Leena Norms: How I Half-Arse Personal Style

This week on the blog, we're publishing a guest entry on personal style by Leena Norms, author of Half-Arse Human and Bargain Bin Rom Com!

I don’t know about you, but when you’re faced with a big choice of beautiful clothes, sometimes the decision paralysis can set in – yes, it’s all lovely, but which ones should I add to my wardrobe? Which ones belong in my clothes collection? Which ones are ‘me’?

Something I find daunting about the concept of personal style is the idea that I don’t actually know myself. What if I’m not failing at item selection, or refining my taste, or if it’s not simply because I haven’t looked hard enough for the perfect item? What if I don’t really know who I am? What if, underneath all the clothes, there is no one to know?

The question of whether or not we are knowable is one I’ll leave to the philosophers, but from my experience, my ‘self ’ has always been a slippery thing. It won’t be nailed to the floor, and trying to pin it down only results in tears and torn skin. I’ve accepted that I change all the time and thus being my own stylist is a thankless task.

I wondered, as I was working on my book Half-Arse Human, I might get away with applying my half-arse principles to the concept of personal style… what if it wasn’t my wardrobe that needed a makeover, but my mindset?

Now that I thought about it, my most positive memories with clothes growing up come from those heightened moments of playing pretend. The dress-up box at a friend’s house, that obnoxious skirt loaned from the theatre department for a production of a school play (probably sewn by someone else’s longsuffering mum), the Halloween costume held together by safety pins and parental prayers.

In those moments no one was wondering if what I was wearing was practical or if it ‘worked’ for me. The remit was clear: I was wearing what I was wearing so I could better resemble a queen/cow/muddy peasant/toothpaste tube (yes, I went to a Halloween party as a toothpaste tube, it was the only way my classmates’ pagan party would wash with my religious parents). I wasn’t tricking anyone. The outfit didn’t promise authenticity, it promised play. And play I did.

Once I started to think of myself as more of a costume mistress, things started falling into place.

The memories that stick out to you from your childhood might not be the same. The moments where you might have felt most harmonious with your clothes might have been when you were walking towards a stadium wrapped in a striped scarf, feeling the fizzing power of wearing colours that meant you belonged. It might have been while wearing something handmade just for you, and feeling the rush of knowing that there was only one item like that in the world. Maybe it was donning something that made it possible for you to dance, or swim, or climb. Whatever it was, it’s worth giving that memory a good shake and seeing what lessons fall out. It might shift your hunch on how to really reach that feeling of harmony that the pursuit of personal style promises, but rarely delivers.

Particularly within recent online culture, our demands for sincerity have reached undeliverable heights: we want our musicians to sing about their own lives so we can dissect their relationships; we want to know our favourite comedians’ politics; we want to know what’s in our favourite actor’s handbag. We inspect celebrities’ paparazzi pictures hoping that the clothes they (supposedly) choose for themselves will help us learn more about who they really are, ‘off-stage’. There is so much that matters about the way we all communicate, I just don’t think that personal style is one of the most important ones. It’s not worth being arsed about. It’s almost as though we’ve started believing that wearing something that doesn’t reflect our personality equates to being disingenuous – that our clothes can’t represent anything but our own essence.

I refuse to accept that the age of the dress-up box is over. The most truthful thing about me is that I like to mess about. I like to play.

My suggestion is, instead of trying to guess which aspects of our personality or temperament are here to stay, we should think about what else could inspire some consistency in our wardrobes. Whilst favourite colours and lovers and postcodes have shifted, two passions have remained constant so far in my life: Helena Bonham Carter and The Sound of Music.

I realised that some of the longest-serving items amongst my monster pile of clothes weren’t the ones that fit me the best, or were in my ‘colour palette ’ – but the ones that made me feel like I might be minutes from speeding through the Austrian mountains on a bike pursued by seven singing children, or was about to spend my evening pulling pints in a steampunk pub surrounded by revolutionaries. Perhaps you have your own equivalent? Maybe you want to always look like you’ve just fallen out of a Frida Kahlo painting, or a Beyoncé video, or been rolled out of William Morris’ curtains.

It’s not by accident that the art we love conjures clear aesthetics in our minds – they’ve been designed that way. The work has been done for us. Painters have palettes, films have costume designers, music artists have creative teams. Streamline your stress by making a list of visual worlds you’ve always felt drawn to, despite the trends coming and going, and choose your clothes accordingly. I promise harmony will follow, no maths equation required.

So, when you’re faced with a big decision on what to add to your basket, don’t follow rules, follow the joy – it lasts longer. The aim is to choose items you’ll love for a long time. A sustainable wardrobe is also about choosing true clothes-crushes that will turn into longterm love affairs, even if they don’t make sense to anyone else. If you want my half-arse advice, don’t bother with the pressures of personal style – after all, who wants a perfect curated capsule wardrobe when they could have a dress-up box?!

Check out Leena’s book, Half-Arse Human, here!