Style: Do your clothes reflect your personality?

Over the past few years, I've found myself stumbling on articles and books saying personal style reflects who we are. It's got me thinking, do clothes really reflect our personality?

By Rosa Fairfield

Photographs by David Smith

After hearing, 'bright colours mean someone wants attention' one too many times, my first thought was no absolutely not. I do wear bright colours and post pictures of myself on the internet but I'm also kind of shy and feel uncomfortable being the centre of attention. But, I think that's the thing, everything we do does say something about us but there's no one size fits all. People are different and we have different motives for our actions.

Someone might be wearing a particular designer label because they care about status. Someone else might be wearing it because they're interested in fashion. Another person might be dressing that way to express their creativity. Someone might like it because they think the clothes are good quality and last longer. Okay, enough with the examples, you get my point.

We're all different and can have different reasons for doing things.

It reminds of an article that says clothes are armour. So, some people might wear an outfit to express their individuality but some people might do it to give themselves confidence to face the world. 

I think that's where first impressions fall down. It's thought that we make first impressions from seeing someone for one tenth of a second. We make instant judgements about people based on how they present themselves but we don't really know enough about them to properly interpret their actions.

First impressions are wrong most of the time because they come from stereotypes, not from knowing someone. So, that person who you think is innocent, because they're dressed younger than their age, might actually be a serial killer. Okay, so that was a pretty extreme example but you get my drift. 

People always seem to be saying they were tricked into toxic relationships because the person looked kind and friendly. But, how much of that is due to the person manipulating the situation or someone having a stereotype of what a person should be like? Films are a lot easier to interpret because the villain always wears black. Yep, real life is rarely that straightforward. 

I think it's also about knowing yourself because our clothing choices can be subconscious and it's easy for our own opinions to be influenced by what others think of us. So, it can be nice to check in with yourself and figure that out too. Of course, you could be wrong. You might not realise or want to deny a certain part of your personality. That's an option too.

But, that's where I stand on that one. I think clothing choices do mean something but you really have to know someone and yourself to get what that means. From my experience, I've had a fair few people misinterpret my motives either for better or for worse. But, hey, I could be wrong, I'm not a psychologist. Not that science is definite anyway, new things are always being discovered that disprove the things we once believed. 

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