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Foreign the Everyday Style School is officially on summer vacation, but that doesn't mean I'm going to leave you hanging for the next few months. I'm taking a break from our longer episodes and instead each week you're going to get a bite sized episode sharing something I think will help you save time or save money and get the wardrobe you've always wanted to. If you're new here, I'm your host Jennifer Macchi. Mary I've been dressing Women for over 25 years and I'm on a mission to help you love the way you look every single day. One thing I've noticed I say a lot on this show is along the lines of something I say a lot is very meta, right? Over the years, I have amassed a huge mental database of tips and quips that I repeat over and over. But unless you listen to every word I've ever said on every podcast, every video, every style coaching session, you've probably missed some. And even if you have listened to every word I've ever said, there is a ton of value in hearing things again so that they can really start to sink in and start to change your thoughts and your habits around style. This summer, I have rounded up what I think are 10 of my best style tips or style thoughts, and I thought I would share them with you in this series that I'm calling the Everyday Style School Summer Shorts. We're going to start the series with something I think is so fundamentally important to understand and something that can have a huge impact not only on the way you look, but also how you feel about yourself. This one is the foundation of everything we do at Everyday Style. So let's just get to today's thought, which is dressing well doesn't mean dressing up. I know this concept seems pretty straightforward, and it is, but it's something I saw women really struggle with on a deeper level when we did the Style Made Simple Challenge back in May. So I thought today it would be worth spending just a little bit more time on. In this episode, I want to talk about how the two are different, what happens when we don't understand the difference, and then wrap up with what you can do to start embracing the idea that you can have the style you want even when you're not going anywhere special. Let's start with the difference. Dressing up is what most of us think of when we hear the word style. It's putting on your best outfit for date night or wearing a suit for a work presentation. Dressing up is temporary. It's often tied to situations or events or other people. And it's something that we usually save for when style, quote unquote matters. There's nothing wrong with dressing up. I love a good dress up moment. But if that's your only relationship with style, then what you're basically saying is that looking good is only for special occasions and that you can only have style when all the conditions are right. On the other hand, dressing well is totally different. It's about how you show up every single day, regardless of where you're going or what you're doing. It's about having clothes that are not only functional, but for the day you're having, but that make you feel good mentally as well as physically. Dressing well is about you. Dressing well is personal. When you're dressing well, you're not putting on an outfit that you can't wait to take off as soon as you get home. You're just like living your life, being the best version of yourself. Dressing well isn't wearing a suit to the grocery store. It's just choosing flattering jeans over frumpy ones. It's not different clothes that aren't appropriate for your real life. It's better versions of the things you're actually going to wear. There are a couple of problems with conflating dressing up and dressing well. The first one is this. And I don't know about you, but my life has gotten a whole lot less special over the years. Fancy date nights and Friday nights out as a single girl have given way to family dinners and early mornings at kids sports. Working from home means I no longer have to dress up or frankly, get dressed at all. Only a small fraction of my life requires dressing up. And if I only dressed well at those times, I would spend, I don't know, 97% of my life in clothes that I don't feel fabulous in. And that sounds awful to me, but let's dig a little bit deeper because I just told you my life has gotten less special over the years. But that isn't really true. I have a wonderful life made up of special moments disguised as everyday life. Silly things like impromptu lunch dates with my husband of over 20 years to fancy places like Chick Fil a in the middle of the day. I like the way I look, my energy level is raised and I show up differently to my everyday life, which lets me be more aware and more appreciative of of the mundane moments that are actually a lot more meaningful. And that's really important because again, 97% of the stuff that happens to me is in that no need to dress up category. And if you're thinking, well, Jen, that's all well and good for you, but I really only feel the need to dress well when I see people or when it matters. Let me ask you this. Do you struggle to get dressed for those moments too? I bet you do, and here's why. When your version of style is occasion specific, you probably find yourself shopping every time you need to go somewhere, buying things last minute, never having the right things, or never feeling completely finished. Because style isn't a habit that you are developing in that 90 plus percent of life. It's almost impossible to pull it off in those few and far between moments. If you don't have fabulous jeans for your everyday life, you can't throw on jeans and a cute top and feel good. If you throw that cute top on with your frumpy everyday jeans, you're just going to feel even frumpier. What happens to women who think style is something to bust out for special occasions is that they don't feel good when it, quote unquote, doesn't matter, but they also don't feel good when it does. Dressing well is about feeling good when it doesn't matter, and also feeling good when it does. And which approach would you prefer? I know my answer. Here's what I saw during the Style Made simple challenge. On day one, we talked about this very thing. We talked about dressing well for the life you really live for the day you're really having and how it's not for other people. It's about how it makes you show up. And every woman was on board. Yes, I want to feel good. Yes, style matters to me. For me, it was a very up with women moment and I loved it. But then during the week, during the daily outfit challenges, I saw a lot of I'm not going anywhere today, so I skipped this one or I'm working from home so I didn't dress up. Even though by design, none of the challenges had anything to do with dressing up. And a couple of women even posted in our community about not caring what they wore when they weren't doing anything special. So they were really struggling with doing the challenge at all that week. And I am not here to judge their feelings or be like, I can't believe they weren't changed forever by a 30 minute video from me. No, not at all. Just the opposite. It made me realize that this is a mindset shift that takes some time and a habit that takes some effort to change. But it has to start with the idea that you can dress well for literally every part of your life without dressing up. So here's what I want you to do this week. I want you to think about how you can up level your daily outfits or without. This is a key. Without pushing yourself into a higher level of dressiness. For example, this morning as I was getting dressed and I knew I would be recording this episode, I decided to practice what I preached. I first, when I got dressed, I was wearing cute denim shorts and a cute graphic tee. It was a cute outfit, but it's kind of a default summer uniform for me. So I decided to switch out the shorts for red. Bright red, white, wide leg linen pants. It's basically the same level of formality. And all the things I could have or would have done in my denim shorts I can do in my red pants. And actually the pull on linen pants are much more comfortable than the jean shorts, but the whole thing just looks a little bit more up leveled. That's dressing well without dressing up. I want you to resist the urge to dress up on your quest to dress well. This is a natural tendency for our minds to immediately go there and think that, oh, I want to put myself together a little bit more so I have to dress up. And I can't tell you how many clients I had to talk out of buying dressier clothes. When we shopped together, I knew what they wanted was really just to feel more put together. But I also knew that if a mom who normally wore tees and leggings every day bought nothing but dress pants and blouses, she would have nothing to wear on the random Tuesdays where she wasn't going anywhere and she wouldn't feel more put together in the long run. My goal was to help her dress better for the way she really lived. So what did we do? We bought better leggings, we bought better T shirts, we bought better jeans. We bought those things for her. So if you're wearing jeans this week, choose the best jeans you've got. If you're wearing a T shirt, choose the one that fits the best and has the most style. Push yourself within the boundaries of what's realistic and what's appropriate for your day. That is how you dress well without dressing up. All right, that is all for today's summer shorts. I hope this mini episode inspires you to think differently about how you get dressed and what you wear, even when you don't think it matters. Remember, the majority of life is lived in the everyday, which is why every episode I say your everyday matters. So get dressed for it. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week.
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And that's a wrap. Thank you for listening today. If you're loving the Everyday Style School podcast, I'd like to invite you to become a member of the Style Circle. It's our monthly all access membership that gives you everything we create to make style easy so you can save time and money, have easier mornings and more confidence all day long. You get our seasonal capsule wardrobe guides, all of the master classes we offer, and our exclusive members only podcast, the Everyday Style School. Extra credit. Plus you're invited to the Facebook community where you can get even more style support and inspiration. I would love to get to know you and support your style journey. It's just $19 a month less than the cost of clearance shirt you're never going to wear. Come join me and make your Everyday style easier.