you can do is use your style words to audit your closet.

So if a garment doesn't fit into your core style, you can figure out what you can do with it. Maybe it's refashion it, maybe you need to donate it. Maybe you need to just play around with different ways to style it and see how it might fit into your core style now that you have a better understanding of what that is.

I think going through all of the exercises beforehand will really help you with this part of it, because I think along with the words and along with the mood board, that really sets a picture in your mind of what's important to you. And I think all of the exercises previously kind of feed into that and help you to make those decisions as well. So I think that's really helpful as you're going through your closet. If you want to do a closet clean out.

Another thing you can do is keep a picture of your mood board and your style words on your phone so you can reference it when you go fabric shopping or even when you go clothes shopping.

It's a really good way to check yourself against buying things that you won't actually wear or you won't actually use. I find that extremely helpful because one of my words is simple and what that means to me is, again, like I said before, it doesn't mean no frills or nothing interesting about it. It just means maybe some basic colors, things that will go with other things, a lot of versatility.

And so having that in mind really helps me to check myself against buying fabrics that are really pretty and have bright prints on them that I really like on the bolt, but don't actually reflect my style and what I want to wear.

I think that's a problem that's common to so many of us. There's so many pretty fabrics out there and you can't buy them all. So having an idea of what your particular style is, is a great lens to help you narrow it down.

Another thing you can do is hang up your mood board and your style words where you get dressed in the morning so you can put it into practice when you style your clothes every day. So if you have clothing that you don't wear as often, maybe you'll pull it out of the closet and see, does this fit into my style? And why? Or why not? And maybe find new ways to wear it.

It's so cool when you find something that you haven't worn in years and find a new way to wear it that actually feels really good. It's a really cool experience, especially if it's something you made that's especially fun.

And finally, the last thing you can do is revisit this process every now and again. So Design Your Wardrobe as a program is meant to be done every six months or so. So you're kind of redesigning a new wardrobe for that season. And if you do this process alongside it, or you do it before you do Design Your Wardrobe, you get to see how your words grow and change.

So these exercises really work best when you do them over and over. So you learn to cultivate your style more easily. And also, I think your style is going to change over time. Like, you're going to evolve as a person. You're going to have life changes. You're going to be incorporating new trends that you see and seeing what works for you, what doesn't work for you. So you'll notice that all those things change you over time, and that's totally normal.

And so having this core style doesn't mean that it's your one style for life, and it has to be that way for life.

You will notice that there's a thread that runs through it, and it's really interesting to see what that thread is, but that doesn't mean that it is something that is immovable and that doesn't change.

So I think it works best if you every once in a while just revisit this. Maybe you only revisit some of the exercises, maybe you do all of them, but see what's changed for you and what's come up for you over time.

Haley
Wow, I've just really enjoyed working through this entire process. I think it's been so fun. And if you want to go through this process in its entirety, I definitely recommend checking out the Style Workshop, which launched on July 12. You can it at seamwork.com/go/style-workshop, and we'll link that in the show notes as well.

And just to recap, this is a hands on workshop where we're going to dig deep with exercises and worksheets that help you explore who you are and what you want to say through your clothing and what you want to make. When you take the Style Workshop, you're going to get three main things. You're going to get your core style words, which we discussed today.

You're going to get those three tools to take with you, and then you're going to get a really firm direction for you to move forward and create a core style mood board. That's just going to be so helpful. And such a great tool for you as you move forward in your sewing and dressing and just living your life and looking like you. Looking so fly. That's all we want.

Members can download the Style Workshop toolkit right now if they go to Seamwork.com/downloads.

And during the months of June and July, you can visit the Sewing Camp website, which we'll link in the show notes and download the PDF to get a few of the worksheets just as a fun little teaser.

If you'd like to join Seamwork and become part of our private community, plus get access to hundreds of sewing patterns, dozens of sewalong classes, podcast listeners get 50% off, and that is a lifetime discount when you join at seamwork.com/go/podcast50.

Sarai
Yeah. And you can take advantage of that if you want to join us for Design Your Wardrobe, which is coming up real soon now. It is so fun. I highly encourage you to join us. It's a blast. And to get started, you can also join us for the live version of the Style Workshop, which is going to be on August 4. And if you're a Seamwork member, all of that is free. So it's all free with your membership. All right, that does it for us this week. I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.