Culture Study Podcast - All Your Questions About Personal Style, Answered

00:00:00.000 this is the culture study podcast and i'm ann helen peterson hi i'm sophie strauss and i'm a

00:00:14.000 stylist for regular people so okay stylist i think people hear this term and they think like

00:00:20.140 i don't know like rachel zo being a stylist for like the it girls of the early 2000s like they

00:00:27.060 think it's for fancy people but you're a stylist for normal people so can you describe the range

00:00:32.560 of people that you work with and the kinds of things they're looking for when they hire you

00:00:36.500 absolutely you know it's funny you mentioned rachel so that is she's totally my foundational

00:00:41.200 style like who else would we have seen right that's like the only totally that was like the

00:00:47.020 these like my first understanding of like a stylist imposing their understanding of style

00:00:54.100 onto people right like just like the unifying threads of style and you see like on I'm trying

00:01:01.440 to think of who she styled like Misha Barton um was it like Cameron Diaz yeah she used to I think

00:01:07.740 style Anne Hathaway I think I mean I it was also just that quite frankly and this is a whole we

00:01:14.480 could we should do a whole other podcast about this but part of why that was the beginning of

00:01:19.080 the stylist in the sort of like public imagination is because it was also really the the beginning of

00:01:26.260 when celebrities were as visible as they now are all the time like the sort of explosion of like

00:01:33.340 tablet and paparazzi culture and this idea that you actually might want to pay somebody to help

00:01:38.980 make sure you like quote unquote look good all the time at first for red carpets because they

00:01:44.440 were these sort of brand and image making opportunities but then it was like when you

00:01:48.840 go to get groceries and all these things but to your first question growing up I like absolutely

00:01:55.160 loved fashion and style and all I really knew of this particular job was Rachel Zoe and that

00:02:02.260 while I found it deeply entertaining was not actually appealing to me at all as a career

00:02:06.480 and so I didn't consider it and then I actually pursued a career in music and was working as a

00:02:14.260 nanny and sort of doing like other creative pursuits for work and all the while I mean I

00:02:21.200 worked uh to be clear I worked fashion retail for a long time like through high school and college

00:02:26.540 so I also think I I learned a lot about the industry and clothing that way it's not like I

00:02:31.240 went from zero knowledge to this job yeah um but I wasn't working consistently on like a I want to

00:02:38.080 be a stylist track which is very much a thing now I was just helping my friends get dressed when they

00:02:43.800 were having not even struggles I think the thing I've really come to is uh moments of transition

00:02:51.200 so whether that was a transition like a new job or a new city or a transition like a new body size

00:03:00.140 bigger smaller a new gender presentation I was the first call and I really cherished that yeah

00:03:07.920 And eventually, while my other music career was sort of not really panning out, though, you know, I'm at home yet.

00:03:15.580 It could still happen.

00:03:16.700 I think my music was good.

00:03:18.260 But anyway, I started doing this on the side and I kind of like on a whim was like, I wonder if people would pay for this.

00:03:25.720 And I like posted about it on my Instagram.

00:03:28.300 And the response was overwhelmingly yes.

00:03:31.020 And I kind of built it as like a side gig.

00:03:34.620 And then it very quickly overtook my, like, regular assistant job that I had at the time.

00:03:40.160 And from there, Sophie Strauss Styling was born.

00:03:43.160 So I really work with, I mean, like I said, with everybody.

00:03:48.800 I work with people of all ages, genders, sizes, locations.

00:03:53.760 So I've worked with people as young as 13 and as old as 80.

00:03:57.180 I work with men, women, non-binary people, trans people.

00:04:00.560 I work with people who are getting married.

00:04:05.980 I work with people who are attending funerals.

00:04:08.740 I work with people who want to feel better when they drop their kids off at carpool.

00:04:14.180 And I work with people who do go to red carpets but are not celebrities.

00:04:19.460 So, like, being in L.A., I have a lot of people who may not be Anne Hathaway, but they're like, yeah, but I have to stand next to Anne Hathaway on the red carpet. 0.99

00:04:28.160 I don't want to look like shit. 0.81

00:04:29.420 totally totally that's like my nightmare of like going like being on a red carpet and doing like 0.98

00:04:36.240 the the stop and pose and like what would i wear how would my makeup be like you have to

00:04:42.100 do all these considerations that celebrities kind of have outsourced for them and you have to do

00:04:47.660 them yourself so and you also help like melody didn't you help melody oh yeah that's how that's

00:04:52.700 how I'm here. Melody, what happened? I was invited to do like an onstage interview with

00:04:59.860 Sarah Chappelle of Taylor Swift Styled. And I was like, I can't do a fashion interview wearing

00:05:05.640 my current like athletic shorts and oversized t-shirt. So I found out about Sophie from the

00:05:12.160 Big Undies newsletter. So we're doing this whole like, back to school theme of like,

00:05:19.100 Because I love back to school energy. It just really transports me to, even though I have no kids and don't go to school anymore, just the idea of like, okay, like, let's go. In my case, it was this department store called the Bon Marche. Let's go to the Cube, which was the teen section. And like, get like two pairs of pants and two tops and like figuring out your first day of school outfit. Like, I loved that.

00:05:46.500 And so I wanted to do a series about it. I was like, Melody, please let me do this. And we're interviewing a bunch of different people about clothing, about style. And we're interviewing Corinne Faye of Big Undies.

00:05:59.220 Tell Corinne I say hi.

00:06:00.440 And you did an interview with Corinne. You did like her. She does like style interviews that are really fantastic. So many people have done them, including Lena Dunham, which is amazing.

00:06:11.160 But in that interview, there's this great picture of you in this like taffeta gown and fur stole.

00:06:18.900 And I think sometimes people look at pictures of us when we're kids and are like, that person

00:06:23.360 was into fashion. But I think all of us are into fashion in some way, or many of us are into

00:06:29.260 fashion in some way when we're small. And then we get it gradually like flattened out of us in some

00:06:35.620 way. Oh my God. I have so many, so many, that's a rich text you just laid out for me. Okay. So

00:06:42.260 So first of all, I think one of the things is historically, culturally, if you will, on the Culture Study podcast, fashion has been one of the purviews of like marginalized demographics.

00:06:56.580 Right. It has historically been an area for women, queer people, people of color, people who have been colonized to try to find avenues of agency and expression that are still within their means as some other dominant forces tried to take that away.

00:07:13.700 Fashion has obviously also been or clothing has been a means of control and dominance in other ways. But what that has often meant is that the people who kind of feel excited and connected to it are people for whom that expression is precious.

00:07:30.420 And I think the people who most often tend to think fashion is frivolous are people where their humanity is not really questioned based on what they're wearing.

00:07:44.860 Yeah. So so you have a lot of like white bros who are like who think it's either shallow or silly to care about fashion. And what that tends to tell me is if you quote unquote don't care. 0.81

00:08:01.760 I mean, first of all, I don't even think that's real. I think most people care because, and that's a separate piece of this answer, but I think people care because clothes are communication. And so that feeling of even that like the first day of school, what am I going to wear? The question at the core of that for every kid is who am I going to be this year?

00:08:24.600 Yep. And that's identity. And I don't think that fashion is I'm not like, oh, fashion saves the world. It's the most important thing. Like there's a lot of awful, evil, villainous, well-dressed people out there.

00:08:35.640 Yeah. But I think that at its core, when you are not dressed in a way that feels good to you, it feels kind of like opening your mouth to speak and the wrong words come out.

00:08:51.560 Mm hmm. And so that's kind of at the core of like all of what you know we're talking about is like why is fashion for everyone and it's like well maybe maybe I make a distinction between fashion and style like fashion to me is a little bit more tied to the industry and style is kind of a personal expression but that's my my semantics.

00:09:11.680 Yeah. But I think that's also why you don't have to be a fabulous gala bound gal in a gown to have fashion feel or have how you dress feel important to you. You can be a person who lives on a remote island or you can be a mom at carpool drop off. And how you are experiencing the agency of self-presentation in that moment will matter.

00:09:41.680 Yeah. I mean, I agree with all of us entirely. And I just like as someone who used I've gone through periods of like in and out of love of clothes. And I think probably a lot of people can identify with that, like feelings when you felt more empowered to wear the things that felt very you and times when you felt like your choices were limited or circumscribed by some forces.

00:10:09.720 And sometimes that's like my body keeps changing and I buy something and it no longer fits the way that it used to.

00:10:17.260 Or this company that makes this thing that I think is gorgeous will not make it in my size.

00:10:24.080 Or all the kids make fun of me when I wear the thing that I want to wear in school.

00:10:28.380 Like I just I have all of these moments of like very subtle incorporation.

00:10:33.000 And I grew up in, like, a small town in Idaho where there wasn't a lot of leeway about what was cool or what you should, quote, wear to school.

00:10:41.960 And I remember yearning for a school uniform or loving the days that I wore my cheerleading uniform because it gave me that, like, release from trying to perform a certain type of, like, 1998 femininity for the audience of my peers, right?

00:11:00.540 Yeah. Well, I think so. The first part of what that was, and it also goes back to the conversation about like being little kids who love fashion and then something kind of changes.

00:11:11.460 Yeah. Is and I kind of think almost everybody has an experience like this, which is like I have a four year old and I watch him get dressed and it is just so joyful and ridiculous.

00:11:24.240 and he is not looking in a mirror until the very end just to sort of admire he is not thinking

00:11:31.740 about his body he is not even really thinking I mean obviously not really thinking practically

00:11:37.560 but there's something so magic that gets squashed so young and I think even younger when you are

00:11:43.960 like socialized to be you know presenting femininity in a certain way um but I think

00:11:50.540 every single client I've ever had and every person I've talked to, myself included, has some memory

00:11:56.200 from childhood of putting something on that felt really good. Like, oh, this is this is so I'm just

00:12:05.860 I'm filled with joy. Like, yes. And walking out of the sort of like private sanctity of wherever

00:12:11.860 you put that on your room, your closet, whatever, and emerging into the public sphere, whether it

00:12:18.400 was just like into your living room or a sibling or a parent or at school and having somebody go

00:12:23.980 what is that right and the core feeling of that is I believed myself when I said this felt good

00:12:37.480 to me and I was wrong yeah and so that severs our trust with ourself that we can kind of like

00:12:44.720 follow our nose on what brings us joy. And then that gets reinforced like a million times more

00:12:51.600 throughout like childhood and adolescence and adulthood. And unless you're really

00:12:55.640 consciously going, how do I unpack that? Then you end up in the position that you were talking

00:13:01.820 about now where you were seeing even like the sort of freedom from the fatigue of trying to

00:13:06.760 navigate all of these choices and being like relieved when you'd have to wear your cheerleading

00:13:11.280 uniform what you're getting at there is that for most people getting dressed feels like a guessing

00:13:19.680 game at where they don't hold any information so it's like i hope i'm guessing correctly at what

00:13:26.760 the outside world will somehow know is right or wrong but i i couldn't possibly know myself

00:13:32.340 yep and then it's like well yeah no shit that's not fun right right and the people that i know

00:13:39.280 who maintained style like throughout their lives they they had such a strong sense of self and 0.93

00:13:46.400 sometimes it's like this came from their family came from their parents or it just was like just

00:13:51.680 them like they're the weirdo in the school pictures right and by weirdo i mean that with

00:13:56.740 like great admiration and respect um or in uh like their family photos they like they picked

00:14:04.560 out their outfit like they oh like this the sense of self was so strong that no other voices could

00:14:11.580 tamp it down and that's when you get like style icons right like totally and a lot of like i don't

00:14:18.040 want to be a style icon all right like that's not in my in my purview but i would like to like uh

00:14:25.060 i would like to have that sense of self really shine through and i feel like some of us are

00:14:29.180 getting there a little bit more as we age but then some of us are very confused by this

00:14:34.340 matrix of like what is happening in the larger fashion world in this moment and then also like

00:14:40.680 many of us no longer being young girls anymore which is where a lot of the momentum of fashion

00:14:47.100 is oriented is towards like a 22 year old consumer of course of course well i think

00:14:54.020 the key there is the definition of style that i like to work from with my clients

00:15:00.400 is very simple. It's that style is the expression of your personality and your preferences through

00:15:07.100 your clothes. And why I came up with that definition, because I don't think that's

00:15:15.260 like what the definition is in the dictionary. Why I came up with that definition is because

00:15:19.380 it puts all the agency in your hands. There's no following of any rules. There's no needing

00:15:29.180 to be on trend or relevant or not dated or whatever. It's guided by two things, which is

00:15:34.740 personality and preference. And it also allows those things to fluctuate in a very human way

00:15:39.520 from day to day. And the thing I often remind people is like, I'm actually really, I don't

00:15:46.040 care if you wear sweatpants every single day of your life. If that feels like a choice you're

00:15:50.780 making because you are prioritizing comfort, that's really different than if it feels like

00:15:55.940 it's happening to you against your will because you don't know how to do anything else. And the

00:16:03.060 reason that this very simple definition is so difficult for people to then execute, like for

00:16:09.120 me to sit here and go, it's just your preferences and your personality and your clothing, run, go

00:16:12.780 forth, dress stylishly. Most people would still not be able to go anywhere with that information

00:16:18.360 because most of us have been taught to shop and to get dressed kind of like if you had to cook

00:16:26.100 without knowing what ingredients are so you're you end up in this position where you're often

00:16:31.460 trying to make an informed choice without information so if you might notice i don't

00:16:38.160 like this shirt great but why what what about it and to your point about like you may never be a

00:16:45.540 style icon and like not not everybody's going to be a fashionista not everybody's going to be a

00:16:50.640 Michelin star chef but I think all of us understand the value in being able to cook ourselves a

00:16:55.700 nutritious meal and then maybe from there you become somebody who kind of finds joy in experimenting

00:17:00.600 with food or maybe you are simply somebody who can adequately nourish yourself for the rest of

00:17:06.060 your life both of those paths are valid but if you're so far away that you can't even do the

00:17:11.520 nourishing we've got a problem and it's the same thing with clothes well and like a nourishing

00:17:15.560 meal that tastes good to you when you're not like choking down yeah it's not punishment exactly

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00:21:45.660 there's a way that you distinguish between personal style and the way that fashion markets

00:21:54.540 to us like i'm trying to remember how you phrase it it's like that style and that's marketing like

00:22:00.720 how do you yeah how do you discern between those two so i think that when clients sit down with me

00:22:07.100 and we start to do an intake i tend to hear a lot of things about all the rules right unpacking this

00:22:12.220 kind of secret language like I've hired a stylist and she's going to help me speak the secret

00:22:17.360 language of the cool stylish people so that I can follow the rules and I can be I can finally be

00:22:22.200 correct when I go out into the world they will see me as one of them right and it is this sense

00:22:28.980 and like the undertone of almost everything I hear from clients who struggle with this kind of thing

00:22:33.420 is very similar which is like are we wearing wide leg pants now or are we skinny jeans high rise

00:22:40.600 mid-rise, low-rise? Am I not allowed to wear socks? Am I not allowed to wear no-show socks?

00:22:44.480 Like, is this snuck? What's going on? And what that comes from is the sense that your job in

00:22:51.740 becoming stylish is to sort of see what the cool people over there are doing and try to replicate

00:22:59.020 it correctly. And then as anybody who's tried that knows, by the time you learn the language,

00:23:04.240 the language has changed, right? By the time you got rid of your skinny jeans, skinny jeans are

00:23:09.000 back. And that, what I tell people, is marketing, right? That's not style. That's marketing. That

00:23:16.180 is a very, very manipulative and savvy machinery of industry that is designed to make sure that you

00:23:26.740 are feeling inadequate and anxious and less than, and also ideally under-informed about the more

00:23:36.240 objective parts of style as well fabric composition silhouette measurements cut color things like that

00:23:43.580 so that you also are more likely to make an impulse purchase right you didn't check that

00:23:48.520 fabric composition they can get away with making things that are shittier and lower quality and

00:23:54.000 that you won't even really notice because you don't know better right the less you know and

00:23:57.480 the worse you feel the better of a customer you are yeah we have so many questions today i cannot

00:24:03.240 I really narrowed them down. We got so many good ones. But we're going to start with a couple more philosophical questions, building on what we've already talked about with style.

00:24:14.720 And then for the Ask It Anything section, we're going to answer three questions from listeners with specific style conundrums.

00:24:22.080 One about dressing for both in-office and remote work. One about dressing for work as a teacher. And one about what to wear when it's really, really hot.

00:24:30.600 So if you want to get that extra 30 minutes of really solid style wisdom, become a paid subscriber at patreon.com slash culture study.

00:24:40.060 Let's start with this question from Jordan.

00:24:42.540 With personal fashion, there's a sense that if you just found the exact right pieces for you, all of your problems would be solved.

00:24:49.160 It's a quest centered on self-knowledge and optimization.

00:24:52.900 But the self is dynamic and modern clothing is deeply flawed, so it can be a bit of an aesthetic treadmill.

00:24:59.160 I'd love to hear more about how others suss out the difference between trying to find items that help you feel like yourself, especially as that changes, and feeling pressure to view consumption as an existential solution.

00:25:11.360 Oh, I know, right? Right. Well, we always say that, like, I love how so many of our listeners submit questions that kind of answer the question in their question because it's such a smart question.

00:25:26.480 Like they're they're they're working through some of their own ideas that they've processed already in this question.

00:25:32.300 So what do you what comes to mind when you hear this?

00:25:35.720 Yeah. So I I'm hearing sort of two things at once.

00:25:38.920 I'm hearing a bigger picture sort of existential question that is like so gorgeous and I can't wait to talk about it.

00:25:45.220 And then I'm hearing a more material and concrete question about sort of how can you possibly tie something as fixed as clothing to like the fickleness of person?

00:25:56.160 I love that I'm like and then there's that objective question and then it's like the fickleness of humanity.

00:25:59.740 Yeah. So. OK, so the first part, which is like the meatier half of this, and I just love this question, is we're pitched personal style as both like a solution to the ickiness of like the consumerism treadmill.

00:26:17.400 But then it just kind of puts us back on that treadmill. And the reality is my opinion is that personal style is not a solution.

00:26:26.160 it is a result um and that personal style can emerge not through consumption of things right

00:26:37.100 like like a sort of ravenous quest to buy up stuff so that you can be stylish is is both bad

00:26:45.280 whether or not it worked it's just like morally bad yeah and also doesn't work so then it's cool

00:26:51.500 because you don't have to do it at all yeah and to me the clients who are always the most difficult

00:26:56.940 to support in their style journey are the clients who are very very far away from themselves as

00:27:02.920 human beings yeah um because there is no way to sort of like you can we live in an era that is

00:27:09.380 saturated with imagery and it is very easy to imagery and affiliate links so it's very easy

00:27:15.040 to click copy and paste to try on like you're a paper doll whatever your influencer person

00:27:21.100 paid advertisement comes up on your feed and it's not going to feel the same as wearing something

00:27:29.520 that feels like it came out of your life because it made sense for you and that is of course super

00:27:38.940 lofty but the reality is like and by the way I would say there are probably way more kind of

00:27:45.120 like cool dressed people who are who suck and are far away from their like selves as people

00:27:53.180 than there are like wonderfully kind of grounded human beings who maybe to the average person are

00:28:01.960 not well dressed like I would pick that a hundred times over um and again I think that's because to

00:28:09.480 me personal style is not an aesthetic it's a practice and it comes less from did you buy a

00:28:16.940 bunch of things that express you and and actually more i think from buying less like discernment

00:28:23.980 and restraint i didn't we are especially when like truly you cannot take a step without being

00:28:30.520 advertised to yeah um that it it's really comes much more from what you don't buy than what you

00:28:37.380 do yeah um and so i guess that would be my answer there is like personal style how are you bringing

00:28:44.760 that about and how you make do with what's what's already in front of you with what's around you

00:28:48.880 with what your life demands with what your your body demands right um and then the piece about

00:28:55.420 this sort of expression of like it's supposed to be this expression of your personhood and

00:29:00.420 your humanity but that we change all the time yeah um that's part of why i really don't like

00:29:06.500 a lot of and I don't mean any disrespect but there's a lot of style solutions out there that

00:29:11.040 in my opinion repackage the problem and then sell it back to you as a solution which is like this

00:29:18.300 kind of confinement of you're you're three words you're two words you're you're this body type

00:29:22.860 you're this color story and it is all the same crap which is like here's all these external

00:29:29.420 things these things to put you in a box and the the the sort of limited number of words in

00:29:34.600 particular comes up a lot because i think the only stylish people we see most of the time are

00:29:41.140 either brands or celebrities or influencers who are brands and these are all people who have an

00:29:47.160 ulterior motive which is that they have to be packageable to somebody they have to be able to

00:29:52.480 sell an affiliate link in order to succeed particularly in today's like totally yeah and

00:29:58.360 so when you see an influencer who seems to have a very like like something i hear a lot is like

00:30:02.600 consistency. Like they have a really consistent aesthetic. And I'm like, you don't, you're not a

00:30:07.460 brand. So you don't have to have a consistent aesthetic. You could look at my Instagram. I

00:30:12.420 mean, I just moved to a farm, but I also love to wear a sexy dress. And then half the time I'm

00:30:17.600 wearing like Carhartts and a t-shirt and, you know, work boots. And both of those things are

00:30:23.980 me and a million things in the middle. So that's the sort of, again, the more abstract, sorry,

00:30:28.780 Wow, I could write a dissertation on this. The final button on this, I will say, on a really, really material level, is that clothing, and this is where that knowledge and information comes in handy, clothing is not the whole sentence, right?

00:30:43.780 each garment is like a word in a sentence and so it's if you actually understand how clothing

00:30:52.060 behaves where it performs well right how the material is gonna breathe or not breathe fit or

00:30:58.360 not fit how that color is going to interact with another um and I actually wrote about this recently

00:31:03.500 for my newsletter style school where uh I talk about trying to take my Los Angeles city girl

00:31:10.140 wardrobe and without doing a bunch of shopping edit it to make sense for a year living on a farm

00:31:17.360 which is what I'm doing right now and that's only possible by being able to look at the clothes

00:31:23.380 as what they are and remembering okay well if I used these pants in this context with heels and

00:31:29.900 a blouse what happens to them when I use them in this context with rain boots and you know a work

00:31:36.020 jacket. Yeah. And that you get the more fluent you are in this language, the more capable you'll

00:31:43.920 be of moving the pieces around and using them in a context that suits you as you inevitably change

00:31:50.500 without needing to start over each time. Right. That a lot of these garments are extremely versatile

00:31:56.400 when you've purchased them because you understand them instead of like purchasing them because you

00:32:00.800 saw them on an influencer, right? Right. I wonder if others have had this experience of like finding

00:32:07.340 an item of clothing or like a style of an item of clothing, and then it becomes your personality

00:32:14.660 for like two years, right? So when I was 24, maybe 25, I went back to school shopping. I actually

00:32:26.360 went back to school shopping. This is when I was in grad school. I didn't have hardly any money,

00:32:30.620 But I had a little bit of money that I wanted to buy.

00:32:32.700 Like I was going to be a TA.

00:32:35.260 And I was like, okay, I need like a little bit.

00:32:38.220 What's going to be something that makes me feel like me, right?

00:32:42.200 And we went to Nordstrom in Portland.

00:32:44.560 I was living in Eugene, Oregon.

00:32:46.180 I was going to the University of Oregon.

00:32:47.720 And it was the famous, you know, Nordstrom half-yearly sale.

00:32:51.260 And they had these boots, which now are very, very familiar to everyone.

00:32:55.300 It was the classic Fry riding boot.

00:32:57.060 And I had never bought anything that expensive. Back then they were like two hundred and forty dollars. But I looked at them and I tried them on and they were so different from anything that I owned. And like my friends that I was with were kind of like, and I was like, they must be mine.

00:33:16.260 i cannot like my entire wardrobe rotated around those boots for the next four years of my life

00:33:22.240 if not more like i wore them with everything i wore them with dresses i wore them with shorts i

00:33:26.860 wore them with pants i wore them every single scenario but they made they like just felt like

00:33:31.880 me and so sometimes i'm just trying to chase that high of like what thing can i then use as my like

00:33:39.280 that that item and it doesn't have to be like a specific boot or a specific pant like

00:33:46.260 In 2014, the thing was, I tried on a jumpsuit before jumpsuits became everywhere. And I was like, this is me. And I didn't realize it would be and continues to be my fashion personality. But as people say, sometimes you just really, it returned me to my seven-year-old self.

00:34:06.040 like the sort of feeling that I had in clothes when I was seven and I loved that rompers even

00:34:11.540 more so but does that make sense like and it's not necessarily about like buying the thing that

00:34:18.840 is marketed to me it's more like how do I find that one thing that does that for me

00:34:23.300 okay so first of all love that yes I I had a pair of nine west combat boots that I found at a

00:34:32.900 thrift store in LA called Wasteland when I was 15 and I still have them and I haven't worn them

00:34:37.980 in like 15 years but they were so me yeah like a four-year chunk of time yeah that I'm just I've

00:34:44.020 got I put more money re-soling and refixing the zippers and everything that I then I spent on

00:34:48.800 them at the time yes um and worth every penny um and I'm sure I will come back to them you can't

00:34:55.160 force it yeah you can't that's the thing you can't no and I think what

00:35:02.900 you're getting at honestly and it depends but what you're feeling is affirmed and for some people

00:35:11.140 that comes from something that feels a little bit more like a security blanket like i know that when

00:35:17.140 i put this thing on i'm gonna feel like myself and every that gives me either like wiggle room

00:35:20.480 for everything else or like with the jumpsuit right i think boots are a little different because

00:35:25.840 they don't take up as much surface area they're not the whole outfit ever but they they add such

00:35:30.180 a tone and a jumpsuit is kind of the whole thing so you're kind of one and done and there's like

00:35:34.580 an effortlessness to that that appeals to some people and for other people is like dreadfully

00:35:38.820 boring and you know and that's not to say it's boring for you right like yeah yeah but you don't

00:35:43.940 get the they live for variety and for other people that variety is like the most stressful daily

00:35:48.400 decision fatigue they could possibly imagine right and i've seen both sides of that equation

00:35:52.140 but what you're talking about at its core is this skill that i try to teach my clients a lot which

00:35:59.940 is my dad is a chef and he has this tattoo on his wrist that on the on the underside of his wrist

00:36:07.020 it says taste and on the above part of his wrist it says adjust which is sort of the like taste it

00:36:13.200 and then season it and sort of with like what part of your hand are you looking at when you

00:36:18.140 taste versus when you adjust but I use that phrase taste and adjust all the time which is just kind

00:36:22.880 of life but it's really applicable for clothing which is I think a lot of people will put on an

00:36:28.640 outfit. And maybe on paper or the objectives, right, there's sort of the objective half of

00:36:34.320 clothing, which is like, is it comfortable? Does it fit you? Like the sort of physical realities.

00:36:41.740 And then there's the more abstract. There's the messaging, right? Is it girly? Is it edgy? Is it

00:36:47.120 masculine? Is it formal? Is it professional? These things that clothing communicates and that humans

00:36:53.620 kind of instinctively we pick up on those messages. And so oftentimes, I think like with

00:36:59.440 the fry boots, for example, a piece like that is going to allow you, if we do a little forensics on

00:37:07.140 it, right? Like those fry boots are a little bit edgy. They're a little bit sort of like

00:37:12.760 westerny, outdoorsy, rugged. They are casual. They're warm. They're grounding. And so it gives

00:37:21.220 you the ability to be a little bit more flexible with the garments you put around it. Because when

00:37:26.280 you add those fry boots into the mix, it's going to kind of always tweak the tone towards something

00:37:32.120 that feels relevant to who you are in that moment. And sometimes that can be a single piece that you

00:37:38.080 come to every single day. You just top, right? It's the sort of like, I put this seasoning on

00:37:43.840 everything and then I like it. It's like, great, if that works for you. And then sometimes it's not

00:37:49.440 going to be that one piece every day. It's going to be understanding when you look in the mirror

00:37:54.160 and you go, okay, I like this, but it's not edgy enough, right? That instead of just looking in

00:37:58.560 the mirror and going, blech, I've failed. Take it off. It's off. It's bad. This is wrong. Going,

00:38:04.920 hmm, what is this feeling too much of, or what is this feeling not enough of? And then what

00:38:10.080 garment from my wardrobe can I add swap or take off to bring that sort of messaging balance

00:38:19.720 back to where I want it and I would say 99% of the time it's actually that people are missing

00:38:27.860 some of their own complexity so they've put on their girly dress with their girly shoes with 0.77

00:38:35.420 their girly jewelry and suddenly they feel sort of like a poofy princess yeah and for some people 0.99

00:38:40.400 that is how they like to dress every day but for others that that feels like well I know I wanted 1.00

00:38:44.420 to wear this dress because I think it's really pretty but now I feel like I'm in costume as

00:38:48.020 somebody else and that's a perfect opportunity where it's like well yeah let's put on those

00:38:52.180 fry boots with this frilly dress and then I think it's going to bring in you can you are a layered

00:38:57.180 person your outfit can also be sort of emotionally aesthetically layered as well yeah

00:39:03.180 today's episode is brought to you by lola blankets so i was just talking about how my friend and her

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00:43:20.940 this actually this is a great segue to our next question which also harkens back to

00:43:30.040 a little bit of what you were talking about with like the personal style in three words

00:43:33.920 this comes this is just about restriction generally this comes from rebecca is describing

00:43:39.080 your personal style in three words or having a capsule wardrobe a diet my personal style has

00:43:44.520 always been somewhat limited by my size i currently wear a size 14 but have other times been an 18 or

00:43:50.640 at 20. So my style has evolved with some general sense of what I like, colors, graphic prints

00:43:57.240 versus florals, specific shapes, but I don't like being hemmed in. And when I'm at the store,

00:44:02.760 there's only so many pieces that even fit me. So is the construct of having a three-word style

00:44:08.300 a diet? So this question of is blank a diet comes from Virginia Sol Smith at Burnt Toast.

00:44:14.560 And it's basically asking, like, is the thing like that we're talking about, is this a form of restriction that will ultimately fail and that we will feel like failures because we failed at it?

00:44:28.380 Yeah.

00:44:28.700 So how do you think of the three word style in the capsule wardrobe, especially when people like the restriction is not necessarily something that they are choosing?

00:44:37.240 Yeah.

00:44:37.640 So I think you have to separate those two things out.

00:44:40.280 I don't – I think the – I want to talk about just, like, the limitation of availabilities over, like, truly a size 12.

00:44:48.860 And really, you know, it used to be a little bit more generous than that, but it's contracted back down to, like, over a size 12.

00:44:55.740 Yeah.

00:44:56.300 I think that's a very worthwhile conversation that's just not the same as the restriction inherent in this, like, three-word method or Kimmy body typing or color typing or, you know,

00:45:09.160 there's this other there's a million there's there's like a capsule wardrobe that was the

00:45:14.080 other one capsule wardrobe so huge in like i don't like 2018 yeah i feel like it's still here

00:45:21.440 but like was so big then right it comes up all the time so you're like yes so i want to talk

00:45:31.180 about the capsule wardrobe separately yeah i do think these are all diets in less in that they're

00:45:37.260 inherently, I mean, they are all inherently restrictive. So yes, I think the point behind

00:45:42.840 them, my like touchstone for this is like, I am a big maintenance phase podcast, super fan. I feel

00:45:49.900 like I've listened to every single episode and I think that they talk very, very eloquently there

00:45:55.520 about, and this is what Virginia is also getting at, right? Which is this system that is so

00:46:02.520 ridiculous, essentially, that it is impossible to achieve it and you will fail and it will feel 0.64

00:46:11.920 like it's your fault and not its fault. And I would say with clothing, sometimes it's because 0.91

00:46:18.020 it's extremely restrictive, like the three-word method. And by the way, I want to be careful

00:46:22.840 sometimes because people do sometimes find this helpful. And there are a handful of different

00:46:29.860 people who sort of like claim whether you call it the three-word method or like finding your

00:46:33.380 adjectives or there's a bunch of different versions of this so I don't want to just be like pinning

00:46:37.400 down on the three-word method because that's just one person's thing and I don't want to be like

00:46:41.740 it's not her it's yeah this is a cultural thing yeah yeah but the other thing that style advice

00:46:48.520 in particular has a lot of is like malicious or not intentionally malicious but very sort of

00:46:55.820 convenient opacity. So this is to me, and I've been written about very negatively on the Kibbe

00:47:04.200 body typing boards. So maybe this will be another notch in my bedpost over there. But

00:47:09.200 Kibbe body typing is something that gets brought up to me a lot. And to me, it is truly the most 1.00

00:47:14.920 unintelligible body typing system I've ever heard of. It takes the already complicated messaging we

00:47:21.420 receive about how we are and are not supposed to present our bodies to the world and then

00:47:25.580 grounds it in language that is like so unintelligibly convoluted and then you go on to

00:47:32.180 these message boards and this is the same thing with all of these color analysis things too

00:47:35.620 which is that you then go on to these message boards and you find a bunch of people who are

00:47:39.580 sad about what they were assigned because it doesn't actually reflect the things that they're

00:47:44.200 like that makes their heart sing yeah you find people who have gone to multiple sort of practitioners

00:47:50.120 who have confidently and concretely assigned them completely different things that contradict each

00:47:56.580 other and sort of reveal that the emperor has no clothes no no pun intended but that like 0.90

00:48:02.320 you know if you are a kibbe body type i'm gonna get this wrong but it's like i'm a soft gamine

00:48:07.260 dramatic and then i went to another person who said i'm uh uh i don't even know what the other

00:48:13.080 kinds would be but they're you know whatever or i'm i'm a bold winter but i'm actually a soft

00:48:17.780 summer and it's like it kind of like takes the veil off of these things that are really like yeah

00:48:23.940 because this is subjective like yeah you know you watch these color typing videos where some

00:48:28.920 you know you they're mean it's like look how dead you look when you're wearing this color

00:48:34.060 and it's like what you know well and like okay so the other thing too i think so some of it is like

00:48:40.460 you look dead or you look old and then some of it especially with the body the overall body typing

00:48:46.200 the thing that they never talk about or that they like they know that they're not supposed to say as

00:48:51.360 much anymore as it explicitly is like everything is about a fear of wearing something that god

00:48:58.360 forbid makes you look fat right absolutely this is that the the core of like seeking out flattering

00:49:04.520 at all costs flattering in quotes here right it's like and i've done my own work a lot of personal

00:49:09.020 work on like what i mean when i say that something is flattering what anyone means when they say

00:49:14.180 that it's flattering what they're trying to get at is like does it make me look fat or does it not

00:49:19.380 make me look fat and like if you don't name that anti-fatness like i have to do that with clients

00:49:25.800 all the time because a lot of the time people reach out and they think what they're going to

00:49:30.220 get from me is somebody who's going to sit in front of them and like be honest about whether

00:49:34.660 or not they're quote-unquote pulling off the clothes that they're wearing um and i and i like

00:49:40.020 to do exactly what you're talking about which is i like to name it what do you mean pulling off and

00:49:43.600 they'll be like well does this work for me and i'm like what does work for me me right and then

00:49:47.600 when i when i i drill them until we get to a point where does it make me look fat and i'm like

00:49:52.340 if that that's actually not what i do i can't provide i'm not gonna i don't provide that

00:49:57.780 service um i it's also i've just worked i mean i've worked with over 600 people at this point

00:50:04.720 in my career and i can just tell you there is no objective flattering so i have clients with very

00:50:10.700 arguably similar body types where one person absolutely loves the way this outfit makes her 0.74

00:50:15.660 hips look wide because it makes her feel really feminine or it makes her feel really sexy 0.99

00:50:19.960 or it's a feature she's worked really hard on or it's a feature she's worked really hard to

00:50:24.620 make peace with. And then I have another client who is non-binary and is made to feel extremely 0.99

00:50:31.120 dysphoric by an outfit that emphasizes the width of their hips because it feels very femme in a 0.97

00:50:37.940 body that they are trying to present as more masculine. And so this idea that I can just sit 0.52

00:50:42.700 there and sort of go, yes, no, yes, no, that's not the skill I'm building. The skill I'm actually

00:50:47.220 building and the question that we're going to ask over and over and over and over again is,

00:50:51.200 do you like it? And if you like it, why? And if you don't like it, why not? And by the way,

00:50:56.680 that's allowed to apply to your body. You're allowed to not like something. It's a little

00:51:01.960 muckier because when you get there it's like okay well do you actually like this but you don't think

00:51:09.380 your body deserves it or you're afraid of what people will think about your body in it or do

00:51:14.560 you not like it those can be hard to to disentangle yeah i see a lot of that happening with people

00:51:19.840 figuring out how they feel about like midriff showing i'm on that journey right like um being

00:51:26.900 I'm like, like my ideal was like, there's this episode of Sex and the City where there's a rooftop party and Kim Cattrall is wearing these high-waisted shorts, which, yes, the gingham.

00:51:41.420 I love that you knew exactly what I was talking about.

00:51:43.620 You could have stopped that roof.

00:51:45.500 I knew.

00:51:46.680 And I did like at that time wearing a high-waisted short, which like very almost like a 50s silhouette.

00:51:52.980 Right.

00:51:53.660 Which is very back, has been back for a while.

00:51:56.200 But I remember looking at that and being like, huh, interesting.

00:52:00.580 Like, this is a different way, especially at that time in the early 2000s, of wearing something like showing off, like loving, showing your midriff that doesn't involve wearing like low slung jeans.

00:52:13.380 Right.

00:52:14.240 Yeah.

00:52:15.120 But then also just people who are like, oh, there's just this understanding that like if you have a fat roll, there's no way that that fat roll should be visible to anyone at any time.

00:52:25.040 that like somehow it like must be covered under penalty of like social exclusion and people be

00:52:31.380 like but I like the feel of this midriff bearing top like this feels awesome to me and I'm gonna

00:52:37.660 do it yeah hell yeah and that actually brings up the one other piece when the people like am I

00:52:42.660 pulling this off is I would say 80% of the time it's like a fat phobic question about like does

00:52:47.560 this make my body look bigger and then the other 20% of the time it's an ageist question about

00:52:52.120 yeah like am i too old to be like allowed to have fun yeah or to feel like to show this part of my

00:52:57.380 body right or has that ship sailed and now i just hide away until i die totally because i'm 34

00:53:04.820 um you know the other yeah i just have people are the other part of that question by the way

00:53:11.420 was which was about um the just the lack of size options i don't want to miss that part

00:53:17.060 Yeah. Is like that is that's like we're talking about it. That's a systemic issue. You know, it's it is of the. Yeah, it is like one of it's up there with all the biggest issues in fashion.

00:53:31.740 And I would say on the on the consumer side is the biggest issue. I think we have existential crises on the production side as far as sort of treatment of workers and sustainability practices and things like that.

00:53:45.720 But on the consumer front, I think size inclusivity and like adaptive disability friendly inclusivity are like just absolutely the bar, as my friend Alicia Cole, who is a stylist, says that the bar is in hell for plus size fashion. 0.99

00:54:02.780 And that is true. 0.74

00:54:04.400 Well, and it all goes back to anti-fatness, right?

00:54:07.060 Because a brand, it's not that they don't want to make money off of people who are in larger sizes.

00:54:11.660 It's that they don't want to understand themselves as a fat brand.

00:54:15.720 Right. Like just that fear at the core, which is so there's a million. It's very there's a million reasons. Right. It's it's a lack of right. Just like even viewing fat people as humans worth designing for of not wanting fat people seen in their clothes.

00:54:34.080 sometimes it is i would say like a systemic inertia around some of the logistics of like

00:54:39.800 and i'm not saying this to justify why it doesn't happen i'm just saying like this is

00:54:43.960 the way this has like deepened hideously in this industry is like there's not a lot of people who

00:54:51.080 have put the time and energy into understanding pattern making and size grading four plus sizes

00:54:56.460 and so that knowledge is not as abundant as it should be and the people who have taken the time

00:55:01.440 to learn about it it's just fewer and farther between and then have invested money in perfecting

00:55:06.820 it again it's like 99 of the time ironically it's like these tiny tiny little brands who are

00:55:15.180 scraping by on razor thin margins who just either like the designer themselves is fat and they're

00:55:20.520 like i want to wear my own clothes so i'm gonna get good at this um or just care and are like we 0.94

00:55:28.320 can fucking do this and it's ridiculous and unfortunately in the last like two or three 0.55

00:55:34.000 years we had like a sort of moment of like are we finally going to be more size inclusive and 0.99

00:55:39.780 fashion in general and have better size ranges and stuff or are we going to just have you know

00:55:46.200 go up to a size 12 and say sorry and pretend that fat people don't exist and i think with the rise

00:55:50.320 of glp1s the fashion industry has essentially taken this kind of quietly and not so quietly 0.99

00:55:55.420 as an opportunity to excuse themselves from the labor of servicing what is quite literally a

00:56:00.780 majority of the marketplace. I will briefly shout out both Big Undies and Burnt Toast,

00:56:06.540 Virginia Sol Smith's Patreon, and especially Virginia's Gene Series, Gene Science Series,

00:56:13.820 where she talks a lot about, this is so illuminating to me, how so many, part of the

00:56:18.500 problem with uh the pattern cutting as you pointed out is that like they just try to like

00:56:25.560 like apply larger size across the board like they're like okay well if we're gonna get a

00:56:31.600 bigger size then like we're gonna just make it longer and wider like essentially like yeah and

00:56:37.620 then you end up with like a sleeve a sleeve that's like eight feet long and yeah 70 yards wide like

00:56:43.000 Zero attention. It's really awful. But like bodies actually like are different sizes. So

00:56:48.480 there's yeah, I would love to shout out just on that note, a couple places like to me,

00:56:55.520 my favorite store on the planet is Berry's, B-E-R-R-I-E-Z in New York. But they have an

00:57:03.780 online store and they do other pop ups. Berry's is a mostly vintage and secondhand, but also

00:57:10.500 carries some emerging designers store in Brooklyn and she carries from size extra small through

00:57:19.340 5X. She sources meticulously. It is a thankless job. Emma is one of the most stylish, fabulous

00:57:25.920 people I've ever met. I find a lot of my favorite designers as somebody who like very consistently

00:57:31.100 wears a size medium through her because the work she's doing to find and not just find but also

00:57:37.260 train and pattern and sample like she she both sources vintage but she also will work with

00:57:44.100 independent designers who don't have size inclusive size ranges to do um like plus size runs and help

00:57:51.260 them actually get their patterning and their grading right and i cannot recommend her enough

00:57:56.600 we also have connelly goods in canada who does like a lot of denim and workwear i know that

00:58:02.180 corinna is a big fan of connelly i got to work with connelly a couple months ago and she's just 0.88

00:58:06.080 an angel and that's for like her specialty when it comes to jeans is 100 cotton denim but with an

00:58:12.640 elastic waistband so you get the durability and quality of a non-stretch jean which is really

00:58:19.420 really hard to find like over a size 14 or 16 but you also get the size flexibility of an elastic

00:58:24.560 waistband and something made ethically locally because the reality is for the most part plus

00:58:31.100 sizes are serviced by the fast fashion industry and that needs to change okay so now we're going

00:58:36.240 to keep going with this conversation for ask and anything as i mentioned up top we have three

00:58:40.780 specific style conundrums from listeners so if you want to hear more of these practical tips from

00:58:45.700 sophie head to patreon.com slash culture study sophie this was such a pleasure i'm so happy

00:58:52.360 this was like everything that i could have met like i really want to go and shop my closet right

00:58:55.860 now yes i was like i'm gonna wear something for this podcast that is very me but i also don't

00:59:01.980 want it to be very um like too obvious that i was dressing for the podcast with the stylist

00:59:08.420 the way i'm only gonna see your shoulders

00:59:11.080 i almost said something when you logged on i almost said like oh cute

00:59:16.040 i do get that people tell me all that it's sort of like the two things that people try to do when

00:59:24.240 I do a session with them is like they either try to like clean their closet before I come over or

00:59:30.240 they try to like dress up a lot for me because they're like they want to impress me and I'm like

00:59:34.620 it's kind of like waxing for the gynecologist I'm like you don't need to do this is my hairstylist

00:59:40.060 is always like please don't wash your hair I want it filthy when you come in and I get so

00:59:45.120 self-conscious about like how my hair looks and she's like shut up like we're I'm gonna make your

00:59:49.360 hair look good so um where can people find you on the internet if they want to hear more from you

00:59:55.060 learn more about you everything they can find me at sophiestraussstyling.com that is my website

01:00:02.540 that has how to book with me and work with me or if you want to join my newsletter and membership

01:00:09.260 program style school that's also there and then i am very active on social media they can find me

01:00:15.420 on Instagram at sophiestrossstyling.

01:00:18.620 Amazing.

01:00:19.380 Thank you again.

01:00:20.500 Thank you for having me.

01:00:23.720 Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.

01:00:26.040 Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

01:00:28.440 because we have so many great episodes in the works

01:00:30.960 and I promise you don't want to miss any of them.

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01:01:01.040 for each episode. The culture study podcast is produced by me and Helen Peterson and melody

01:01:06.420 Raul. Our music is by poddington bear. You can find me on Instagram at and Helen Peterson melody

01:01:12.300 at Melodias 47 and the show at Culture Study Pod.

Culture Study Podcast - August 19, 2026

All Your Questions About Personal Style, Answered

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