To come up with an effective tagline for PSYKHE, I’ve been reflecting on what the most important point about fashion psychology really is. Why are we creating a psychologically based shopping platform? What pain point does our innovation solve? And I kept coming back to the word ‘becoming’, the notion that clothes shape our identity and that the right clothes for you help you become your best self. As such, our working tagline has been “Clothes That Help You Become”.
But the other day, it dawned on me that while all the above is valid, the most important point, was actually something else.
To give myself a break from our current status-quo of Coronavirus-related quarantine, I was out for my daily walk around my local park in London. I hadn’t left my neighborhood for a month, but this walk around the park, usually listening to a book on Audible, was my respite. I was wearing a grey hoodie, grey sweatpants, black Nike high-tops and a forest green vinyl-coated down jacket. My hair was in a bun that was the wrong side of messy, and around my torso, I wore a studded leather fanny pack that housed my credit card, hand sanitizer, lip balm, and keys. What I wear to the park for 45 minutes shouldn’t matter so much, but I felt deeply uncomfortable. This uncoordinated, brash ensemble, and mushy palette of green, gray, and black did not feel right. It wasn’t me. It felt out of alignment. And that’s the word I really keep coming back to. When you’re feeling uncomfortable or unattractive in your clothes, it’s when you’re out of alignment.
Dressing in alignment, or out of alignment – that’s all good or bad dressing is. It’s why one outfit feels right and makes us happy, and why another makes us miserable and feels wrong.
All-business in monochrome in Paris.
I also realized the importance of dressing in alignment when I was cleaning out my closet that weekend. There are a handful of clothes that I really like in theory, which I mysteriously never wear. In particular, there is a pastel pink Cos sweater with a huge tulle ruffle panel to the front, and a pair of pale green satin shorts, that I never feel good in, despite the fact that optically, I truly like them. I realized that what these clothes have in common are their soft, gentle, moderate coloring. It wasn’t immediately clear, because I do wear color. But upon further examination, it was clear that apart from my monochrome obsession, I only like really bright, bold, shocking colors. I don’t like the in-between hues.
All-fun on a road trip in Oahu.
And perhaps uncoincidentally, this extreme-shade preference is perfectly in line with my extreme personality and my inability to moderate – a subset of the personality trait of neuroticism. I either thrive in tropical weather or winter wonderland. I don’t like spring. I like walking or sprinting. Not jogging. I’m either eating like I’m begging for a freshman 15 or doing Keto bordering on Dukan, and 16:8 Intermittent Fasting to a T. I can’t and won’t eat “balanced”. I love you or I don’t know you. I like to work in a dark room when I’m working for 12 hours straight, or lying out under the bright sun when tanning, which I can also do the entire day. Call it dysfunctional, or call it its own form of balance, but this is who I am, and I can similarly only really feel in alignment when dressed in extreme contrasts.
The other bit of evidence I gathered to support the case of ‘alignment’ came to me spontaneously, when our editorial associate Megan McClelland and I were sending various product and lookbook photos back and forth, over Slack. I sent her a Staud campaign look that was so her. “It hurts”, she replied. Another. “I’m shaking”, she said. I sent her a shocking pink ruffled Marc Jacobs mini dress with a black square neckline trim with the accompanying text: “this dress is a literal sucker-punch to the gut”.
Why do we describe the reaction to seeing clothes that we really love as painful? Because when something is so strongly in alignment with who you are, it’s almost as if the piece were a missing limb. Clothes are an extension of you. So it hurts, because you recognize a necessary piece of yourself in it.
I realized that while clothes do help you become who you’re meant to be, and the future-self aspect is important, finding the right outfit for the present moment, to reflect who you are in the here and now, is the most important. After all, it’s our present moment that creates our future moment.
And the real pain point is that it takes a while to get a sense of why or what is in alignment and when, which is the white space we’ll seek to address with PSYKHE.
The other day in the park, I acknowledged that what I wanted to be wearing was my NY Yankees cap (which I’d lost, so mentally reminded myself to order a new one), and a black-and-white athleisure look. It reflected who I really was that day: homesick, and full of contrasts.
To see the full scope of your personality chart and the styles that could be in alignment, take PSYKHE’s personality test here.
In the world of post-pandemic dressing, one word has taken social media by storm: cheugy (pronounced: chew-gee). In the worlds of fashion and lifestyle, cheugy describes a look, a thing or a person that’s considered out of date.