Gemma Spake

A 2010 study from the University of Huddersfield actually found that certain clothes, if they were the participants' favorites, actually served as emotional regulators like we were talking about before, meaning that the participants were more likely to feel in control of their emotions and in control of their environment and

if 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 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 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 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 like get out there because people are going to see this like enigmatic amazing side of you and like the side of you that feels very very alive and

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 us feel good or 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 and I'll seriously consider wearing them and then I'll like put them back in my closet.