When Mood Affects Style
Getting personal today, with the sometimes delicate matter of the effect mood can have on one’s personal sense of style. Most of the time a person arranges her environment as well as her look to match a general preference of taste. For example, decorating a room (or even one’s complete home) in, say, Victorian (or more accurately neo-Victorian) style. Yet a strong change in mood, however passing and temporary, may spark a matching change in how one dresses – at the very least.
When the mood swing is negative, depression or exhaustion are two examples, the change can be a symptom warning others that the once content friend is undergoing some emotional hardship. This change can be very dramatic – clothing is unkempt, hair unwashed, demeanor hunched or closed in where such hadn’t exemplified the person at all.
Of course, dressing to go out and work in the garden may mimic the unkempt look but one’s demeanor will be a lot more upbeat!
On the other hand, feeling extraordinarily happy can impel one to dress up, maybe add make-up, accessorize with unusual care, even. Not merely a chore or habit but conscious determination to create a look meant to advertise (often loudly) how terrific one is feeling at that moment.
For me, negative emotions (even simple exhaustion) is manifest as lack of color coordination, use of dingy and faded colors, shirts and trausers that were meant to be relegated to being worn when cleaning out a garage or attic. When I’m exhausted I want only to wear the most comfortable, barest minimum of clothing and if I only finger comb my hair I feel accomplished. I want a nap and no amount of fancy dress is going to do anything to invigorate me.
When I’m feeling harried I still want to look nice, but for some reason I feel uncomfortable taking out my prettiest sarong or carefully doing my eye make-up. Whether it’s because I don’t feel capable enough to create a perfect look or because I want the universe to know I’m feeling harried, I haven’t quite figured out.
Depression is actually more complicated. On the one hand one doesn’t feel compelled to take much effort with anything yet there is sometimes a compunction to move carefully and exactingly in putting together one’s dress for the day.
I am touching on only the surface of a far more profound subject. For you, I think, can consider if any long term mood has changed your personal style and whether this was for the better or not. I leave you with one final question to ponder. In what ways do you think falling in love has an effect on how one designs one’s own personal style?