Wardrobe Psychology


The clothes that live in your closet tell a story. Do you know the story they are telling?


If you were to invite someone into your home, and invite them to see the contents of your closet, I am sure you would feel compelled to tell the story of the items hanging there (or not hanging...perhaps they are on the floor!). We'd need to explain how this coat was the best purchase we ever made, or that dress was bought for a party we never went to, or how that suit is very expensive but we need to lose five more pounds to wear it. Oh, and over here, here are the clothes that dear Aunt Agnes gifted you (aren't they lovely --vintage!!-- no, they don't fit...). And this is my FAVORITE.... Etcetera.

Imagine for a moment that you aren't standing there to tell the story. What if someone had to look at your closet and determine who you are from what is hanging there? Would they be able to? If so, congratulations…you have achieved one of the highest goals in style development and wardrobe planning. You have wardrobe consonance. If not, you are far from alone. The vast majority of people never quite reach this lofty goal. Why is that? To answer, let’s look at the three components of wardrobe consonance.

What is wardrobe consonance?

The first thing to realize is that there are actually three components of a functional wardrobe:

1) Your style persona

2) What is really in your closet

3) What you actually wear

In a fully functional wardrobe, a wardrobe with wardrobe consonance, all three of these elements will be in harmony. In most people's closets, however, these three categories are widely disparate. Let me explain.

Style Persona - Imagined vs. Concrete

Most people have in their minds a picture of how they would like to present themselves to the world. These pictures are likely to be an uncategorized and unconscious mish-mosh of likes and dislikes, current trends, cultural expectations, and habit; and they will include a whole lot of wishful thinking. Naturally this picture is very feeling or emotionally based, and because of this can be highly variable. This picture is your imagined style persona.

The challenge in dressing is that we see this imagined style persona as our authentic self. But we are only half right. What we don’t realize is that the personality of the unconscious mind correlates to our behavior more highly than the personality of our conscious mind correlates to the personality of our unconscious mind. In other words, we are pitifully bad at predicting our own behavior…and because of that, who we think we are is oftentimes very different than who we really are.

In contrast to the imagined style persona is the concrete style persona. This is a consciously decided upon style orientation with definite parameters that is used to guide all choices in buying and dressing.

Let’s continue on….

The Clothes in Your Closet

Now we come to the clothes in your closet. If you are like most people, you will have bought clothes in an attempt to satisfy your imagined style persona. This is how you end up with clothes that do not suit your lifestyle or that you will never wear because they make you feel self-conscious. This is also how you discover that the clothes in your closet could outfit ten different personas at one time. Having a concrete style persona can help immensely in building a functional wardrobe, because it prevents you from making many of these purchasing errors. But there is still another element to the clothes that are in your closet. These clothes represent the sum total of choices that you have each day in getting dressed. You can’t outfit yourself with a magazine cover or with a daydream. You have to go to your closet and pull out clothes that you already own.

But, just because you own them, doesn’t mean that you will wear them.

The Clothes That You Wear

And then there are the clothes that you actually wear. I tell all my clients, "You wear what you wear." Bottom line. You put on the clothes that you feel most comfortable in, regardless of what else is in your closet and regardless of your style persona --imaginary or concrete. Whenever something goes onto your body, you have, at some level, made the choice to wear it.

Wrapping it Up

If you have wardrobe consonance, your style persona will align with what you have in your closet, and what is in your closet will align with what you actually wear, and what you actually wear will influence your style persona.

Without any blame, go through the contents of your closet. What in there is an accurate reflection of where you are today, right now? Isolate those clothes from the rest. You don't have to get rid of anything just now...just look at what you can pull from the closet that our imaginary visitor could look at and say, “Oh, yes, I have an idea who this person is.” Are these clothes that you wear frequently? If so, examine why. The answers can begin to lead you down the road to wardrobe consonance.


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