← Her Style Podcast | Shopping, Color Palettes, Fashion, Wardrobe, Outfits, Clothing
Her Style Podcast | Shopping, Color Palettes, Fashion, Wardrobe, Outfits, Clothing
218 | Breaking the Jeans and T-Shirt Rut: Effortless Ways to Elevate Your Everyday Outfits
00:21:09
If you’re ready to break out of the rut of wearing the same basic jeans and t-shirt on repeat, then I’ve got you, friend. In today’s episode, I’m sharing all the do’s and don’ts of everyday outfit styling! Spoiler alert: You don’t...
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- [00:00]
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If you're ready to break out of the rut of wearing the same basic jeans and T shirt on repeat, then I've got you, friend. In today's episode, I'm sharing all the do's and don'ts of everyday outfit styling. Spoiler alert. You don't need a whole new wardrobe and you definitely don't need to spend hours getting ready in the morning. By incorporating just one or two of these simple strategies, you'll be able to elevate your outfit so you can feel effortlessly stylish every single day.
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Welcome to Her Style Podcast where we're all about empowering you to show up and get dressed every day with confidence. I'm your host, Heather Riggs, a 15 year and counting certified image consultant and color specialist ready to build a wardrobe and a personal style you love. Let's get started.
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Before we dive into all the free tips I have for you. For you today, I want to say if this is something you really struggle with, if you want to uplevel your style, if you're tired of defaulting to the same basic outfits, and if you don't really understand how to adapt the styles that you see online to work for your personal tastes, your lifestyle, your body, and your budget, then let's team up and tackle this together. I would love to walk you through the exact steps you need to style yourself with confidence inside my 90 day group coaching program, Her Style Collective. The doors are open. You can join us and begin transforming your outfits and wardrobe today. There's no need to wait or struggle for one more minute or to keep spinning your wheels trying to figure this all out on your own. Join me inside Her Style Collective right now at herstylellc.com collective and let's reach your style goals together in the fastest and most efficient way possible. This is the perfect time to start revamping your wardrobe for the spring season. If you join us this week, your wardrobe and outfits will be fully dialed in by May and members start seeing results within the first two weeks of the program alone. I would love to work with you at a fraction of the investment you would make hiring an in person stylist for just one day. And we get to make over your closet and your outfits from top to bottom. We cover absolutely everything that you need to rinse and repeat this process season after season. Inside this program. You can kiss your style rec goodbye indefinitely. Just head to herstylellc.com collective right now to get started. All right friend, I have some really simple outfit styling strategies to share with you in this episode today we're talking about the do's and don'ts of getting dressed with a focus on easy, effortless everyday looks. Because nine times out of 10 I think that's what you and I are wearing, right? We might have the occasional special event or work function or social activity, but if I learned anything from teaming up with you at the Wardrobe Revamp Bootcamp last month, it's that you're struggling to get ready for the simple everyday activities like working from home, running errands, going to your kids sporting events. The things that don't necessarily feel glamorous but that you still want to show up looking polished and stylish for nonetheless. And the good news is we don't need to overcomplicate this. You don't have to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe. You can implement just one or two of these tips that I'm going to share with you and I see every single day working with clients. What a big difference a few small adjustments can make in your overall outfit and presentation. So let's start with the do's on this list. I have six strategies that you can try. I would suggest maybe just pick one to test out this week and then work on building from there. You don't need to do all of this overnight. So here is the list of six do's when it comes to everyday outfit styling and the first thing is to consider adding a coordinating belt, shoe and or handbag to make your look feel a whole lot more polished and intentional. I had a one on one session with one of my clients clients recently and we were looking over her style Mood board and trying to figure out if there was anything else that she really needed or could do to up level her outfits to create the really classic elegant look that she desires. And at first when we were talking about this, she thought she might need to look at jewelry and accessories, but when we took a look at her style Mood board, one of the things that really stood out to me is that most of the looks on there had this coordinating belt, shoes and handbag. It was very simple, it wasn't overdone, it wasn't super dramatic, it was a really understated element, but it really made all of the looks feel completely polished and put together. My client was so excited because she realized she didn't need to buy a whole bunch of new jewelry or accessories. She didn't even need to stretch herself beyond her personal tastes. She would be able to easily recreate some of these looks with items that she already had in her wardrobe, maybe picking up one new colored belt to work with, a pair of shoes or a handbag that she had in her closet. But it wasn't anything extreme and it was an easy to implement action step that she could start taking right away. So that is one tip that I want to share with you is to try adding some coordinating accessories just to bring everything together, make your outfit feel a little bit more polished and dialed in. The second thing that you could do is consider upgrading some of your basics. It's going to be really important to keep your personal taste in mind with this tip. But there are some easy things that you could do to take your basic pieces to the next level. For example, if you have a great basic cardigan, maybe you to swap out the plastic buttons for some beautiful pearl or jewel encrusted buttons just to make things feel again, a little bit more fancy, a little bit more feminine, whatever suits your personal tastes. One of the personal style coaches in her style collective gave one of the members some advice that she could switch out the lining in one of her everyday blazers for something with a great pattern and a pop of color. So when she cuffs up the sleeves, you would get that little accent of a beautiful print or maybe even something more creative. And of course this would add a little bit of color to the outfit and really style up a basic jeans and T shirt look and take it to a whole other level. Another thing that you can do this is tip number three is to incorporate an accent color or a print into your outfit. If you are kind of defaulting to the same basic color palette, maybe it is just a basic denim jean and a simple white T shirt. Could you bring another accent color into your outfit? Keep in mind the basic design principle of the rule of threes. This means that generally things look better together in groups of threes. So rather than doing a two color outfit, bringing in that third accent color, even if it's another neutral, can really help to pull everything together and make your outfit feel more dynamic and elevated. So again, consider adding one accent color, whether it's in the shoes that you pair with your outfit for the day, in a great jacket or layering piece, or even just a handbag or a small accessory in your outfit. This can make such a big impact without any extra legwork. The fourth thing that you can do is to invest in meaningful everyday jewelry. If your outfits are feeling a little too blah, I think one of the first things that you could do is add some accessories to make it feel more polished and put together and what I would recommend if you are someone who likes a minimal look. If you don't like overthinking the art of getting dressed every day. If you just want to be able to throw a few pieces on and get ready super fast in the morning, it can be helpful to have a couple of really meaningful everyday jewelry pieces to go to. I know that I am a stylist and image consultant and I do have a really fun jewelry collection, but most days I am wearing a simple pair of basic earrings, whether it's a small set of hoops or huggies on my ears or I have a really great cubic zirconia set of earrings that I picked up at Nordstrom that just make all of my outfits feel way more put together and it's not anything I have to think about. I generally don't even switch out this jewelry. I also have a really minimal gold necklace that I wear with most of my pieces and I only usually think to swap out my jewelry if I am going out for a date night or an occasion with friends or something a little bit more special and I do want to dress it up or try something different. But if you can invest in just a couple of meaningful everyday pieces, whether you get something that has your significant other or your children's initials on it or something with your birthstone, it can be anything that you want. The sky is the limit. I would encourage you to get out there and find some inspiration. Maybe check Etsy for some ideas. But really basic everyday jewelry can just help your outfit feel again, so much more elevated, a lot more beautiful, and of course a little bit more interesting than not wearing any jewelry or accessories at all. The fifth thing that you can do is to play around with your proportions. This one is a little bit trickier and it's going to take some more trial and error or doing some more of the legwork to figure out your body's proportions and what works best for you and your overall outfits. But for now you could just start experimenting. Try tucking in your tops in different ways. I have a whole blog article on that that I will link up in the show notes for you to give you some ideas. You might want to experiment with various pant rises and shirt lengths just to find some different combinations that work well for you. But again, altering your proportions and the way that your outfit reads from top to bottom can again make a really big difference and take your basic pieces to a whole other level. And the last thing that I want you to do if this works within your budget, is to Take your outfits to the next level with some tailoring. I really believe that fit is everything when it comes to looking put together. So you want to make sure that your pieces appear to be made for you. You don't want to be wearing things that are sloppy or that are a little too tight or oversized. So if you do have some basic pieces in your wardrobe that you really love and that aren't fitting you optimally, it can make a massive difference just to have a little bit of basic tailoring done. Whether it's having a T shirt taken in a little bit or shortened to the best length for you. If it's hemming your pants to work best with the shoes that you typically wear on a day to day basis, whatever you need to do, consider finding a local seamstress, taking your pieces to Nordstrom if you want, or any local boutique or department store that offers on site alterations, and see what you can do to have some of those essential wardrobe pieces work even better for you. This is one of Jennifer Aniston's secrets to an enviably effortless style. And if it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me. So that is the last tip that I want to share with you to try to do. Now let's talk about some don'ts and I think that these are equally important. These are things that you want to try to avoid as best you can. The first is defaulting to the same color over and over and over. I talk to so many women who say that black is their go to when it comes to getting dressed, and I have no beef with black. I think it's a beautiful color. I think it can definitely work. It's something that's easy to pair with all the pieces in your wardrobe, although it can be a little bit heavy and overpowering for some people, myself included. I think it's really great. If you can mix up your neutrals, you might have a great go to outfit formula, whether it is jeans and a T shirt or otherwise. But you might be feeling a little bit bored if you're constantly wearing the same color combinations over and over and over. So you might want to consider swapping out even your basic neutrals. Instead of black, try the navy blue pant or instead of a beige T shirt, try the rich nutmeg color. You don't have to go outlandish in terms of the colors that you're wearing. You don't have to switch your color scheme from black to to canary yellow, but you might want to make some subtle Changes just to keep things feeling really fresh and a little bit more playful in your color combination. Some really good, universally flattering options for you to try are navy, as I said, eggplant, a deep teal, even a simple ivory can work much better for a lot of people than a true bright white. So start playing around with some different color combinations and see what feels good for you. All right, the second thing that I don't want you to do is to just wear your pieces. Instead, I encourage you to style your pieces. I know it's a very subtle distinction, but if you Google this, wearing your pieces versus styling your pieces, you're going to find tons of ideas on social media and YouTube to get you started with this. And it really goes back to a lot of things that I shared with you in the do column of today's Episode, which is adding some different accessories to your look, trying to tuck things in differently. It's the difference between putting on a T shirt and jeans and running out the door and putting on a T shirt and jeans and then styling it up to be more flattering and creative and intentionally put together. Now, what I would recommend that you do is don't just take to the Internet and find all these ideas of things that then you're going to think you need to buy for your wardrobe. Instead, start your search based around the pieces that you already have. So if you do love wearing T shirts on the daily, maybe start by outfit styling ideas for T shirts and then see what different looks and ideas come up just to help get your wheels turning. All right. The third thing that I don't want you to do is pick your outfits in a hurry. I know we're all short on time. I know that you want to get dressed quickly and efficiently in the morning, but I think that you are more likely to default to the same old standbys if you are getting dressed really fast in the morning. So I would encourage you, if you can, to plan ahead. Instead, maybe at the start of the week, on Sunday, you set aside 30 minutes or whatever small window of time you can steal away for yourself and try to plan out a couple of outfits for the week. What you're going to find when you take a little bit of time to do this intentionally is that you will have some space to be more creative. So instead of just grabbing the same basic thing that you wore the week before, you could look at your closet as a whole and say, okay, if I know that I want to wear these bottoms tomorrow, what different tops would work with this in my wardrobe to maybe mix it up a little bit and have some more fun. Ideally, I would love to see you start building an outfit library for yourself so that you have some great pre planned go to looks for all the different activities on your calendar. I have a whole podcast episode that will walk you through doing that. I'll link that up in the show notes as well. But the idea is to get ahead of your week, even just the day before. If you can think about what you have going on tomorrow and plan out an outfit, just take five minutes to do that tonight. I think you will have a little bit more fun if you can give yourself that time and space to think ahead and be ready for your day. All right, the next thing I don't want you to do is to carbon copy online outfit inspiration. What I see with this typically is that a couple of things can happen. Either number one, that outfit is going to fall flat when you try to put it on for yourself for any number of reasons, which I'll talk about in a minute. And that can really send us down a comparison spiral of why is this working for everyone else and not for me? There's something wrong with my body, my budget, my colors, whatever the case might be, it can really send you on a mental loop that is not going to serve you in showing up with confidence. So that's my first concern with just directly trying to copy paste someone else's outfit onto yourself. And the other concern that I have is if you are blindly copying other people's outfits, it can end up taking your wardrobe to a place that doesn't really feel like yourself. If you are copying what you're seeing everybody else doing on social media, on YouTube channels, or even in your local community, I think this can be a really quick path to a wardrobe that just doesn't feel like you. So instead what I want you to do is adapt any online outfit inspiration to work for you. Your personal style, your features, your body type, your personal coloring. There is a critical step that I don't want you to miss between seeing an outfit that inspires you and wearing that outfit that inspires you inspires you. And this critical step is asking yourself the question of how can I make this work better for me? You might need to adapt it in even just one small way to make it apply better for you and your life. So this is something that I teach in depth inside Her Style Collective. I would love to help you if this is something that you've been struggling with, to apply the outfit inspiration that you see online if things just are not hitting the mark, this is really easy to troubleshoot, but you need to know what to look for and what questions to ask. I do have another podcast episode that will help you walk through some of this too. It's episode number 30, which is why you struggle to pull off Pinterest outfit Inspo and what to do about it. So that will help give you a jump start as well. All right, the fourth thing I don't want you to do is to impulse shop as a way to fill a void in your closet and your outfits. What I see often as well is that when women are stuck in a wardrobe and an outfit rut, if you are wearing the same things all the time, you might feel like you need to go out and buy a lot of new stuff in order to feel more creative in order to freshen up your looks. And that might be true. You might have some legitimate gaps in your wardrobe that need to be filled. But I don't want you to impulse shop your way to new outfits. Instead, I really do want you to get strategic. Shop your own closet first. See what looks you can recreate with pieces that you already own and then be really strategic about what you buy again. We're not going to dive down into that rabbit hole today. I have a ton of other episodes to support you with this. And of course this is explicitly what we do inside Her Style Collective Together. We're super strategic about filling in the gaps of your wardrobe so that you can recreate the looks that you want to work within your budget. But my best advice is do not run to your nearest store or your favorite brand online and immediately start filling up your cart. Instead, be a little bit more scrappy with what's already in your closet and think critically about what you need to really move the needle in your wardrobe in the most efficient way. And the last don't on this list is please friend, don't try too hard if you are on this style journey. If you've been feeling really frustrated with your wardrobe, I know that it can be tempting to blindly follow trends, to try to keep up with what all the kids are doing, to pile on the jewelry and the colors, and to take your wardrobe to a way more creative or fashion forward level. And again, there's nothing wrong with that unless it doesn't feel like you. I don't want you to try so hard that you're pushing yourself way past your comfort zone to look like other people and to not feel true to yourself. I don't want you to pile things on to the point that you're feeling self conscious or you look back later and wonder what you were thinking. So remember that generally speaking, less is more. Maybe just pick one trend to test out for this season. And above all else, you've got to trust your instincts. You know what works best for you. You need to feel confident in your outfit. So despite what anyone else is telling you to wear, you need to feel good in the outfits that you're styling and putting together. So a lot of this really does just come down to taking a little bit more time, putting a bit more thought into building your outfits, mixing your pieces up in new and interesting ways, and having some fun when you get dressed without pushing yourself way past your limits. So friend, I hope that this was helpful. I hope it gave you a ton of ideas to up level your everyday looks with ease again. Go back to that list of do's. Pick one to try out this week. I would love to hear what you're going to do. First you can head to our free community over on facebook@herstylellc.com community leave me a comment if you listen to this episode and let me know what you're gonna try out this week. And of course, if you want to take this a step further, team up together to ensure that you implement all of this advice with clarity and ease, then I would love to work together inside her Style collective. The link to join us is in the show notes or you can head to herstylellc.com collective and get started today. No matter what feels like the next best step for you. I hope that you can have a little bit more fun, feel, re inspired and express your creativity when you get dressed this week.
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Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you want to stop copying everyone else's style and start dialing in your own spoon worthy signature look, head over to take my free 5 minute personal style quiz which you can find at the link in the show notes. If you've enjoyed our time together, please be sure to rate, review and subscribe to her style podcast so you never miss an episode. Finally, I invite you to make this.
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A two way conversation and send me.
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A DM over on Instagram eatherrigstyle to let me know how I can best support you on your style journey. I'm always here for you in style and service. Until next time.