How to Stand Out in a Sea of Style Sameness
Feeling like everyone’s style suddenly looks the same?
You’re not imagining it. In this Nat Chat, Natalie breaks down why algorithms are shaping our style more than we think—and how to break out of the cycle. From rethinking influence to building a wardrobe rooted in personal history, favorite brands, and signature pieces, this episode is your reset for creating a style that actually feels like you (and not the internet’s look du jour).
Episode Notes & Resources:
Revisit episode 3, “Inspiration vs. Aspiration”
Submit style questions you’d like answered in a future Wear Who You Are episode
Join BU Style Circle online membership for more of Natalie’s style resources, live Q&As, and more. Use code BUCIRCLE for one month off your subscription.
Read the full & Raw Episode transcript:
[00:00]
Hello friends and welcome back to another Nat Chat of Wear Who You Are, coming straight to you with your questions and hopefully some useful answers. So we'll cut right to it. Our first question, or one question today, is from Courtney in Tennessee. And this is a great question that I'm really excited to answer. Her question is, “I feel like everything looks the same these days. How can I build more personal style that stands out?”
[00:32]
Well, Courtney and everyone else, your eyes are not tricking you. There is a lot of sameness out there, especially if you are on any sort of social media, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook now, all of it. So I'm going to give you some of my tips to help you stand out in the sea of all the same. First, stop being influenced. The algorithms are absolutely targeting you, and they're targeting everyone. So everyone starts to see the same thing. And then what happens? We start shopping for the same thing based on what someone else is telling you is in style.
[01:05]
So let's take, for example, the recent phenomenon of Love Story, right? So we have Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and this show is based on a real human. This real human had her own unique style. This was the nineties. This was when people were exploring their own style more, and we didn't have social media. So she had this style, and now fast forward to this show coming out, I'm out and about in New York and I am literally seeing a lot, not every, but a lot of New York girls in a headband. And I'm seeing post after post on Instagram of how to recreate this look. Why did it work for her? Well, it worked for Carolyn Bessette because it was hers.
[01:48]
All right, this was her style of things that she had curated for herself over the years. Many of these girls now are looking at it, or many of us are looking at this online and tossing on a headband and feeling like it's the look du jour right now. But then something else comes along, and then we're told here's someone else's style to recreate. That is not building a personal style. So I did a really early podcast episode on this that was called Inspiration Versus Aspiration. I'm going to link that in the show notes. That's worth a visit as well.
[02:25]
The second tip I have is to believe it or not, there are brands or items within brands that bring a unique spin. So my suggestion for you is to find the brands that you love, not that you're told to love, ones that you actually love. Go back to those brands season after season to start building your personal style. So they're most likely going to be targeted, hopefully, toward your style preferences.
[02:55]
So I actually, story time, unknowingly did this in high school. Everyone was wearing a logoed Abercrombie or Hollister shirt, right? My mom refused to buy me an overpriced tee. She was like, “Natalie, you are not an advertisement for someone else.” I was upset at first. I was annoyed because I'm like, it's just a tee shirt. But my mom was like, no, we're not doing that. But she did push me to find quality. So I could buy, maybe it's Abercrombie, but it was a sweater that had a unique design on it.
[03:33]
But then I also at this time discovered the J.Crew catalog, okay? This totally changed my life. So I loved the colors, I loved the cuts, I loved everything about it for me. So season after season, I'd get my J.Crew catalog, I'd circle the things I loved, and then I would build on it when I would get maybe a Christmas present or a birthday present. And so I became the J.Crew girl in high school.
[04:03]
And something else I did that I still encourage clients to do, and I still do, and we all should be doing, is keep items from previous years. That's how you build a personal style. It's a story of things you've collected year after year and you're building upon it. So it's your piece and you style it in different ways. You wear it in different ways. It becomes yours. So you're not just buying whatever is out that season and you're wearing it one season and done.
[04:37]
Another tip is to find things on your travels or maybe favorite memorable experiences like a concert. I used to get a t-shirt from every Broadway show that I went to. Or maybe when you're traveling you find a unique necklace or vintage find. Here is a way to build your own personal style with your story. Another one is vintage or secondhand.
[05:03]
I have a client who has these beautiful pieces from her mom who's passed. And so she wears those dresses of her mom. She had them tailored to her to modernize them, but that is a way that it becomes her style and she gets to carry on this memory. And it's not something that anyone else could get in the store. I've also been gifted some really cool secondhand pieces by my friend Faith and by Allison, who found me unique pieces, or Faith, they were hers from the nineties and they fit me like a glove. And they're so cool. And so that helps build your own personal style.
[05:38]
Finally, the last tip is you can pick a signature color or pattern or item type that feels like you. For me, we know I love a blazer. So that's a signature item type for me, or I love icy blue. And so when people see, that's Nat's blue. Farida, who works at DALYA, the owner of DALYA, who's been on the podcast, she loves orange. That's a signature color for her. So people now associate, I associate orange with Farida.
[05:58]
So those are just some quick, easy ways to build your own signature style so that way you don't feel like you're just looking like another picture in your algorithm or looking like everyone else. Thank you so much for coming to another episode of Wear Who You Are and we will see you nex