Welcome to Style POV Podcast
That's all well and good Gabby, but I just need something to help me look good today. Oh friend, you read my mind this time.
Hi, I'm Gabrielle Arruda, your host for the Style POV podcast, and I'm here to help you learn to trust your fashion instincts, hone your authentic style point of view, and find strength through style.
Exploring the Concept of Creativity
Creativity.
What an ambiguous concept. If you went up to 10 different people and asked them what creativity means or how to achieve it, the results would be pretty varied. Style creativity, even more convoluted. I mean, if you asked your mom what style creativity was versus your best friend, do you think the answers would even be close to one another?
And if you do this, I'm sorry, you might get a few weird looks or confused stares coming at you. But turns out there is an actual definition to the word creativity. Creativity is divergence plus convergence. Who's eyes? But wait, what does that mean, and why should you care?
I hear your inner voice, and I'm going to explain.
Understanding Style Ruts and Creativity
A style rut is simply feeling disenchanted, stagnant, frustrated, or bored with your style. And how would you go about getting out of a rut? You would try something new. And trying something new would require a creative approach. Ah, you're catching my drift now.
But I don't want your attempt at style creativity to just be throwing spaghetti at the wall or an exhausting and frustrating deep dive into the depths of your closet hole you call a system. I want us to learn what creativity is, how you can use it, and apply it to your style so that it guides your unique style POV and stretches your understanding of what your style can be.
Diving Deep into Style Creativity
Now, in the previous episode, all about the style toolbox, I mentioned a process of cognitive molding all of us have undergone. We are all a collection of our experiences, external stimuli, surroundings, and that has all helped us form opinions and a unique perspective. Good, right? Well, yes, I want you to be an individual and be in touch with that, but the problem lies with our natural inclination to then jump to conclusions.
This habitual narrowing of opinions and perspectives as it relates to your visual experience and fashion prevents you from seeing a broader, more creative picture and visualizing a different end product. So if you're in a style rut or not evolving your style as much as you'd like to be, then you are most likely leaning too much on your habitual knowledge and are falling into tunnel vision,
A unique point of view, fantastic. A narrowly defined visual point of view ends up being limiting.
So here's where style of creativity can come into play. And to properly heal our relationships with our styles and tap into this process, I need to nerd out a little bit.
The Power of Divergent Thinking in Style
Creativity has been scientifically defined. It's been defined as divergence plus convergence.
Now let's break this down a bit further and then I'll explain how it relates to your style. This concept can single handedly change your perception of where you are in your style journey. In simple terms, Divergent Thinking is when a person is asked to explore an open ended task with imagination, creativity,
and no one answer. So if I held up a brick and asked, What can you do with this? If you said build a house, that would be a correct answer, but it wouldn't be exploring the open realms of possibility and using divergent thinking. If you said you could use it to hold open a door, or you built an entire story around the holes of a brick could be used to hold fireworks or how it could be used as a weapon to rob someone.
Well, while I might not recommend those actions, that is divergent thinking. You are thinking about it in a limitless way outside the original referential domain we have for the object. In this case, the brick. Now, what does that mean in terms of style or fashion? It's about using the data you've collected in your style toolbox and visualizing them in different ways.
Look at your style toolbox, examine your style parameters
what items can you use to build an outfit and reframe, expand, and innovate what it can mean? If you're familiar with the Kitchener Essences, let's try an experiment. If not, I have a deep dive series on my YouTube and I'll link that in the show notes, but you don't need that reference.
Let's start small. You have a basic white t shirt. Now, start imagining that t shirt, and create an outfit for each of the seven essences. Dramatic, natural, classic, gamine, romantic, ingenue, and angelic. And if you're not familiar with the essences, just use those words as adjectives. Now, the rule is you can't change the t shirt between each essence outfit.
Same t shirt applied to each essence or adjective. Your habitual narrowing and foundational information might have led you to believe that that T only works for This person, not that person, but in your mind, start creating outfits for each. Pause the show if you need a second to do this. Do you see how you've already stretched your creativity to what you might have originally thought of?
Now, if you struggled to do this, that's okay. It's now something you can be mindful of when you're struggling with an item. That reframing and expanding the answer is an exercise to practice. And we can even take the divergent thinking further and imagine how we could take outside inspirations of fantasies that we are drawn to and find connections to our styles and closets.
This is the limitless section of style. It can also include collecting new style information and studying style systems for new elements to add to your style toolbox. But I want to stress that a style system, like KIPI, will not teach you how to think divergently. Instead, it will give you new information that you process to expand your initial style point of view.
Okay, cool. So Divergent Thinking is all about collecting the new. It's about imagination, expanding your mind, and your style experience. But, I hear those inner voices. That's all well and good Gabby, but I just need something to help me look good today. Oh friend, you read my mind this time.
Convergent Thinking: Crafting Your Unique Style
Here is where convergent thinking comes in. Convergence is the narrowing of that information, focusing in and finding the quote unquote right answer. So you have your style toolbox, you've deep dived into style systems, But how does that all relate to the outfit you're going to create today?
Convergence, in the way that I'm using it, is tapping into the deeper needs of that outfit and finding the right answer for yourself. Now, historically, they labeled it as quote, one right answer, unquote, but I'm going to extend that for our purposes to quote, one right answer for your own style POV, unquote.
So while a typical convergent example might be combine engine, water, wings, and you get seaplane. To form it for our unique style point of views, I want us to individually find our one answer. How will you know it's the right answer? Because you'll love your outfit. You'll feel good in it. Won't question whether it works for this system or for this season.
It will just work. Now that's a lofty goal. One right answer. It may sound so far off from where you are today. But this is a journey that you will constantly be evolving and traveling through. There is no finish line. Once you determine your image identity or your color placement or your style needs, you've really only, quote, begun, unquote, your journey.
And as you grow, evolve, change, your style goals and style toolbox will evolve as well. So this aspect of style creativity is essential. It keeps you actively participating with your style so you avoid those ruts. And it allows you to positively progress your style as you grow. The more style creativity you cultivate, the more the process of evaluating, embracing, and tweaking an outfit will spark joy instead of confusion.
If developing this style creativity is so important, and we understand the basics of what constitutes creativity, what might we do to practice or improve this skill?
Practical Tips to Enhance Your Style Creativity
Now, there are a few best practices I have in mind that will be met with varying degrees of enthusiasm based on your personality. So no one is saying that these are the only ways to get your creative juices going.
Feel free to explore your own methodologies as well. Number one is what I call the croquis concept. I'm a fashion designer by trade and when we are designing we are towed to croquis sketch, which is essentially the act of divergent thinking within a set domain. i. e. designing clothes.
You quickly sketch out a design and then continue to do as many variations and tweaks as you can with that design. For personal style building, this could look like taking a piece of clothing from your wardrobe and trying to create as many outfits as you can Using that one piece, or it could be taking an inspiration, whatever inspiration you want, for instance, a black and white photograph of a mountain and trying to build as many outfits as you can around that specific inspiration.
You could use music, movies, sounds, words, let your divergent thinking take off with both the inspiration source and the outfit building. Now, a key component of this will be taking output photos so that you can go back and start to hone your correct style point of view answer. I. e. your convergent thinking.
If this seems overwhelming or like too much initial action, you can also try a meditation of sorts. Now I'm not going to have you manifest or give you breathwork teachings, but studies have proven that lying down motionless, eyes closed for let's say 10 minutes and allowing your mind to wander on the topic of your style can greatly improve your creativity around the topic.
And this is in fact an ideal state for your brain to utilize divergent thinking. After those 10 minutes, take a few minutes to jot down any realizations you had, any revelers. I don't want to lay down or try on clothes. Well, the next could be an aspect of narrative building and future envisioning.
I have specific steps on how to do this in my linked YouTube video and building your dream or fantasy style, which is in the show notes. But studies have shown that children have a far greater ability to access creativity, and yet their ability to think divergently is not overly developed. They rely on narrative or world building.
Um, And I link all the studies and resources in the show notes, if you're curious. But start building your style narrative or your dream style world. In my YouTube video, I break down how to take multiple creative inspirations and apply them to one creative fantasy goal. And I have worksheets for you to fill out as well.
So I encourage you to use that resource. As I already mentioned, your style is a journey. We take the daily outfit photos for data, but we don't want to get there. It's so consumed with the details that we lose the larger picture in five years. What do you want your style to look like? Envisioning that even if it changes over time, can help you stay motivated, can help you keep your style creativity working and can help you achieve that dream style.
Your style POV is your superpower. Let's continue to tap into that to find our own unique expressions that feel right to each of us and that teach us to trust our own fashion instincts. And the last thing you could try is reorganizing some or all of your closets. Our brains get used to certain information living in certain places.
It creates routine to be able to streamline the information and make our efficiency greater. So if you reorganize your closet, it has to put more thought into what items go with each other. How you're building that outfit is now a new process in your brain. It may actually be a bit frustrating that the first couple of times you go back into your closet with a new layout, but that discomfort is a good sign.
It's making you more aware of the Your clothing inventory and making you more present in the decision making. This can spark creativity. All of a sudden you find that blouse you completely forgot about. You're removing autopilot outfit building and stretching your creativity once again.
Conclusion and What's Next
I hope this has been super helpful so far. Thank you for listening to me nerd out on style concepts and the next episode is going to have you questioning your shopping habits for the benefits of your personal style. Until next time.