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Who you are (and who you want to be): self-actualisation through style!

The first dress!
Details
Dress: Vintage Laura Ashley
Waistcoat: charity shop (brand unknown) 
Shoes: vintage Dr Martens

 Being steadfast in your identity is pretty darn difficult in your youth. You're constantly evolving, being moulded by society, but primarily yourself, into who you want to be. They say self-assuredness (is that even a word? It is now!) comes with age. 'They' are probably right. So why not use your teens, twenties, and even early thirties (age is but a number, eh?) to explore who you might one day become through the ideals, projections and desires of who you are now. Only through experimentation can you decide the characteristics and interests you want to cultivate in the future you. Great things are on the horizon. 

Admittedly, this post is a bit of a thought experiment, or perhaps even simply an expanded train of thought that chugged its way through my rather busy brain (pun intended!). It relates to how we feel in ourselves to how clothes (and hair and makeup and accessories) can make us feel. Self-expression becomes self-projection, which in turn becomes reality. 


The second dress! 
Details
Dress: vintage via charity shop
Blazer: charity shop (brand unknown)
Boots: Miss Selfridge 

Personally, lately I've really been playing around with my femininity. I don't feel very feminine in my mind, but I appreciate my female-bodiedness and want to explore this particular previously forbidden avenue. So, I've been wearing (well, mostly buying, actually) a lot of vintage dresses. The two pictured here are two of my latest purchases. 

In the first one, I feel powerful in my womanly body, free-spirited and motherly. It is reminiscent of times-gone-by and fills me with a rich sense of elegance and full-bodied happiness. In the second one, I feel put-together in both life and style (meaning that I know what the heck I'm doing, which is not something I usually know...), ambitious and professional. For me, these dresses project a sense of knowing, both in the power of my body and my mind, in my personality and my career. They demonstrate my ideal future self: eccentric, motherly, hard-working, accomplished. I feel striking in them (if you could ever describe my dull exterior as striking (minus the hair, which screams 'vibrant!' and 'passionate!'). 

An expression of these traits, or any that you might choose, will then become an experienced reality by strangers, new friends, estranged family members, if only as a first impression, but maybe even as a more prolonged opinion of you.


Our appearance is the first message that we send to the physical world, the primary way to convey who we are deeper within. However, if we are to dress to project who we want to be - whether this is feminine/masculine/genderless, confident or unique - we can use our initial message to push ourselves closer towards our ideal selves, to actualise who we want to be. 

The world sees our vintage dress, our suit, our double-denim combo, and makes an assumption about our character. If treated, even initially, like who we want to one day become, we are one step closer to actually becoming that person.


Style is an incredibly powerful tool. 
Appearance is more than frivolity and self-indulgence. It is a signal to the world that dictates how we should be viewed and treated.
Use it wisely! 

Right, so that's the conclusion to this ramble/thought experiment(?)/dose of Louise's personal blah-blah-blah. I'm sorry if it's written slightly more formally than usual, I'm in an academic(ish) mood. 

I hope you enjoyed this commentary on style as a tool for self-actualisation. 
What did you think of the outfits? Let me know in the comments. 

A selection of side-notes:
(I post twice a week)
(Please follow this blog if you like what you see!) 
(Follow me on instagram @jumper.dweller) 

Okay, I'm done now, thank you very much for reading! Over and out! 

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