Style, Break-up-Style
on moving forward by dressing like yourself
The following is a special guest post written by Sophie Strauss, break-up stylist of your dreams. Thank you for your sharing your words and wisdom here, Soph!
Okay, I don’t just do breakups. I’m a stylist for regular people. I take people shopping, I clean out their closets, I help them pack for trips, I troubleshoot any and every style question. I’ve dressed people for weddings, birthday parties, first days of work, carpool pickup, even funerals. And while I’ve worked with everyone from nonbinary teenagers to 70-year-old men to Broadway actors, the majority of my clients are women, many of whom are moms (which, as a mom myself, is a treat). And, totally by accident, a lot of the moms who have hired me lately are at one of life’s great transitional moments: a break up.
Being inside someone’s closet during a breakup is a rare kind of intimacy. Because there’s something very tender about being trusted by strangers to guide them in moving from one chapter of life to another.
It sounds silly. They’re just clothes after all. And in many ways, that’s true. Clothes, and how we dress, are limited in their power. They’re superficial. They won’t save the world, end hunger or climate change (and our current rate of fashion production and consumption is definitely making it worse). Empowering oneself to look good isn’t actually empowering if you use that power only for yourself. And it’s extra disempowering if the metric for “looking good” is normative, patriarchal, fatphobic beauty standards. So no, in that way clothes are not important. But everyone has to get dressed every day (unless you’re a nudist in which case, congrats). We can’t opt out. And the truth is, no one doesn’t care. Making a big deal of not caring is actually a form of caring, sorry. We put clothes on our body every day, they are an extension of ourselves. They can be profoundly affirming – just ask anyone who has navigated gender expression how much clothes matter when they want to feel like themselves. Ask anyone who is disabled how much it matters to have accessible clothes that still feel expressive. Ask anyone who is fat how important it is to have clothes they actually like that come in their size. Ask anyone who isn’t white how much their clothes matter when they want to be taken seriously, professionally, when they want to move through the world safely. When we want to express ourselves or connect to our culture or heritage or community. Ask anyone who is going through a break up how much their relationship impacted how they dressed. Clothes are communication. To other people, certainly. A fleeting signal of who we are to those who won’t know us long enough to find out otherwise. But clothes are also a way of communicating with ourselves.
Clothes, at their best, tell us how we see ourselves. At their worst, they tell us how we think we should be seen by others.
This is one of the first things Rebecca and I connected about (okay, we connected about basically everything, but that’s another story). That Rebecca discovered, as a new widow, how much her clothes were failing to tell the story society wanted to hear from a bereft woman. That the cover of her book did not show a mourner in a black shroud, nor a woman so ravaged by grief that she was unable to change out of sweats or wash her hair. Rebecca continued to dress like herself. Without opening her mouth, without saying a word, her clothes told the story of a woman who was not losing herself, but finding herself in the wake of her husband’s death. People don’t like that. How brave to do it anyway.
And that fearlessness is what I’ve found working with women on their personal style as they go through breakups. That it’s scary and exhilarating to dress like yourself, despite it all. That women have these closets full of past selves at old sizes with different priorities. Pieces that were bought to fit in, to stand out, to be taken seriously at work when no one did, or to chase comfortably after a baby if they stopped working. To be the right kind of wife or mother or at least not the wrong kind. Tiny messages we tried to send out to the world about who we thought we should be, to ourselves about who we hoped we were. And that it takes courage to pull yourself out from under all that.
In their closets, we laugh, we cry, we fold, we sweat. We try on old date night dresses and jeans that don’t fit and ugly shoes gifted from mean mothers-in-law who don’t have the right to call anymore, thank god. We struggle to let go of pieces that are shockingly sentimental (why is this t-shirt harder to part with than my wedding gown?!) I never push. I’m not Marie Kondo, we’re not moralizing minimalism. Keep what you want to keep, get rid of what you need to. We make piles of clothes and thank them for their service – they’re not trash piles to burn, they’re the armor or the disguise that got us here safely. Honor that. Plus, someone’s likely-underpaid hands had to make this garment, we can’t forget. And the pieces we toss will live on this earth much longer than any of us do, we can’t forget that either. Together we shed layers of old selves and then start the work of figuring out the hard part: Who are you to yourself, now?
If I do the job right, I’m just holding up a mirror. In the kindest light, when no one else is around, who are you? You don’t have to be anything in particular. You don’t have to be sexy now that you’re single, though you can be. You don’t have to be practical because you’re a mom, and you don’t have to be impractical to reject stereotypes about being a mom. You don’t have to be modest or professional because you’re over 40…or over 50…or over 60. That is the best and scariest part of true personal style – that there are no rules, no wrong answers except the thing you don’t like for yourself but wear anyway.
On the one hand it can be terrifying, you’re unmoored with no map. A total freefall. On the other hand, it’s completely liberating. Wear the mini skirt, wear the crop top. Wear the Eileen Fisher that you love but it makes you feel old and it reminds you of your grandma. Good, I bet your grandma was awesome and what a privilege it is to be old, not everyone gets there. My job is to help you find the things you like, not to talk you out of liking them. Because style is not an externally-defined thing, it’s not a never-ending cycle of trends you have to keep up with. It’s not something I can deliver to you. It’s corny, but it comes from the inside out. It’s the intersection of how you feel and who you want the world to believe you are, or at least believe you are today.
And that’s what I love about styling people’s breakups. Something any of us, breakup or not, could learn from. Life has handed them a clear inflection point and there is no denying it. There’s this readiness to say “fuck it, let’s go” that I rarely see with other clients. What a gift! To value yourself after years of being undervalued. To see yourself clearly when for so long you were unseen. To know with fierceness that it’s time to change. Not into a Whole New You™, but a whole you you.
SOPHIE’S 3 TIPS FOR FINDING YOUR STYLE (post breakup or not)
Start by coming up with a few words that describe how you want to feel, rather than how you want to look. It’s easy to get caught up in stereotypes of what XYZ should look like, so start with a feeling and then take note of what you’re wearing when you feel those things. For example, feeling powerful doesn’t mean you have to be wearing a power suit (though it could be!). Maybe you feel powerful in a sundress or in vintage khakis and a big tee shirt. Great. Take a second to check in with yourself when you put your clothes on.
Play dress up. Clients always ask me “how will I know if that’ll look good on me?” Put it on your body! I’m sorry, there’s no magic sauce here. Yes, knowing a little about construction, fabric, and fit can help you make better guesses, but it’ll still be a guess til you try it on. Adults are busy, we often have five minutes between work and kids and dinner or whatever to get dressed. And usually one of two things happens: you reach for your “uniform” and feel bummed to have missed a chance to wear something fun, or you reach for something out of your comfort zone and spend the night feeling a little uncomfortable or self conscious because something’s not quite right. This is where dress up comes in! Give yourself an hour or two every few months, light a candle, pour a glass of wine, put on some Dolly Parton. Set the mood for yourself to try on your clothes. Grab pieces you’ve been neglecting, ones that have sat unworn for a while, mix them and match them. Try them tucked, rolled, tied, cuffed, open, closed, layered, backwards. Add jewelry. Try it with the shoes you always reach for and then the shoes you never reach for. I promise you’ll end up feeling like you just went shopping. Take selfies in the outfits you like and save them to a folder in your phone called “Outfits.” Next time you go out, look to that folder for quick inspiration.
Don’t silo your wardrobe. Your “work clothes” and your “mom clothes” and your “cool clothes” (or whatever other categories you may have) don’t need to be separated. It’s a recipe for feeling bored and dissociated in your clothes. Let them mingle! Pair your work trousers with that big comfy t-shirt you sleep in. Try a lacey date night blouse with the baggy, ripped jeans you wear to chase your kid at the park. Hell, put on high heels with sweats if you’d like (a favorite of mine)! Even if you don’t think you’ll wear that exact outfit, you’ll find you look at your clothes in a whole new way. It’s like doubling your closet without buying a thing.
Sophie Strauss is a stylist for regular people with a focus on inclusivity and sustainability. She is based in LA but works with people all over the world. You can follow her on Instagram and/or TikTok and at sophiestraussstyling.com
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