February 23, 2026 • 49 mins
Personal style might look like a surface-level thing, but it’s actually one of the most psychologically loaded choices we make every day. What we wear shapes how we’re perceived, how we feel, and sometimes even what parts of ourselves we give permission to show. In this episode, we’re unpacking the psychology of personal style - why we’re drawn to what we’re drawn to, what shapes our wardrobe, and how to find a style that actually feels like you.
We explore:
• How upbringing and early experiences shape what feels safe, flattering, or off-limits
• The role of the Big Five personality traits
• Style as identity signalling
• How clothes shift out mood
• The role of trends and fast fashion in conformity
• How to rediscover your personal style
If you’ve ever felt like your wardrobe doesn’t quite match who you are, this episode is for you.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:25):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here, back for another episode
as we, of course break down the psychology of our twenties.
I'm going to give a little heads up to you
guys today. I am I'm quite ill. If you're watching
you on Netflix, you will see I have this cup
of tea in front of me, and there's a little
secret to this cup of tea. There's actually three tea
(00:47):
bags in it. I mixed to lemon and ginger and
then one throat sooth, so I've invented an entire new
tea flavor. And I also don't have any taste buds
right now, so it's honestly doing the trick. But throughout
this episode, I'm sure you're going to hear some horrible
nasal noises and I'm so sorry, and I wish I
could fix it, but the show must go on, especially
(01:11):
because there was no way I was missing. There we go.
We just got some There's no way I was missing
today's episode because it is a long awaited episode, probably
one of my most personally researched. We're talking about the
psychology of personal style. I have been so drawn into
the psychology of fashion recently. I'm not a particularly fashionable person.
(01:36):
I don't really think about it that often, but like,
just the psychology behind why we wear what we wear,
why we choose certain colors, why we are drawn to
certain accessories, even certain animal prints, like, there is a
massive rabbit hole that you can fall into looking into this,
and I want to share some of my findings. The
thing is, what we choose to wear, isn't It's not
(01:58):
the most important thing about us. And I'm sure there
are some people who would disagree with me. There are
some die hard like fashion fans out there who would
say it's the most important thing in the world. But
you know, there's definitely plenty of more that matters what
you do with your time, your values, your hobbies, etc. Etc.
But when you think about it, getting dressed is incredibly
(02:20):
psychologically revealing because it is a ritual. It is a
thing that we do every single day, and what we
choose to get dressed in every single day, that decision
can reveal some really significant things about our personality, about
our insecurities, how we were in childhood. It's honestly so
(02:42):
mind blowing what we're going to get into today. Whether
you care about fashion a lot, you have a Vogue subscription,
whether you care about it a medium amount or not
at all, I really don't care, because you're going to
hear a fact today that is going to blow your mind.
I promise you that. And you may also learn how
(03:02):
to make better style choices based on your identity and
your personality. And you may also save yourself some money
and some time by being able to curate a wardrobe
based on what you're gonna what you're gonna find out
about yourself today. So, without further ado, let's get into
the psychology of personal style. I think the magical thing
(03:27):
about fashion and personal style is that clothing is obviously
one of the most immediate and obvious forms of self
expression that we can have, and that is what makes
it so mentally significant, because it's basically looking at what
somebody wears every day can help us decipher so much
about how they want us to see them. Your clothes
(03:50):
aren't just pieces of fabric. They are a first impression,
they are a profession. For some people, they are an
identity hallmark, and they cause a reaction in other people.
A twenty twenty three Canadian study found that people immediately
make some pretty rapid and pretty on the nose conclusions
(04:10):
about everything from our cognitive state, to our social status,
to our esthetic status within seconds of seeing what we're wearing.
And they're very accurate assessments. And as people, we know
that we know that, whether we like it or not,
people are making broader assessments about us based on our clothes.
It's why we agonize over a first date dress, or
(04:31):
we agonize over what to wear do a job interview,
or what color of genes is best when they all
kind of look the same. Those reactions we get to
our clothes are part of what actually informs our personal
style from a very very young age. I think we
take personal style for granted sometimes and we think that
it's just kind of like appeared, or it's just based
(04:54):
on trends, But from very early on, we are actually
conditioned to choose the kinds of clothes that we continue
to wear for the rest of our lives, and I
think that is something not many of us know. Our
childhood is a huge fundamental part of our fashion choices,
and this is because of a very fundamental psychological process
(05:15):
called associative learning. Essentially, at some stage, your brain begins
to link clothing choices with certain feelings and certain outcomes
that were either good, bad, neutral, exciting, terrible, or something else.
So this starts actually fairly randomly, most associative learning does.
But obviously when we're young, when we're kids, like, we
(05:38):
don't pick our clothes. Our parents pick our clothes for us,
and their style is essentially our style. My mom was
born in Wisconsin, my dad was born in Queenscience, and
so when I was a kid, I was always dressed
in like a mix of Oshkosh Bergosh overalls if you
know what those are, and like beachware and T shirts.
You know you don't really have a choice. But what
(06:00):
you do start to realize and notice is when certain
items get a positive reaction and when certain items don't,
or how certain items make you feel. What made you
feel comfortable, what made you feel safe, what made you
feel close to your parents, what made you fit in?
I remember there was this certain long dress I used
to wear that my grandma bought me, and the first
(06:24):
time I wore it, like everybody in my family made
such a huge fuss about how nice I looked in it,
and I would wear it all the time. I would
literally twirl in it. I would go up to strangers
to show them my great dress, and they'd be like,
where the hell is this child's parents? But that was
such a learned association, and it was so funny. Last week,
(06:44):
I was looking for an outfit for a friend's wedding
and I found a dress that looks really similar, and
it was like this gravitational pull, like this is something
that I know, This is something that like I have
this long ago positive association with, and I ended up
buying the dress for that reason alone. I also remember
feeling the most myself in like my buzz light your shirt.
(07:05):
I knew that was comfortable, I knew I could move around,
I knew I could be a child in that. That
was my safety blanket. So that's how you learn. But
on the other side, you also learn, yes through positive things,
also through negative things. You learn what gets you teased,
what illicits negative reactions. Maybe it was wearing a crop
top in your childhood and you were teased for it,
(07:27):
you were shamed for it. Some kids said terrible things
for you. And so you grow up thinking you can't
wear that, and you never do. Or you wear a
type of pant or a type of jeane that ripped
or gave you a rash and for some reason you've
avoided that for the rest of your life. Clothes, Carrie
Learnt associations. That is why certain clothes like we were
(07:49):
talking about, feel emotionally relevant because they are often tied
to memories, the same memories that our identity is built on.
In fact, researchers from the University of College London looked
at this in great detail and they basically said in
this article they wrote, and I can't remember the name
(08:11):
of it, but they said that clothes are instruments for
anchoring the self and remembering the past, and through that
they enhance our well being. They are like this weird
rope that ties together who we want to be, who
we are now and who we were in the past
in like one long line. Close are a mix of yes,
(08:34):
practicality and what's affordable, but also of mood and memory,
and that is constantly playing subconsciously in the background of
the choices you make around fashion every single day. It's
incredibly emotionally evocative. It's incredibly representative of the past. It's
why I think we struggle to throw out items that
we don't wear anymore but used to be our favorites.
(08:57):
It's why we have really distinct childhood memories, not just
of moments, but of the clothes that we wore in them.
They are not neutral items Beyond these past memories. Research
also shows that your baseline personality can also predict how
you'll dress. Essentially, there is this kind of theory that
(09:19):
if you were to take somebody's outfit, you could pick
it apart and basically make a composite of what their
personality is like based on some pretty amazing correlations between
personality attributes and clothing choices. We can specifically look at
this through the Big five personality domains or personality principles,
(09:43):
So just as a little refresh, the biggest theory on
personality is that our personality is made of five traits.
Those are extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
And if we look at the profile of each of
these where you sit on those ladder, well, where you
sit on that spectrum for each of those traits is
(10:04):
going to essentially reveal your clothing choices. So starting with
openness to experience, people high in this trait often value play,
and they value esthetics, and they are creative and they
are curious and inquisitive and unconventional because of that, according
to a paper published in the Polish Psychological Forum in
(10:26):
twenty twenty four, if you are high in that, you
are more likely to seek original items of clothing. You
are typically more fashionable, as they called it, You are
most likely to be somebody who adopts the new trend
first because of that intellectual curiosity and that kind of
experimental personality that you have. People in contrast, who are
(10:49):
low in openness to experience, there's actually been all this
research that they wear more subdued clothes, They're more likely
to want to capsule wardrobe, They're more likely to gravitate
towards the same shapes, colors like yeah, silhouettes, or features
of clothing that they have for a very long time.
So openness to experience is this first thing that we
(11:10):
can kind of divide fashion profiles by are you more colorful, creative, experimental,
or are you more do you kind of more dress?
I don't want to say subdued, because that's kind of
I think that has negative connotations, but in a more
subtle way, in a more ordered way. Next up are
the extroverts. According to a twenty twenty one Frontiers and
(11:32):
Psychology study, extroverts do, in fact dress differently from the
rest of us. For this group, clothing is a significant
social signal. The study looked at almost eight hundred women
and found that extroverts preferred clothing that is seen as dramatic.
They are more likely to combine styles and combine color palettes.
(11:55):
They are less likely to choose clothes that camouflage them.
And that really makes a lot of sense. I feel
like extroverts are the ones like holding up the fun
jewelry atsy shops and like the word of T shirt
stores because they're looking for a way to display their
personality as vividly as possible, to kind of almost like
(12:15):
a butterfly, like attract people. In let's go in the
opposite direction. If extroverts lean more that way, what is
to say about people whose clothes are always professional and
pressed and very neat and tidy. These people are like
the hallmarks of conscientiousness. According to that same twenty twenty
(12:36):
one study, these individuals, although they are very socially aware,
although they are confident, they seem to gravitate more towards
classic formal styles. They seem to represent themselves as organized,
as reliable, as punctual. They use fashion to signal competence
and order. You want to know the weirdest fashion psychology
(13:00):
I learned the other day if someone is wearing a
wrist watch, that can actually tell you something about their personality.
So a twenty fifteen study looking at i think over
seven hundred people found that people who wear wrist watches
are more conscientious, more responsible, more real following. Compared to
people who don't wear risk watches, they're typically less conscientious
(13:23):
and they're less likely to follow the rules. So there
you go. If you want to look good in a
job interview, shot up wearing a wristwatch because it signals
a lot of really good things. It's just so weird
how you fashion and personality kind of connects in that way.
Something as simple as a risk watch, like that's like
a peek into who you are as a person. Two
final conclusions from that same study, just because it was
(13:46):
just such a magnificent one, we have to go into
detail on a little bit more. People who are high
in agreeableness, they were also more likely to wear less
traumatic or unusual clothing, so likely to want to blend
in or wear traditional clothing. Obviously, they want to be
friends with everyone. They're agreeable. Anything that makes them stick
(14:08):
out or makes them controversial is not something they're going
to be leaning towards. And people who are high in
neuroticism actually used clothing as a form of emotional regulation
or security blankets, So apparently these individuals are more likely
to be self conscious. People hiring euroticism are more likely
(14:28):
to be self conscious and to engage in body surveillance,
so they may actually use specific clothing styles to manage
their body image. And on top of that their social
anxiety or general anxiety, often opting for safe choices, often
opting for things that are comfortable or that avoid drawing
unwanted scrutiny or judgments from other people. So that's like
(14:51):
a whole profile of all the big five, and like
how your measurement on that might turn the dial on
your clothing choice. Essentially, it's this thing we've been repeating.
What you choose to wear can be a really subtle
personality cue. And now that is not permission to go
and judge or assess every single person you are meeting
(15:12):
based on this profile, Like that must like if they're
wearing a riskwatch or if they're not wearing a risk watch,
like that must say that they aren't a kind person
or whatever. Like these aren't rules to follow. People can
very easily be outliers or shift from the norm. Here,
it's just one singular peak into fashion psychology. I think
(15:39):
clothing again, why it's so important is because it's one
of the quickest ways that we can communicate not just
our personality but our identity before you've even spoken, Like
your outfit can signal to other people I see myself
as this kind of person, or I see myself as
one of you, or I want to be seen as
one of you, or as one of these kinds of people.
(16:02):
Clothing and the role it plays in social cohesion and
social conformity is another major piece of this puzzle. So
much of personal style is tied up in who we
want to align with subcultures subgroups, little tribes with their
own codes and aesthetics and shared references, and their own
(16:23):
music tastes and values and political views. You know, a
band tea isn't just a band tea. It's a sign
of the world or the subgroup that you're in, and
with that becomes a lot of information about certain likes
or dislikes. A particular hiking shoe, it's not just a shoe.
It's a signal that you love the outdoors, but you
also love the city, and that these are the two
(16:46):
sides of you like blending in together. There is something
for everybody in that sense. A certain silhouette isn't just
a silhouette. It can reference a scene, an error, a movement,
a set of beliefs about class, about what's what gender
even means. Clothes are as political and as psychological as
they are fun. And where we can really see that
(17:09):
is in women's at leisure wear trends. You know, the
rise of conservatism came at the same time as the
rise in pilates wear and in pink matching sets and
ballet silhouettes, things that are very traditionally feminine. Now, what's
trending more in this day and age is especially for women,
trekking pants, double stacked sports bras, practical hardcore hiking shoes
(17:34):
like gore tech. It's like this real signal of that pushback, right,
this pushback against traditional feminine ideals, the fight back, the
literal protest against authoritarianism that is like taking place in
the world. You can really read a lot about what
is happening in society based on fashion trends and based
(17:55):
on where people kind of present themselves on the spectrum.
Everything you choose to wear has a message contained if
you look for it. Sometimes it's explicit, like a slogan
or a flag or a badge or a university merchandise,
your literal favorite band on a T shirt. That's an
(18:15):
explicit message of how you want to be seen. And
sometimes it is more coded. It's like anytime you see
somebody with like visible mending or stitching, that might be
a sign of sustainability values, or you know of class
or income level, or if you wear athletics were outside
(18:37):
of the gym, you know that might be a sign
of how you again, how you want to represent yourself
as a healthy person, or if you blend typically masculine
and typically feminine clothes together that signals gender nonconformity. I'm
giving you a lot of examples just to say that
the brain pays attention to this stuff, and it pays
(18:57):
attention to the stuff, yes, to categorize and to understand people,
but mainly to use clothing as a mental shortcut and
to be able to then identify the people you want
to relate to or the tribe you want to belong to,
and those that you don't see yourself close to or
as a part of your brain often scans for these
(19:18):
familiar cues because we're naturally attracted to similarity. So somebody
who is wearing a similar silhouette, similar colors, similar brands,
a similar uniform to you, that is a visual marker
of somebody who's going to be part of your in group,
and when we find them, that registers as safety and
that registers as belonging. One distinct example of this and
(19:40):
how this happens is like and how identity forms through
clothes is like punk and what made punk so big
predominantly in London in like the seventies and eighties, It
was like this counterculture reaction to economic and to like
social unrest this period and designers like Vivian Westwood like
(20:03):
they really had their rise during this time because they
utilized a lot of this like anti monarchy, anti establishment,
anti capitalist messaging that a lot of people were getting
behind and kind of flocked to, and like the androgynous
silhouettes and the ripped clothing and the tartan that was ripped,
and the non traditional hairstyles and the safety pin visual
(20:26):
that represented to people a kind of philosophy and a
kind of subgenre of people or people with certain beliefs
that they wanted to gravitate towards. And so it is
used almost like a badge. What we wear a symbolic
of how we want to be seen, which then also
(20:47):
impacts how people treat us, and that in itself either
strengthens our identity or diminishes it, or you know, it
either reinforces the cycle or again, through that learned association,
it kind of teaches us or guides us into being
somebody else. Here's something super interesting. A twenty twenty five
(21:07):
study found that we often dress more group aligned when
we feel socially uncertain. That is why micro trends and
fast fashion calor is more towards younger people. Yes, because
it's cheaper, but also because they don't know who they
are yet or where they fit in. They also don't
have a sense of personal style because they don't have
that identity, so they're really quick to buy whatever is
(21:29):
trending because of that lack of identity stability, regardless of
whether it's made poorly, because it doesn't really matter. They
don't need it to fit, they don't need it to
be something they wear in like three months, because their
identity is probably going to change as fast as the
trend is. It's also why teenagers or people in high
(21:51):
school or younger people, that's where subgroups really start. Often
in younger groups of individuals, because their identity is so unstable,
there is this greatest sense of wanting to align with
a subgroup or a type of fashion or a type
of identity that is represented to fashion through fashion that
(22:12):
is stable and that is that means one thing and
that can be categorized because it's kind of like this
life raft for them. It's kind of like this thing
that they can hold on to when everything else about
them is kind of like floating around. Similar to this,
it's also why when we enter a new social environment,
(22:33):
we really feel the need to reinstate or reinforce our
personal style or reinvent it. So that's why we go
and buy new outfits for a new job. It's why
freshmen always buying new wardrobes before they start university. It's
why someone who just moved to Berlin wants to dress
more Berlin. This is what it's called in clothed cognition.
It is a psychological phenomenon coined by this man, hardro Adams,
(22:56):
whereby this symbolic meaning of our clothing actually influences our
cognitive processes, which in turn affects our thoughts, affects our feelings,
affects our behavior. The researcher who coined this term in
his research, he basically discovered that this can influence everything
(23:16):
from our emotional state to how we see ourselves to
our intelligence. What you wear can literally influence how smart
you feel and how smart you are. In this now
very famous twenty twelve experiment, participants were essentially asked to
complete a bunch of attentional and memory tasks either wearing
a doctor's lab coat or not, and some were even
(23:40):
told like the lab coat was like a painter's coat.
And then some people didn't wear it at all. The
people who went into these tasks wearing the doctor's coat
did significantly better on those tasks compared to the others.
And there was a large sample size here, and the
only thing that was different. Yeah, maybe there were slight
(24:02):
personality and intelligence differences, but that was definitely controlled for.
The only major difference was that they dressed smarter. This
is why things like dopamine dressing, or dressing up for
a date, or dressing for the job you want not
the job you have, can actually change the way you
feel in those situations. A twenty ten not twenty twenty
(24:24):
twenty ten study from the University of Huddersfield actually found
that certain clothes, if they were the participant's favorites, actually
served as emotional regulators like we were talking about before,
meaning that the participants were more likely to feel able
to you know, they were more likely to feel in
control of their emotions and in control of their environment
(24:46):
if their the outfit they were wearing was their favorite.
Nothing else changed, just the outfit. And again, I could
cite so many more sources like this that essentially all
say the same thing and reach the same conclusion. Clothing
is a mental leather that we can use to direct
our emotional state, and we can therefore take advantage of
(25:09):
that knowledge to change our mood in situations where we
want more control using our clothes, like we can literally
feel more confident, more competent, more safe, more everything based
on what we're wearing. And you can do that both ways, right.
You can yes, choose what you're going to wear to
(25:30):
best embody an emotional state you want to have. You
can actually also examine the clothes that you are unconsciously
choosing at a certain time in your life to tell
you what you're avoiding or tell you what you're feeling.
Like when you suddenly find yourself unable to wear your
favorite pair of jeans or completely avoiding any tight clothing,
that's saying something about your self esteem. That's something you
(25:52):
need to focus on. Or when you find yourself leaning
more towards revealing tight, colorful clothing, maybe this is a
natural sign that, like you're really feeling yourself right now,
maybe it's time to like schedule some dates. Maybe it's
time to get out there because people are going to
see this like enigmatic, amazing side of you and like
(26:13):
the side of you that feels very, very alive. You
know what I find interesting, though, What I really find
interesting is that despite all this, like we know, personal
style is supposed to be self expression and it has
this effect and it's so emotionally powerful, and yet there
are so many moments where like, we know what we
want to wear, and we know it's going to make
(26:33):
us feel good, and we know that this is something
we like, and then we don't do it. This is
this weird contradiction with personal style. We have personal style,
and sometimes we avoid our style. I feel like, right now,
I have all these really cool clothes that I really
like in theory, that I think represent me, but I
never wear them because they're too out there or they're
too different. And I'll try them on every few weeks
(26:56):
and I'll seriously consider wearing them, and then I'll put
them back in my closet. We so often choose the
safe outfit, the one that we yes, no, we feel
comfortable in, but the one we know won't get any comments,
the one that won't make us feel too visible. Because
a lot of the time I think we're dressing not
for ourselves, but we're dressing for the imagined audience. Right
(27:20):
most of us. I know I do carry around with
us a mental panel of judges, whether they are colleagues,
whether they are strangers, whether they are friends or on
ex people on Instagram. There's this panel of people who
we almost present every outfit we wear too before we
walk out the door. It's this weird like they're not there,
(27:42):
but it's this weird social monitoring that we have in
our head. How is the general public going to feel
about my outfit? We put that before how we're going
to feel, and that is why we constantly come back
towards three or four outfits that we feel the safest
in because we feel they are the easiest. What's important
to know is that we tend to really overestimate how
(28:03):
much other people notice. Us. Psychologists I think we spoke
about this only a couple of weeks ago, call this
spotlight effect. It's that feeling that if you wear something bold,
everyone's gonna stare, everyone's gonna comment, everyone's gonna judge you
or remember you. Everyone will see how you know, the
fabric pools slightly, or like that your bra sticks out
(28:24):
a bit like that, it's a bit different from what
you're used to. They know it, We know it like
it's this weird thing, so we should just take it off,
like we just shouldn't wear that. It's so funny because
in reality, most people do not give a flying f.
They're not thinking about you, they're thinking about themselves. If
(28:44):
you listen to our how to Stop taking things personally
episode like, you'll know this very well. Only twenty two
percent of our daily thoughts are spent thinking about other people.
And often even when we are thinking about other people,
we're thinking about their behavior and relation to ourselves. So
if we're judging somebody else's outfit, it's not really about them,
it's about us and our lack of confidence to wear that.
(29:05):
If we are looking at somebody else's coat, perhaps part
of it is because we wish we had the boldness
to wear it. Social media has definitely exacerbated this. It's
definitely made this harder, and it's partially responsible for I
also think how fast trends come and go these days,
(29:27):
because we are all judging ourselves based on this impossible
what's hot what's not that changes every few weeks, Like
what was the print that was like trending a couple
of weeks ago, like dear print I was seeing all
these articles about like dear print is in, dear print
is the next thing, and then just last week there
was this TikTok being like dear print is cheap, dear
(29:47):
print is last season. You can't win when you are
judging yourself against the imagined current status or current state
of what is cool and what's not. As soon as
like you adopt the trend and the trend goes out
of style because the moment that more than fifty percent
of people are wearing what is cool, it's no longer
cool anymore, because it's gotten to public and it's no
(30:10):
longer something people can gatekeep. The author Paula D'Elia. She
talks about the fact that social media fashion culture has
actually increased self objectification and comparison pressures, and that actually
means that style and fashion has suddenly become incredibly basic,
(30:33):
and that a lot of our personal style choices are
really based on what looks good, based on a trend,
what we think will photograph well, what we think will
get likes, or what we think will look right next
to everybody else. Most of our fashion choices are for
(30:54):
the feed, and the more you lose touch with what
you actually enjoy or feel best in the worse it becomes,
and the harder it is to come back, and the
harder it is for society as a whole to have originality.
I read this other article that talks about this thing
called esthetic convergence, or a narrowing of what is most
often shown, liked, copied, and worn. So essentially, this researcher
(31:17):
did all this analysis and found that we're all starting
to look the same, not just like physically in terms
of our faces and our bodies, but fashion because it's
becoming more and more trend based, and competitive brands know
that the only way to make a profit is to
follow what is trending and what people like in the moment.
They're not going to create something different or new because
(31:40):
that's going to be less likely to sell. It's not
the current style, and who's not wearing the current style,
So all our options are becoming increasingly similar and increasingly
siloed into categories. So there's like the cool girl brand
the athletic brand, and they don't really have as much crossover,
which is why we feel like we have less and
(32:01):
less choice. It also explains why I know I've personally
noticed trends are always just one degree, a one degree
shift from the last trend, like they're never that revolutionary.
Take like animal print. A couple of years ago it
was cow, and then the slight change was that it's cheetah,
and like now it's deer, or like it went from
(32:23):
like matching gym sets to like cling girl polarate sets
to like why two K yoga mom set. Nothing is
ever a full sweep. It's always just this tiny change.
No brand, no fashion house is ever gonna move too
far because they don't want to fall off the balance
of something that is fresh and new without being too
different and therefore difficult to market. Like this is a question,
(32:48):
I genuinely want you to ask yourself, when was the
last time you saw something new. It's not because people
aren't inventive. It's definitely not because people are boring. It's
because we are social learners, and fashion is one of
the fastest moving social signals that we have to conform to.
You know, in social psychology, conformity is what happens when
(33:10):
we adjust our behavior to what the group expects. That
is what's happening with our fashion choices. Sometimes that's because
we genuinely believe the group is right. This is known
as information or influence, so you know, if everybody's doing it,
they probably know what's good. And sometimes it's just because
we don't actually like the trend, we just fear rejection.
This is known as normative influence. So I don't want
(33:32):
to look weird, even though I hate those added our
stampers or whatever. Like everybody's wearing them, so I better
wear them. Either way. The result is the same. We
all drift towards the center of what feels socially safe,
and clothing is especially vulnerable because it is so public
and because it is tied in yet again to our
(33:57):
identity and to how we see our elves. If you
want to reclaim your personal style, here are four really
easy ways to do it. Number one, reduce the wardrobe clutter.
You know those pieces that I was talking about that
(34:19):
we own and we would never wear, but we just
keep them because they're cool or because we bought them
because they were like the trend, Like we want to
be the kind of person who's gonna wear them, but
we don't. For me, it's like this big fluffy hat
and a couple other things, but the fluffy hat in particular,
these pieces are mental clutter, and they are blocking your
personal style by increasing a sense of decision fatigue, essentially
(34:43):
giving you more options to consider when that option isn't
really a true option, but you feel like you have
to consider it, you feel like it's kind of there,
and when you do finally choose it, you're never going
to be comfortable in it anyways. So basically you're just
slowing down the process of gain geting dressed every morning.
So I need you to do a closet perche. When
(35:03):
you do a closet perge, what I need you to
ask yourself is have I worn this in the past
three months or have I worn it at all? And
if it's not something like a big winter coat or
like your wedding dress or a summer dress, you know
you're gonna wear heaps when the sun is back up.
Sell it on deep Up, give it to a friend,
sell it on vinted. Start not from scratch, but from
(35:26):
your favorites. Basically, get down to that capsule wardrobe. And
speaking of favorites, also notice the things you keep rebuying
in a slightly different font or in a slightly different version.
I realized this the other day when I was looking
back at pictures of me from twenty twenty two for this,
like I don't know something I was doing on Instagram,
(35:47):
and I was looking at this photo and I realized
I was wearing the exact same outfit in those pictures
as the one I was wearing just that like as
I was looking on my phone, and none of those
items were the same items. Like I had replaced my
wardrobe from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty six, and
(36:07):
I was still wearing the same thing, just not with
the same clothes. And I genuinely I wish I could
you could see this side by side. It was like bootcut,
baggy white jeans, cropped kind of like cream gray cashmere
type V neck sweater, literally the same shoes, And I
was like, why did I throw those pieces away only
to replace them like three years later. I think it
(36:29):
was because at some stage, like I tried to reinvent
my style and I tried to like do this whole
like overhaul of what I wore, And it was this
weird thing where it's like, this is my equilibrium that
I keep coming back to, like as much as I
try and be this kind of person or whatever, like
there are some core things that I'm always gonna have
in my closet. I know for me that is like
(36:49):
a chunky blue sweater, a stripe blue collar shirt. I
literally used to wear them to high school when I
was fifteen. I looked like a little business woman and
like a pair of blue jeans. And if you go
through your pictures, you will notice the things you always
end up buying and wearing even as the trends change.
And that is your personal style. That is the base
(37:13):
of your wardrobe. So if you're going to invest in anything,
invest in having good quality versions of those historical style
pieces that you can structure the rest of your wardrobe around.
I would also say create your own style archetype. Archetypes
are everywhere in society, everywhere in psychology, from jung to
(37:35):
Greek mythology to the seven feminine archetypes. You know, the maiden,
the mother, the mystic, the huntress, blah blah blah blah blah.
It is such a great mental shortcut for figuring out
what you want to wear and why you want to
wear it. And you can make your own fashion archetype.
This is how you're going to do it. You're gonna
begin with some descriptors. What do you need your clothes
(37:56):
to do for you day to day? What are your
clothes need to make you feel like and look like? Comfortable? Flexible?
Do they need to make you look effortless? Smart? You know,
if you're an artist, what does that mean? Maybe if
you're a social worker, it has to be understated, grounded,
if you work in carpentry. Choose three words that are
(38:19):
essentials for your clothes, and those are your basis. So
mine are like comfortable, smart, and I would say unassuming.
That's just what the preference for what I need my
clothes to do for me. Then add your aspirational words.
So think of five people whose style you like, really admire.
Steven Nicks, Jennifer Lawrence, Asap, Rocky, Emma Chamberlain, I don't know,
(38:39):
Adam Sandler, whatever. Five people who's clothes you really admire.
Get on Pinterest, get on any platform, make a PowerPoint presentation.
Put a bunch of their outfits that you love on
that PowerPoint slide. What are the core like words or
themes that define all of those pieces or all of
those outfits? Bold, branded, colorful, maximalist, chaotic, athletic, simple, like whatever,
(39:06):
it is, find the connecting words, choose two of those words,
and then identify the word that would best describe your
personality or how you want to be seen or how
you see yourself. So like dreamer, mystic, intellectual, adventurer, natural, entrepreneur.
What word if you could choose just one, just one
(39:28):
word sits at like the center of your identity, as
your archetype, then you put it all together. The effortless
but bold entrepreneur, the sleek, flowy mystic, the smart, colorful intellectual,
the unassuming, accessorized creative. This sounds so cliche, It sounds
(39:48):
so silly, I know, but you have no idea how
helpful this is mentally how much of an identity shortcut
this has been for me in realizing my personal style. Actually,
in a trend heavy society, if I find myself wanting
to buy something, especially an impulse purchase, especially if it's
a micro trend, I go back to my archetype and
(40:12):
I basically ask, is this something like a smart, playful
scholar would wear? That's my archetype, by the way, that
feels very private to share. But smart, playful scholar, That's
how I make all my clothing choices. And it really
really helps if it doesn't match that and if that's
how I want to be seen, and obviously you could
have a couple if you want, but I'm not gonna
(40:33):
wear it. Like I'm not gonna wear something that like
a maximalist entrepreneur would wear, because I'm not a maximist entrepreneur.
I'm not gonna wear something that like a bold I
don't know what's what's some of the words like a
I don't I was gonna say simple scientist, but that's
kind of rude. But you know, like all these other archetypes,
they're wonderful and I'm sure they all dress well, but
(40:54):
they're not me, and so it stops me from this
is so cliche, but like trying to be something that
I'm not trying to be, like trying to dress a
way that like I'm just never going to enjoy. I
would also say, kind of as part of this as well,
pick a uniform similar to that kind of historical analysis
of past items. We were talking about, what is the
(41:15):
staatepole outfit you wear almost every day? Like blue jeans, blazer, sneaker,
midi skirt, tight top, boots, soup pant, cool shoe, tope bag, like,
what is your uniform when in doubt, just change one
item from your uniform every day. You know, I didn't
come up with that advice. I heard somebody else speak
(41:36):
about it. But again, it stops you from buying pieces
that you have nothing to wear with because if they
wouldn't go with the uniform, chances are like they aren't
going to go with the other things that you own either,
And it keeps everything kind of centered around what you
know you already lean towards. Finally, I feel like this
is such an underrated tip, but pay attention to what
(41:59):
you are drawing onto outside of clothing and fashion. If
you are committed to finding your personal style, Often things
that are seemingly unrelated to fashion are the most inspiring
things because of the feelings they evoke. I and I'm
saying that is somebody who doesn't understand fashion at all.
I've just been told. But it might be like a
certain color, or like a mood, or your favorite film,
(42:21):
or an album cover or a music video, or like
even nature. The one I always think of is like
the Mum and Beer movie. How many people dress the
way they do because of the Muma mea movie or
abba look at tons of different things, look at all
these different influences, and allow that to inspire you. Because
I think fast fashion can make our pool of inspiration
(42:45):
so narrow. You're going to try your best to broaden
this in whatever way you can by looking elsewhere so
that I don't know if this is an ambition. Maybe
you're happy to look like everybody else and honestly power too.
But if that's not your ambition, this is the way
to prevent that from happening. Seek inspiration from beyond what
(43:05):
is the easiest thing to sell you, and what is
the easiest thing to sell you because everybody likes because
it is trending. Also vinted, deep hop, op shops, charity
shops do that as much as possible. This has nothing
to do with psychology. I just think the most stylish
people I know know how to hunt for their clothes,
and they know how to find yeah, really basic things,
(43:27):
but versions that very few people have, Like the white
T shirt. My friend found like this crazy white T
shirt from like the seventies the other day, I'm vinted
for like five pounds, Like that's incredible. Nobody else has
that white T shirt. Like it's about taking yeah those
fundamental things and just making it more fun and enjoyable,
(43:47):
because I think that's what fashion should really be about.
Our final golden rule for personal style is about impulse shopping.
And I have to sneak this one in here because
it is so important. I used to have a huge
problem with impulse shopping. I think a real reason why
our personal style gets diluted and gets mashed up and
(44:09):
like ripped apart is because we just like because of
emotional regulation in a way, Like this is something that
I found. I would just shop when I felt sad
or lonely, and I wasn't being intentional with the pieces
I was buying, so I would just have all this
like crap, and none of it went together, and I
(44:30):
felt I'd feel like guilty one week, and then I'd
feel the emotions come back and I'd overspend the next week.
Then I'd feel guilty. Wait seventy two hours forty eight
seventy two hours before you buy anything you want to buy,
unless it is something that you literally could not live without,
Like if you genuinely are on holiday and you've run
out of underwear, you can obviously break the forty eight
(44:53):
hour rule, but nobody needs like another pair of your
fourth pair of blue jeans instantly as soon as you're
seeing them. And even if you do, even if, for example,
you need a skirt or you need like a suit
jacket for like an upcoming event. If that is the case,
make it your mission then to find the best version
of that at the price point you can not just
(45:15):
the first one you see. I think when it comes
to personal style and the psychology behind personal style, yes,
it is about understanding your personality, and yes, it is
about understanding how style and identity contribute to each other
and go hand in hand. I also think then there's
this like second element where you understand it and then
(45:36):
you put it into practice. And if this is a
priority for you, and if you want to look, if
you want to have like that brand, if you want
to have that real, identifiable Steve Jobs esque kind of
look like people know that those are the clothes you wear.
You've got to be intentional, You've got to be focused
(45:57):
on what it is that you actually like, and in
many ways you have to actually buy less. All of
those tips that I kept coming back to for that
won't just mind that as tips from like stylists and
I don't even know the words, so obviously I'm not
as included as they would be. But like fashion editors
and fashion journalists, that's the word. They're all about consuming less, actually,
(46:24):
and I think that's really this real thing. The thing
that's making us have less personal style. Is this just
like periodic blasting of the trend of the season, and
this like periodic, this periodic like I don't know, I
don't want to say archetype, but yeah, like archetype, like
(46:46):
this year, this month we're fairy core, and next month
we're cottage core, and then we're like grunge core, and
all these things and all that is just asking you
to buy more and to keep these big, fast fashion
businesses in business, and it's not doing great things for
your personal style. It's obviously not doing great things for
the planet either. If you want to break out of that,
(47:08):
you've got to kind of look away from trends. You've
got to consume more slowly and more intentionally, and you've
got to focus on like the real soul of your
clothes and how that is like a direct peek into
your personality. This is going to sound so woo woo.
Maybe I've gone too far here. Maybe it is time
to end this episode, but like, this just came to
my mind. Honestly, maybe that's the assessment you have to
(47:31):
do before you buy anything. You have to genuinely look
at this item and be like, does this say something
about me? Like could somebody say? Could somebody tell you
something about the person I am? From this item? And
why I'm choosing to buy it? A bit wacky. I
don't know you can take that or leave that, but
I think I'm going to start doing that. I think
that is a great way to make more intentional purchases.
(47:52):
So thank you for listening if you have made it
this far. Our question of the day, if you are
listening on Spotify, what is your unifor slash? What is
the item of clothing that you have had the longest
and why? I will go first. It is a Brandy
Melville Khaki snklet that I bought in twenty thirteen, and
(48:16):
I actually don't own it anymore. I only recently threw
it out, and that synklet has not been wearable outside
slash doesn't didn't even fit for years. But it was
this weird thing where I was like, really, I was
really holding on to it tight and I couldn't let
it go. So what is your version of the Brandy
Melville Khaki singlet? I want to know? Leave a comment.
(48:38):
Thank you, as always to our lovely, wonderful researcher Libby Cobbett.
She really did some amazing research for this episode, so
we appreciate her so much. Make sure as well that
if you're listening and you're in the US or Canada,
you give us a watch on Netflix. That is correct.
Video episodes of the podcast are now on Netflix, and
we would really appreciate it if you are in those
(48:59):
two countries checking it out and telling us what you think.
You can also follow us on substack if you want
the episode transcript for this episode, including links to any
of the studies. But until next time, be safe, be kind,
be gentle to yourself. We will talk very very soon.
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:25):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here, back for another episode
as we, of course break down the psychology of our twenties.
I'm going to give a little heads up to you
guys today. I am I'm quite ill. If you're watching
you on Netflix, you will see I have this cup
of tea in front of me, and there's a little
secret to this cup of tea. There's actually three tea
(00:47):
bags in it. I mixed to lemon and ginger and
then one throat sooth, so I've invented an entire new
tea flavor. And I also don't have any taste buds
right now, so it's honestly doing the trick. But throughout
this episode, I'm sure you're going to hear some horrible
nasal noises and I'm so sorry, and I wish I
could fix it, but the show must go on, especially
(01:11):
because there was no way I was missing. There we go.
We just got some There's no way I was missing
today's episode because it is a long awaited episode, probably
one of my most personally researched. We're talking about the
psychology of personal style. I have been so drawn into
the psychology of fashion recently. I'm not a particularly fashionable person.
(01:36):
I don't really think about it that often, but like,
just the psychology behind why we wear what we wear,
why we choose certain colors, why we are drawn to
certain accessories, even certain animal prints, like, there is a
massive rabbit hole that you can fall into looking into this,
and I want to share some of my findings. The
thing is, what we choose to wear, isn't It's not
(01:58):
the most important thing about us. And I'm sure there
are some people who would disagree with me. There are
some die hard like fashion fans out there who would
say it's the most important thing in the world. But
you know, there's definitely plenty of more that matters what
you do with your time, your values, your hobbies, etc. Etc.
But when you think about it, getting dressed is incredibly
(02:20):
psychologically revealing because it is a ritual. It is a
thing that we do every single day, and what we
choose to get dressed in every single day, that decision
can reveal some really significant things about our personality, about
our insecurities, how we were in childhood. It's honestly so
(02:42):
mind blowing what we're going to get into today. Whether
you care about fashion a lot, you have a Vogue subscription,
whether you care about it a medium amount or not
at all, I really don't care, because you're going to
hear a fact today that is going to blow your mind.
I promise you that. And you may also learn how
(03:02):
to make better style choices based on your identity and
your personality. And you may also save yourself some money
and some time by being able to curate a wardrobe
based on what you're gonna what you're gonna find out
about yourself today. So, without further ado, let's get into
the psychology of personal style. I think the magical thing
(03:27):
about fashion and personal style is that clothing is obviously
one of the most immediate and obvious forms of self
expression that we can have, and that is what makes
it so mentally significant, because it's basically looking at what
somebody wears every day can help us decipher so much
about how they want us to see them. Your clothes
(03:50):
aren't just pieces of fabric. They are a first impression,
they are a profession. For some people, they are an
identity hallmark, and they cause a reaction in other people.
A twenty twenty three Canadian study found that people immediately
make some pretty rapid and pretty on the nose conclusions
(04:10):
about everything from our cognitive state, to our social status,
to our esthetic status within seconds of seeing what we're wearing.
And they're very accurate assessments. And as people, we know
that we know that, whether we like it or not,
people are making broader assessments about us based on our clothes.
It's why we agonize over a first date dress, or
(04:31):
we agonize over what to wear do a job interview,
or what color of genes is best when they all
kind of look the same. Those reactions we get to
our clothes are part of what actually informs our personal
style from a very very young age. I think we
take personal style for granted sometimes and we think that
it's just kind of like appeared, or it's just based
(04:54):
on trends, But from very early on, we are actually
conditioned to choose the kinds of clothes that we continue
to wear for the rest of our lives, and I
think that is something not many of us know. Our
childhood is a huge fundamental part of our fashion choices,
and this is because of a very fundamental psychological process
(05:15):
called associative learning. Essentially, at some stage, your brain begins
to link clothing choices with certain feelings and certain outcomes
that were either good, bad, neutral, exciting, terrible, or something else.
So this starts actually fairly randomly, most associative learning does.
But obviously when we're young, when we're kids, like, we
(05:38):
don't pick our clothes. Our parents pick our clothes for us,
and their style is essentially our style. My mom was
born in Wisconsin, my dad was born in Queenscience, and
so when I was a kid, I was always dressed
in like a mix of Oshkosh Bergosh overalls if you
know what those are, and like beachware and T shirts.
You know you don't really have a choice. But what
(06:00):
you do start to realize and notice is when certain
items get a positive reaction and when certain items don't,
or how certain items make you feel. What made you
feel comfortable, what made you feel safe, what made you
feel close to your parents, what made you fit in?
I remember there was this certain long dress I used
to wear that my grandma bought me, and the first
(06:24):
time I wore it, like everybody in my family made
such a huge fuss about how nice I looked in it,
and I would wear it all the time. I would
literally twirl in it. I would go up to strangers
to show them my great dress, and they'd be like,
where the hell is this child's parents? But that was
such a learned association, and it was so funny. Last week,
(06:44):
I was looking for an outfit for a friend's wedding
and I found a dress that looks really similar, and
it was like this gravitational pull, like this is something
that I know, This is something that like I have
this long ago positive association with, and I ended up
buying the dress for that reason alone. I also remember
feeling the most myself in like my buzz light your shirt.
(07:05):
I knew that was comfortable, I knew I could move around,
I knew I could be a child in that. That
was my safety blanket. So that's how you learn. But
on the other side, you also learn, yes through positive things,
also through negative things. You learn what gets you teased,
what illicits negative reactions. Maybe it was wearing a crop
top in your childhood and you were teased for it,
(07:27):
you were shamed for it. Some kids said terrible things
for you. And so you grow up thinking you can't
wear that, and you never do. Or you wear a
type of pant or a type of jeane that ripped
or gave you a rash and for some reason you've
avoided that for the rest of your life. Clothes, Carrie
Learnt associations. That is why certain clothes like we were
(07:49):
talking about, feel emotionally relevant because they are often tied
to memories, the same memories that our identity is built on.
In fact, researchers from the University of College London looked
at this in great detail and they basically said in
this article they wrote, and I can't remember the name
(08:11):
of it, but they said that clothes are instruments for
anchoring the self and remembering the past, and through that
they enhance our well being. They are like this weird
rope that ties together who we want to be, who
we are now and who we were in the past
in like one long line. Close are a mix of yes,
(08:34):
practicality and what's affordable, but also of mood and memory,
and that is constantly playing subconsciously in the background of
the choices you make around fashion every single day. It's
incredibly emotionally evocative. It's incredibly representative of the past. It's
why I think we struggle to throw out items that
we don't wear anymore but used to be our favorites.
(08:57):
It's why we have really distinct childhood memories, not just
of moments, but of the clothes that we wore in them.
They are not neutral items Beyond these past memories. Research
also shows that your baseline personality can also predict how
you'll dress. Essentially, there is this kind of theory that
(09:19):
if you were to take somebody's outfit, you could pick
it apart and basically make a composite of what their
personality is like based on some pretty amazing correlations between
personality attributes and clothing choices. We can specifically look at
this through the Big five personality domains or personality principles,
(09:43):
So just as a little refresh, the biggest theory on
personality is that our personality is made of five traits.
Those are extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
And if we look at the profile of each of
these where you sit on those ladder, well, where you
sit on that spectrum for each of those traits is
(10:04):
going to essentially reveal your clothing choices. So starting with
openness to experience, people high in this trait often value play,
and they value esthetics, and they are creative and they
are curious and inquisitive and unconventional because of that, according
to a paper published in the Polish Psychological Forum in
(10:26):
twenty twenty four, if you are high in that, you
are more likely to seek original items of clothing. You
are typically more fashionable, as they called it, You are
most likely to be somebody who adopts the new trend
first because of that intellectual curiosity and that kind of
experimental personality that you have. People in contrast, who are
(10:49):
low in openness to experience, there's actually been all this
research that they wear more subdued clothes, They're more likely
to want to capsule wardrobe, They're more likely to gravitate
towards the same shapes, colors like yeah, silhouettes, or features
of clothing that they have for a very long time.
So openness to experience is this first thing that we
(11:10):
can kind of divide fashion profiles by are you more colorful, creative, experimental,
or are you more do you kind of more dress?
I don't want to say subdued, because that's kind of
I think that has negative connotations, but in a more
subtle way, in a more ordered way. Next up are
the extroverts. According to a twenty twenty one Frontiers and
(11:32):
Psychology study, extroverts do, in fact dress differently from the
rest of us. For this group, clothing is a significant
social signal. The study looked at almost eight hundred women
and found that extroverts preferred clothing that is seen as dramatic.
They are more likely to combine styles and combine color palettes.
(11:55):
They are less likely to choose clothes that camouflage them.
And that really makes a lot of sense. I feel
like extroverts are the ones like holding up the fun
jewelry atsy shops and like the word of T shirt
stores because they're looking for a way to display their
personality as vividly as possible, to kind of almost like
(12:15):
a butterfly, like attract people. In let's go in the
opposite direction. If extroverts lean more that way, what is
to say about people whose clothes are always professional and
pressed and very neat and tidy. These people are like
the hallmarks of conscientiousness. According to that same twenty twenty
(12:36):
one study, these individuals, although they are very socially aware,
although they are confident, they seem to gravitate more towards
classic formal styles. They seem to represent themselves as organized,
as reliable, as punctual. They use fashion to signal competence
and order. You want to know the weirdest fashion psychology
(13:00):
I learned the other day if someone is wearing a
wrist watch, that can actually tell you something about their personality.
So a twenty fifteen study looking at i think over
seven hundred people found that people who wear wrist watches
are more conscientious, more responsible, more real following. Compared to
people who don't wear risk watches, they're typically less conscientious
(13:23):
and they're less likely to follow the rules. So there
you go. If you want to look good in a
job interview, shot up wearing a wristwatch because it signals
a lot of really good things. It's just so weird
how you fashion and personality kind of connects in that way.
Something as simple as a risk watch, like that's like
a peek into who you are as a person. Two
final conclusions from that same study, just because it was
(13:46):
just such a magnificent one, we have to go into
detail on a little bit more. People who are high
in agreeableness, they were also more likely to wear less
traumatic or unusual clothing, so likely to want to blend
in or wear traditional clothing. Obviously, they want to be
friends with everyone. They're agreeable. Anything that makes them stick
(14:08):
out or makes them controversial is not something they're going
to be leaning towards. And people who are high in
neuroticism actually used clothing as a form of emotional regulation
or security blankets, So apparently these individuals are more likely
to be self conscious. People hiring euroticism are more likely
(14:28):
to be self conscious and to engage in body surveillance,
so they may actually use specific clothing styles to manage
their body image. And on top of that their social
anxiety or general anxiety, often opting for safe choices, often
opting for things that are comfortable or that avoid drawing
unwanted scrutiny or judgments from other people. So that's like
(14:51):
a whole profile of all the big five, and like
how your measurement on that might turn the dial on
your clothing choice. Essentially, it's this thing we've been repeating.
What you choose to wear can be a really subtle
personality cue. And now that is not permission to go
and judge or assess every single person you are meeting
(15:12):
based on this profile, Like that must like if they're
wearing a riskwatch or if they're not wearing a risk watch,
like that must say that they aren't a kind person
or whatever. Like these aren't rules to follow. People can
very easily be outliers or shift from the norm. Here,
it's just one singular peak into fashion psychology. I think
(15:39):
clothing again, why it's so important is because it's one
of the quickest ways that we can communicate not just
our personality but our identity before you've even spoken, Like
your outfit can signal to other people I see myself
as this kind of person, or I see myself as
one of you, or I want to be seen as
one of you, or as one of these kinds of people.
(16:02):
Clothing and the role it plays in social cohesion and
social conformity is another major piece of this puzzle. So
much of personal style is tied up in who we
want to align with subcultures subgroups, little tribes with their
own codes and aesthetics and shared references, and their own
(16:23):
music tastes and values and political views. You know, a
band tea isn't just a band tea. It's a sign
of the world or the subgroup that you're in, and
with that becomes a lot of information about certain likes
or dislikes. A particular hiking shoe, it's not just a shoe.
It's a signal that you love the outdoors, but you
also love the city, and that these are the two
(16:46):
sides of you like blending in together. There is something
for everybody in that sense. A certain silhouette isn't just
a silhouette. It can reference a scene, an error, a movement,
a set of beliefs about class, about what's what gender
even means. Clothes are as political and as psychological as
they are fun. And where we can really see that
(17:09):
is in women's at leisure wear trends. You know, the
rise of conservatism came at the same time as the
rise in pilates wear and in pink matching sets and
ballet silhouettes, things that are very traditionally feminine. Now, what's
trending more in this day and age is especially for women,
trekking pants, double stacked sports bras, practical hardcore hiking shoes
(17:34):
like gore tech. It's like this real signal of that pushback, right,
this pushback against traditional feminine ideals, the fight back, the
literal protest against authoritarianism that is like taking place in
the world. You can really read a lot about what
is happening in society based on fashion trends and based
(17:55):
on where people kind of present themselves on the spectrum.
Everything you choose to wear has a message contained if
you look for it. Sometimes it's explicit, like a slogan
or a flag or a badge or a university merchandise,
your literal favorite band on a T shirt. That's an
(18:15):
explicit message of how you want to be seen. And
sometimes it is more coded. It's like anytime you see
somebody with like visible mending or stitching, that might be
a sign of sustainability values, or you know of class
or income level, or if you wear athletics were outside
(18:37):
of the gym, you know that might be a sign
of how you again, how you want to represent yourself
as a healthy person, or if you blend typically masculine
and typically feminine clothes together that signals gender nonconformity. I'm
giving you a lot of examples just to say that
the brain pays attention to this stuff, and it pays
(18:57):
attention to the stuff, yes, to categorize and to understand people,
but mainly to use clothing as a mental shortcut and
to be able to then identify the people you want
to relate to or the tribe you want to belong to,
and those that you don't see yourself close to or
as a part of your brain often scans for these
(19:18):
familiar cues because we're naturally attracted to similarity. So somebody
who is wearing a similar silhouette, similar colors, similar brands,
a similar uniform to you, that is a visual marker
of somebody who's going to be part of your in group,
and when we find them, that registers as safety and
that registers as belonging. One distinct example of this and
(19:40):
how this happens is like and how identity forms through
clothes is like punk and what made punk so big
predominantly in London in like the seventies and eighties, It
was like this counterculture reaction to economic and to like
social unrest this period and designers like Vivian Westwood like
(20:03):
they really had their rise during this time because they
utilized a lot of this like anti monarchy, anti establishment,
anti capitalist messaging that a lot of people were getting
behind and kind of flocked to, and like the androgynous
silhouettes and the ripped clothing and the tartan that was ripped,
and the non traditional hairstyles and the safety pin visual
(20:26):
that represented to people a kind of philosophy and a
kind of subgenre of people or people with certain beliefs
that they wanted to gravitate towards. And so it is
used almost like a badge. What we wear a symbolic
of how we want to be seen, which then also
(20:47):
impacts how people treat us, and that in itself either
strengthens our identity or diminishes it, or you know, it
either reinforces the cycle or again, through that learned association,
it kind of teaches us or guides us into being
somebody else. Here's something super interesting. A twenty twenty five
(21:07):
study found that we often dress more group aligned when
we feel socially uncertain. That is why micro trends and
fast fashion calor is more towards younger people. Yes, because
it's cheaper, but also because they don't know who they
are yet or where they fit in. They also don't
have a sense of personal style because they don't have
that identity, so they're really quick to buy whatever is
(21:29):
trending because of that lack of identity stability, regardless of
whether it's made poorly, because it doesn't really matter. They
don't need it to fit, they don't need it to
be something they wear in like three months, because their
identity is probably going to change as fast as the
trend is. It's also why teenagers or people in high
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school or younger people, that's where subgroups really start. Often
in younger groups of individuals, because their identity is so unstable,
there is this greatest sense of wanting to align with
a subgroup or a type of fashion or a type
of identity that is represented to fashion through fashion that
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is stable and that is that means one thing and
that can be categorized because it's kind of like this
life raft for them. It's kind of like this thing
that they can hold on to when everything else about
them is kind of like floating around. Similar to this,
it's also why when we enter a new social environment,
(22:33):
we really feel the need to reinstate or reinforce our
personal style or reinvent it. So that's why we go
and buy new outfits for a new job. It's why
freshmen always buying new wardrobes before they start university. It's
why someone who just moved to Berlin wants to dress
more Berlin. This is what it's called in clothed cognition.
It is a psychological phenomenon coined by this man, hardro Adams,
(22:56):
whereby this symbolic meaning of our clothing actually influences our
cognitive processes, which in turn affects our thoughts, affects our feelings,
affects our behavior. The researcher who coined this term in
his research, he basically discovered that this can influence everything
(23:16):
from our emotional state to how we see ourselves to
our intelligence. What you wear can literally influence how smart
you feel and how smart you are. In this now
very famous twenty twelve experiment, participants were essentially asked to
complete a bunch of attentional and memory tasks either wearing
a doctor's lab coat or not, and some were even
(23:40):
told like the lab coat was like a painter's coat.
And then some people didn't wear it at all. The
people who went into these tasks wearing the doctor's coat
did significantly better on those tasks compared to the others.
And there was a large sample size here, and the
only thing that was different. Yeah, maybe there were slight
(24:02):
personality and intelligence differences, but that was definitely controlled for.
The only major difference was that they dressed smarter. This
is why things like dopamine dressing, or dressing up for
a date, or dressing for the job you want not
the job you have, can actually change the way you
feel in those situations. A twenty ten not twenty twenty
(24:24):
twenty ten study from the University of Huddersfield actually found
that certain clothes, if they were the participant's favorites, actually
served as emotional regulators like we were talking about before,
meaning that the participants were more likely to feel able
to you know, they were more likely to feel in
control of their emotions and in control of their environment
(24:46):
if their the outfit they were wearing was their favorite.
Nothing else changed, just the outfit. And again, I could
cite so many more sources like this that essentially all
say the same thing and reach the same conclusion. Clothing
is a mental leather that we can use to direct
our emotional state, and we can therefore take advantage of
(25:09):
that knowledge to change our mood in situations where we
want more control using our clothes, like we can literally
feel more confident, more competent, more safe, more everything based
on what we're wearing. And you can do that both ways, right.
You can yes, choose what you're going to wear to
(25:30):
best embody an emotional state you want to have. You
can actually also examine the clothes that you are unconsciously
choosing at a certain time in your life to tell
you what you're avoiding or tell you what you're feeling.
Like when you suddenly find yourself unable to wear your
favorite pair of jeans or completely avoiding any tight clothing,
that's saying something about your self esteem. That's something you
(25:52):
need to focus on. Or when you find yourself leaning
more towards revealing tight, colorful clothing, maybe this is a
natural sign that, like you're really feeling yourself right now,
maybe it's time to like schedule some dates. Maybe it's
time to get out there because people are going to
see this like enigmatic, amazing side of you and like
(26:13):
the side of you that feels very, very alive. You
know what I find interesting, though, What I really find
interesting is that despite all this, like we know, personal
style is supposed to be self expression and it has
this effect and it's so emotionally powerful, and yet there
are so many moments where like, we know what we
want to wear, and we know it's going to make
(26:33):
us feel good, and we know that this is something
we like, and then we don't do it. This is
this weird contradiction with personal style. We have personal style,
and sometimes we avoid our style. I feel like, right now,
I have all these really cool clothes that I really
like in theory, that I think represent me, but I
never wear them because they're too out there or they're
too different. And I'll try them on every few weeks
(26:56):
and I'll seriously consider wearing them, and then I'll put
them back in my closet. We so often choose the
safe outfit, the one that we yes, no, we feel
comfortable in, but the one we know won't get any comments,
the one that won't make us feel too visible. Because
a lot of the time I think we're dressing not
for ourselves, but we're dressing for the imagined audience. Right
(27:20):
most of us. I know I do carry around with
us a mental panel of judges, whether they are colleagues,
whether they are strangers, whether they are friends or on
ex people on Instagram. There's this panel of people who
we almost present every outfit we wear too before we
walk out the door. It's this weird like they're not there,
(27:42):
but it's this weird social monitoring that we have in
our head. How is the general public going to feel
about my outfit? We put that before how we're going
to feel, and that is why we constantly come back
towards three or four outfits that we feel the safest
in because we feel they are the easiest. What's important
to know is that we tend to really overestimate how
(28:03):
much other people notice. Us. Psychologists I think we spoke
about this only a couple of weeks ago, call this
spotlight effect. It's that feeling that if you wear something bold,
everyone's gonna stare, everyone's gonna comment, everyone's gonna judge you
or remember you. Everyone will see how you know, the
fabric pools slightly, or like that your bra sticks out
(28:24):
a bit like that, it's a bit different from what
you're used to. They know it, We know it like
it's this weird thing, so we should just take it off,
like we just shouldn't wear that. It's so funny because
in reality, most people do not give a flying f.
They're not thinking about you, they're thinking about themselves. If
(28:44):
you listen to our how to Stop taking things personally
episode like, you'll know this very well. Only twenty two
percent of our daily thoughts are spent thinking about other people.
And often even when we are thinking about other people,
we're thinking about their behavior and relation to ourselves. So
if we're judging somebody else's outfit, it's not really about them,
it's about us and our lack of confidence to wear that.
(29:05):
If we are looking at somebody else's coat, perhaps part
of it is because we wish we had the boldness
to wear it. Social media has definitely exacerbated this. It's
definitely made this harder, and it's partially responsible for I
also think how fast trends come and go these days,
(29:27):
because we are all judging ourselves based on this impossible
what's hot what's not that changes every few weeks, Like
what was the print that was like trending a couple
of weeks ago, like dear print I was seeing all
these articles about like dear print is in, dear print
is the next thing, and then just last week there
was this TikTok being like dear print is cheap, dear
(29:47):
print is last season. You can't win when you are
judging yourself against the imagined current status or current state
of what is cool and what's not. As soon as
like you adopt the trend and the trend goes out
of style because the moment that more than fifty percent
of people are wearing what is cool, it's no longer
cool anymore, because it's gotten to public and it's no
(30:10):
longer something people can gatekeep. The author Paula D'Elia. She
talks about the fact that social media fashion culture has
actually increased self objectification and comparison pressures, and that actually
means that style and fashion has suddenly become incredibly basic,
(30:33):
and that a lot of our personal style choices are
really based on what looks good, based on a trend,
what we think will photograph well, what we think will
get likes, or what we think will look right next
to everybody else. Most of our fashion choices are for
(30:54):
the feed, and the more you lose touch with what
you actually enjoy or feel best in the worse it becomes,
and the harder it is to come back, and the
harder it is for society as a whole to have originality.
I read this other article that talks about this thing
called esthetic convergence, or a narrowing of what is most
often shown, liked, copied, and worn. So essentially, this researcher
(31:17):
did all this analysis and found that we're all starting
to look the same, not just like physically in terms
of our faces and our bodies, but fashion because it's
becoming more and more trend based, and competitive brands know
that the only way to make a profit is to
follow what is trending and what people like in the moment.
They're not going to create something different or new because
(31:40):
that's going to be less likely to sell. It's not
the current style, and who's not wearing the current style,
So all our options are becoming increasingly similar and increasingly
siloed into categories. So there's like the cool girl brand
the athletic brand, and they don't really have as much crossover,
which is why we feel like we have less and
(32:01):
less choice. It also explains why I know I've personally
noticed trends are always just one degree, a one degree
shift from the last trend, like they're never that revolutionary.
Take like animal print. A couple of years ago it
was cow, and then the slight change was that it's cheetah,
and like now it's deer, or like it went from
(32:23):
like matching gym sets to like cling girl polarate sets
to like why two K yoga mom set. Nothing is
ever a full sweep. It's always just this tiny change.
No brand, no fashion house is ever gonna move too
far because they don't want to fall off the balance
of something that is fresh and new without being too
different and therefore difficult to market. Like this is a question,
(32:48):
I genuinely want you to ask yourself, when was the
last time you saw something new. It's not because people
aren't inventive. It's definitely not because people are boring. It's
because we are social learners, and fashion is one of
the fastest moving social signals that we have to conform to.
You know, in social psychology, conformity is what happens when
(33:10):
we adjust our behavior to what the group expects. That
is what's happening with our fashion choices. Sometimes that's because
we genuinely believe the group is right. This is known
as information or influence, so you know, if everybody's doing it,
they probably know what's good. And sometimes it's just because
we don't actually like the trend, we just fear rejection.
This is known as normative influence. So I don't want
(33:32):
to look weird, even though I hate those added our
stampers or whatever. Like everybody's wearing them, so I better
wear them. Either way. The result is the same. We
all drift towards the center of what feels socially safe,
and clothing is especially vulnerable because it is so public
and because it is tied in yet again to our
(33:57):
identity and to how we see our elves. If you
want to reclaim your personal style, here are four really
easy ways to do it. Number one, reduce the wardrobe clutter.
You know those pieces that I was talking about that
(34:19):
we own and we would never wear, but we just
keep them because they're cool or because we bought them
because they were like the trend, Like we want to
be the kind of person who's gonna wear them, but
we don't. For me, it's like this big fluffy hat
and a couple other things, but the fluffy hat in particular,
these pieces are mental clutter, and they are blocking your
personal style by increasing a sense of decision fatigue, essentially
(34:43):
giving you more options to consider when that option isn't
really a true option, but you feel like you have
to consider it, you feel like it's kind of there,
and when you do finally choose it, you're never going
to be comfortable in it anyways. So basically you're just
slowing down the process of gain geting dressed every morning.
So I need you to do a closet perche. When
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you do a closet perge, what I need you to
ask yourself is have I worn this in the past
three months or have I worn it at all? And
if it's not something like a big winter coat or
like your wedding dress or a summer dress, you know
you're gonna wear heaps when the sun is back up.
Sell it on deep Up, give it to a friend,
sell it on vinted. Start not from scratch, but from
(35:26):
your favorites. Basically, get down to that capsule wardrobe. And
speaking of favorites, also notice the things you keep rebuying
in a slightly different font or in a slightly different version.
I realized this the other day when I was looking
back at pictures of me from twenty twenty two for this,
like I don't know something I was doing on Instagram,
(35:47):
and I was looking at this photo and I realized
I was wearing the exact same outfit in those pictures
as the one I was wearing just that like as
I was looking on my phone, and none of those
items were the same items. Like I had replaced my
wardrobe from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty six, and
(36:07):
I was still wearing the same thing, just not with
the same clothes. And I genuinely I wish I could
you could see this side by side. It was like bootcut,
baggy white jeans, cropped kind of like cream gray cashmere
type V neck sweater, literally the same shoes, And I
was like, why did I throw those pieces away only
to replace them like three years later. I think it
(36:29):
was because at some stage, like I tried to reinvent
my style and I tried to like do this whole
like overhaul of what I wore, And it was this
weird thing where it's like, this is my equilibrium that
I keep coming back to, like as much as I
try and be this kind of person or whatever, like
there are some core things that I'm always gonna have
in my closet. I know for me that is like
(36:49):
a chunky blue sweater, a stripe blue collar shirt. I
literally used to wear them to high school when I
was fifteen. I looked like a little business woman and
like a pair of blue jeans. And if you go
through your pictures, you will notice the things you always
end up buying and wearing even as the trends change.
And that is your personal style. That is the base
(37:13):
of your wardrobe. So if you're going to invest in anything,
invest in having good quality versions of those historical style
pieces that you can structure the rest of your wardrobe around.
I would also say create your own style archetype. Archetypes
are everywhere in society, everywhere in psychology, from jung to
(37:35):
Greek mythology to the seven feminine archetypes. You know, the maiden,
the mother, the mystic, the huntress, blah blah blah blah blah.
It is such a great mental shortcut for figuring out
what you want to wear and why you want to
wear it. And you can make your own fashion archetype.
This is how you're going to do it. You're gonna
begin with some descriptors. What do you need your clothes
(37:56):
to do for you day to day? What are your
clothes need to make you feel like and look like? Comfortable? Flexible?
Do they need to make you look effortless? Smart? You know,
if you're an artist, what does that mean? Maybe if
you're a social worker, it has to be understated, grounded,
if you work in carpentry. Choose three words that are
(38:19):
essentials for your clothes, and those are your basis. So
mine are like comfortable, smart, and I would say unassuming.
That's just what the preference for what I need my
clothes to do for me. Then add your aspirational words.
So think of five people whose style you like, really admire.
Steven Nicks, Jennifer Lawrence, Asap, Rocky, Emma Chamberlain, I don't know,
(38:39):
Adam Sandler, whatever. Five people who's clothes you really admire.
Get on Pinterest, get on any platform, make a PowerPoint presentation.
Put a bunch of their outfits that you love on
that PowerPoint slide. What are the core like words or
themes that define all of those pieces or all of
those outfits? Bold, branded, colorful, maximalist, chaotic, athletic, simple, like whatever,
(39:06):
it is, find the connecting words, choose two of those words,
and then identify the word that would best describe your
personality or how you want to be seen or how
you see yourself. So like dreamer, mystic, intellectual, adventurer, natural, entrepreneur.
What word if you could choose just one, just one
(39:28):
word sits at like the center of your identity, as
your archetype, then you put it all together. The effortless
but bold entrepreneur, the sleek, flowy mystic, the smart, colorful intellectual,
the unassuming, accessorized creative. This sounds so cliche, It sounds
(39:48):
so silly, I know, but you have no idea how
helpful this is mentally how much of an identity shortcut
this has been for me in realizing my personal style. Actually,
in a trend heavy society, if I find myself wanting
to buy something, especially an impulse purchase, especially if it's
a micro trend, I go back to my archetype and
(40:12):
I basically ask, is this something like a smart, playful
scholar would wear? That's my archetype, by the way, that
feels very private to share. But smart, playful scholar, That's
how I make all my clothing choices. And it really
really helps if it doesn't match that and if that's
how I want to be seen, and obviously you could
have a couple if you want, but I'm not gonna
(40:33):
wear it. Like I'm not gonna wear something that like
a maximalist entrepreneur would wear, because I'm not a maximist entrepreneur.
I'm not gonna wear something that like a bold I
don't know what's what's some of the words like a
I don't I was gonna say simple scientist, but that's
kind of rude. But you know, like all these other archetypes,
they're wonderful and I'm sure they all dress well, but
(40:54):
they're not me, and so it stops me from this
is so cliche, but like trying to be something that
I'm not trying to be, like trying to dress a
way that like I'm just never going to enjoy. I
would also say, kind of as part of this as well,
pick a uniform similar to that kind of historical analysis
of past items. We were talking about, what is the
(41:15):
staatepole outfit you wear almost every day? Like blue jeans, blazer, sneaker,
midi skirt, tight top, boots, soup pant, cool shoe, tope bag, like,
what is your uniform when in doubt, just change one
item from your uniform every day. You know, I didn't
come up with that advice. I heard somebody else speak
(41:36):
about it. But again, it stops you from buying pieces
that you have nothing to wear with because if they
wouldn't go with the uniform, chances are like they aren't
going to go with the other things that you own either,
And it keeps everything kind of centered around what you
know you already lean towards. Finally, I feel like this
is such an underrated tip, but pay attention to what
(41:59):
you are drawing onto outside of clothing and fashion. If
you are committed to finding your personal style, Often things
that are seemingly unrelated to fashion are the most inspiring
things because of the feelings they evoke. I and I'm
saying that is somebody who doesn't understand fashion at all.
I've just been told. But it might be like a
certain color, or like a mood, or your favorite film,
(42:21):
or an album cover or a music video, or like
even nature. The one I always think of is like
the Mum and Beer movie. How many people dress the
way they do because of the Muma mea movie or
abba look at tons of different things, look at all
these different influences, and allow that to inspire you. Because
I think fast fashion can make our pool of inspiration
(42:45):
so narrow. You're going to try your best to broaden
this in whatever way you can by looking elsewhere so
that I don't know if this is an ambition. Maybe
you're happy to look like everybody else and honestly power too.
But if that's not your ambition, this is the way
to prevent that from happening. Seek inspiration from beyond what
(43:05):
is the easiest thing to sell you, and what is
the easiest thing to sell you because everybody likes because
it is trending. Also vinted, deep hop, op shops, charity
shops do that as much as possible. This has nothing
to do with psychology. I just think the most stylish
people I know know how to hunt for their clothes,
and they know how to find yeah, really basic things,
(43:27):
but versions that very few people have, Like the white
T shirt. My friend found like this crazy white T
shirt from like the seventies the other day, I'm vinted
for like five pounds, Like that's incredible. Nobody else has
that white T shirt. Like it's about taking yeah those
fundamental things and just making it more fun and enjoyable,
(43:47):
because I think that's what fashion should really be about.
Our final golden rule for personal style is about impulse shopping.
And I have to sneak this one in here because
it is so important. I used to have a huge
problem with impulse shopping. I think a real reason why
our personal style gets diluted and gets mashed up and
(44:09):
like ripped apart is because we just like because of
emotional regulation in a way, Like this is something that
I found. I would just shop when I felt sad
or lonely, and I wasn't being intentional with the pieces
I was buying, so I would just have all this
like crap, and none of it went together, and I
(44:30):
felt I'd feel like guilty one week, and then I'd
feel the emotions come back and I'd overspend the next week.
Then I'd feel guilty. Wait seventy two hours forty eight
seventy two hours before you buy anything you want to buy,
unless it is something that you literally could not live without,
Like if you genuinely are on holiday and you've run
out of underwear, you can obviously break the forty eight
(44:53):
hour rule, but nobody needs like another pair of your
fourth pair of blue jeans instantly as soon as you're
seeing them. And even if you do, even if, for example,
you need a skirt or you need like a suit
jacket for like an upcoming event. If that is the case,
make it your mission then to find the best version
of that at the price point you can not just
(45:15):
the first one you see. I think when it comes
to personal style and the psychology behind personal style, yes,
it is about understanding your personality, and yes, it is
about understanding how style and identity contribute to each other
and go hand in hand. I also think then there's
this like second element where you understand it and then
(45:36):
you put it into practice. And if this is a
priority for you, and if you want to look, if
you want to have like that brand, if you want
to have that real, identifiable Steve Jobs esque kind of
look like people know that those are the clothes you wear.
You've got to be intentional, You've got to be focused
(45:57):
on what it is that you actually like, and in
many ways you have to actually buy less. All of
those tips that I kept coming back to for that
won't just mind that as tips from like stylists and
I don't even know the words, so obviously I'm not
as included as they would be. But like fashion editors
and fashion journalists, that's the word. They're all about consuming less, actually,
(46:24):
and I think that's really this real thing. The thing
that's making us have less personal style. Is this just
like periodic blasting of the trend of the season, and
this like periodic, this periodic like I don't know, I
don't want to say archetype, but yeah, like archetype, like
(46:46):
this year, this month we're fairy core, and next month
we're cottage core, and then we're like grunge core, and
all these things and all that is just asking you
to buy more and to keep these big, fast fashion
businesses in business, and it's not doing great things for
your personal style. It's obviously not doing great things for
the planet either. If you want to break out of that,
(47:08):
you've got to kind of look away from trends. You've
got to consume more slowly and more intentionally, and you've
got to focus on like the real soul of your
clothes and how that is like a direct peek into
your personality. This is going to sound so woo woo.
Maybe I've gone too far here. Maybe it is time
to end this episode, but like, this just came to
my mind. Honestly, maybe that's the assessment you have to
(47:31):
do before you buy anything. You have to genuinely look
at this item and be like, does this say something
about me? Like could somebody say? Could somebody tell you
something about the person I am? From this item? And
why I'm choosing to buy it? A bit wacky. I
don't know you can take that or leave that, but
I think I'm going to start doing that. I think
that is a great way to make more intentional purchases.
(47:52):
So thank you for listening if you have made it
this far. Our question of the day, if you are
listening on Spotify, what is your unifor slash? What is
the item of clothing that you have had the longest
and why? I will go first. It is a Brandy
Melville Khaki snklet that I bought in twenty thirteen, and
(48:16):
I actually don't own it anymore. I only recently threw
it out, and that synklet has not been wearable outside
slash doesn't didn't even fit for years. But it was
this weird thing where I was like, really, I was
really holding on to it tight and I couldn't let
it go. So what is your version of the Brandy
Melville Khaki singlet? I want to know? Leave a comment.
(48:38):
Thank you, as always to our lovely, wonderful researcher Libby Cobbett.
She really did some amazing research for this episode, so
we appreciate her so much. Make sure as well that
if you're listening and you're in the US or Canada,
you give us a watch on Netflix. That is correct.
Video episodes of the podcast are now on Netflix, and
we would really appreciate it if you are in those
(48:59):
two countries checking it out and telling us what you think.
You can also follow us on substack if you want
the episode transcript for this episode, including links to any
of the studies. But until next time, be safe, be kind,
be gentle to yourself. We will talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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