A Black Panther of an Outfit

Bespoke Style is a personal style newsletter. I (mostly) wear custom and vintage pieces. My mom’s a tailor and thanks to her, I grew up with the art of fashion and style in my DNA. I’m bringing that to you with this newsletter.

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Enjoy! - Johanna.

If there is one animal to describe my style, it’s the panther.

Like the sleek jungle cat, I prefer long and narrow lines over ornate frills. I like outfits that help me move with grace and intent - a little sexy, a little mysterious.

Or, at least that’s what I’m aspiring my wardrobe to look like.

On some days, I’m there 95%. On others, I don’t know what to wear after big clothing purges last year and the year before.

My style is still in transition, as I’ve completed shedding the old that didn’t work for me and am now pulling in and building the new.

Finding My Style Meant Accepting Myself

For a long time, I wanted to look easy-breezy. Creative and a little quirky. Like all millennials, Sex and the City and its outfits had left a mark on me. My style was hippie meets Carrie with a dash of outrageousness.

I thought it worked. In hindsight, it really didn’t.

I was trying to be somebody else, trying to make my tall frame and intense presence cute.

Fortunately or unfortunately, you cannot hide who you are.

A couple of years ago, an intuitive told me that my aura was like a truck. Needless to say, my family ate that right up. Truck-jokes abounded for years.

There was a big slice of truth to it, though.

With a presence like mine, it’s hard to hide. Though, that’s what I did for years.

You cannot pretend to be cute, when you’re freakishly tall for a girl, even without heels. I did anyways, trying on clashing prints for size, downplaying my presence and intensity. All my childhood, I had heard that nobody liked tall and bossy girls - especially not the boys. And I followed suit, shrinking myself.

Now that I’m in my mid-30s, I have less patience for it. I’ve let go a lot of my aspirations of pretending I’m approachable and easy-going. When your whole vibe says get out of my way, it’s better to embrace it.

Style is a powerful tool to communicate things about ourselves. Finding your style, more than anything, is a path to self-acceptance. 

You can try to be cute, pint-sized, and sweet all day, it won’t work when who you are and what you look like is something entirely different.

I’ve been having more fun embracing who I am and dressing for it. Sometimes, I chuckle, when I appear somewhere in heels and people stare.

Let them! It’s fun to break through somebody else’s worldview.

More and more, it’s becoming fun to be different. And that’s a good thing!

Now, back to outfits.

Long, Narrow, and Lean: My Winning Outfit Formula

This outfit I wore earlier this week felt like a total panther-like win. Dark, though not black (black washes me out), with a little bit of contrast and intrigue and lines that accentuate what I like best about my body: that it’s long, narrow, and lean.

Here are the outfit deets:

Pants: my favorite, narrow, vintage wool winter pants, also seen here, here and here White Shirt: vintage
Sleeveless pullover: Massimo Dutti, I styled it with a bespoke skirt here before
Boots: Marc O’ Polo from almost 20 years ago, also worn here
Belt: vintage Etro

As a fun treat to myself, I curled my hair for some extra polish. While air-dried, tousled waves look amazing on other people, on me they fall very flat. I look unkempt in every sense of the word.

In the photo below, you can also see the slight sparkle in the sleeveless pullover and how it’s not one hundred percent black, more like a blackish-blueish-dark grey.

To finish it off, I threw on a vintage fur jacket that echoed the black and white theme of the outfit.

What do you think? Have you reconciled your style with your personality, yet?

If you want to share your thoughts on this newsletter, you can comment on it here:

Have a lovely day,

Johanna

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