How I’m Defining My Style In 2025

A closet purge, my Three Words, and digitizing my wardrobe

Rather than see January as a blank page on which to immediately fill with commitments and promises to myself (she says nervously as if every Saturday in January didn’t have plans populated in a calendar … oops), I try to take every single one of its days the best I can. If I took a step forward - that’s a win. If I stayed in place, but remained upright - that’s also a win. If all I managed was a cozy move from mattress to couch cushion - surprise surprise, also a win.

Real.

So as we move closer towards February and my first actual “fresh start” of 2025, I wanted to talk about one of my goals for the year. One of my biggest goals was to really drill down into my style and define it more clearly.

Now, this may come as a surprise coming from someone who writes and covers fashion as frequently and thoroughly as I do. While I do think I’m further along in terms of my style identity and what I feel works for me than the average person and that I’m generally really conscious and intentional with what I bring into my closet, I wanted to take it to the next level in 2025. As you know, we’re all about flourishing this year.

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What’s Next?

My plan?

1. Get thoughtful

2. Get organized

3. Get shopping

• Take a style quiz (who doesn’t love a personality quiz)

• Identify my Three Words

As a start, I dove into the Three Word Method to pull apart, label, and understand my style. There are a few different practitioners of this methodology, but they all operate with the same goal in mind: Define your style in three words. This trifecta is meant to provide flexibility and clarity. With three words, there’s a little more space to breathe. As opposed to a more restrictive one (“girly”, “cool”, “sexy”). Let women contain multitudes, as they say. More words also offers more canvas with which to create and visualize while still creating a clear focus. Fashion is an art form and what is art if not a series of carefully placed layers.

Allison Bornstein, New York-based stylist, is someone who did the heavy lifting in popularizing the method. Her approach is giving each word a function to describe your closet. One as it is (baseline), two for where you want your style to go (aspirational), and three for how your clothes make you feel (emotional). Other Three Word proponents like Amy Smilovic, founder and Creative Director of Tibi, likes to derive all three of her words as distillations of her personality. Amy told the podcast How To Dress her favourite tactic is finding patterns in the quotes that speak most deeply to you. Her logic is that these words speak to a deeper place of emotional resonance and better reflect the wholeness of you as a person.

The quiz I turned to was on Indyx (more on that later). After a series of tapping on outfits I found inspirational and liked, out spat my three words. Drumroll …

My Three Words: Minimalist. Edgy. Classic.

Much like when I looked up the stereotypical traits of my zodiac sign (astrology they could never make me hate you), none of these words came as a surprise. In fact, it felt a little like relief. While sometimes it’s nice to operate without labels (the freedom to run limitless, limbs akimbo), other times giving something a name (even what we may have already inherently known) can feel like being granted permission to occupy the space those letters take up. Like releasing a breath you didn’t know you were holding. Like no longer holding your stomach in when you pose for a photo or walk through life. Some might find excitement in the untamed. There are creative minds that thrive best without boundaries or the edges of a canvas. But whether it’s because I was placed there by some design or if I built the fence posts myself, I think I prefer the comfort of (reasonable) confines.

So what did these words mean for me?

Minimalist: Favours neutral colours and clean lines, but seeks to do more with less. A wardrobe of basics “but made special by slightly exaggerated silhouettes, understated details, and luxurious fabrics.” Think wide leg trousers, all. the. denim., oversized outerwear, architectural details.

Edgy: Adds to the shadow of a minimalist’s neutral-forward palette with lightning bolts of cherry red, animal print, leather, or metallics. As my secondary word I see it as an aspirational place to build in my closet and also as a supporting actor. Think a pair of leopard flats or a patent red tote bag or a leather moto jacket.

Classic: Timeless and charming - “a faithfulness to heritage dressing” with preppy staples. Neutrals are another theme here, but as are kicky prints like a good ol’ stripe. Blazers, bows, crisp oxfords, trenches, pearls.

If you’re starting from scratch, a style quiz to point you in the direction of three words is helpful. As is staring at a word bank for inspiration.

Some other words I liked from this particular one were: feminine, tailored, powerful, refined, effortless, elegant.

If words aren’t your thing, there’s also the more visual method. When I worked as a personal stylist, to get a sense for a client’s taste I would ask them to pull together a moodboard of looks they loved. As someone who documents the fashion of a public figure, I - naturally - encouraged clients to think about the celebrities whose style they found most inspiring. Much like how Taylor uses her fashion to create aesthetically distinct “eras” in her life, placing someone’s style on a landscape with an anchor makes discerning their “words” that much easier. This type of exercise was also helpful because, unlike Amy’s method which relies on pulling words out of thin air - which can be hard for some to do on a whim, it was inherently visual and evocative. In the same way that Taylor pinned her style to a moment in her discography, naming a celebrity gave me an immediate image-forward entrypoint into their psyche. If you, for instance, said you loved Kate Moss’ outfits that would be a very different moodboard than someone who loves, say, Kate Middleton’s style.

A peek at my personal moodboard. The key is to not overthink things. I think I pulled this together in <10 minutes. I might have even set a timer while doing it to keep things as instinctual as possible. Something to consider doing if you try this out yourself!

Why is any of this important?

Communicating with self and communicating with others: I view getting dressed and choosing your clothes as a way of nurturing your relationship with yourself. I could have said self-care, but I wanted to go the scenic route - sue me. In getting dressed, we choose how we want to feel about ourselves that day and, in turn, how we want others to feel about us. To dress is to communicate - and I want to be a better communicator. I want to understand myself more.

Enforced thinking before buying: Having a defined sense of style with the guardrails of three words as guidance also offers a checkpoint before clicking ‘purchase.’ Knowing how you want to communicate through your clothes and having a list of criteria an item must adhere to creates a hurdle that makes impulse purchases harder. “Does this align with my words?” you can ask. If yes, you can purchase with confidence. If no, you can move on and feel freed from the pressure to purchase.

Easier styling, more flourishing: If all that remains in your closet and all that you end up buying for yourself has holistic alignment with your Three Words - which are meant to be a distillation of how you feel and who you are - then getting dressed every day is not only easier to do but also more fulfilling and joyful.

• Purge closet of obvious items and items that don’t align with Three Words

• Digitally catalogue remaining items

• Track outfit patterns, analyze the data

You know when you get excited to start a new project and then midway through you regret every single life choice that put you on the path to said project?

Not relevant to anything in this post. Just thought I’d randomly bring it up as a tangent. /laughs nervously

In aligning my closet with my newly discovered Three Words, I did two big passes. The first was to eliminate any low-hanging fruit that might still be kicking around. This includes items that don’t fit and items that are worn / aged to beyond repair. Things that, even if I still loved them, cannot be worn for whatever reason and thus mean they take up precious closet space that could be devoted to something usable. The second pass was a more emotional and languishing one. Did this ladder up into my Words? Did this make me feel like my Words? Does this make me feel anything positive at all?

From there, purged items got sorted into: Donate / recycle, consign, gift.

The items that remained? Well, they were about to fulfill a greater destiny. A data destiny, actually.

My very helpful closet organization assistant, unpaid intern Floof.

You see, for years I had been thinking about how to make my closet more efficient. How do I keep track of things coming into and out of my closet? How do I go about actually tracking the things I wear? How can I learn more about what I own, what I actually put on my body, and the stats of it all? I didn’t just want a spreadsheet. I wanted to digitally catalogue my entire wardrobe so I could create data points for the pieces, the colours, the outfit formulas, the silhouettes I wear the most. For science. Obviously.

I used Indyx for digitally cataloguing my wardrobe and I’m so excited to use it for the rest of the year to really build up some useful data. Not only do you input the individual items in your closet, but you can input the outfits that you create with those items too.

/incoherent nerd noises

Think of the possibilities! Seriously! Thank about them!

I can now visualize the items I repeat most as well as those that don’t get as much love. This means I can actually calculate the cost per wear on an item and even sort my closet by “least worn” to “most worn”, putting the items that don’t get as much love right in my eyeline and top of mind to reach for (or don’t, thus sending it to my next purge pile). I can discern patterns in the types of items I pair with others (tee + jeans, sweater + skirt + tights) to make for easy styling as new items come into my closet. I can see how long an item sticks around in my closet, what my secondhand shopping habits are like, what categories I maybe over-invest in and where I need to spend more time building my collection up or prioritize more. The mind spins!

My newly digitized closet via Indyx.

Now, this was definitely a labour of love. A real “buy once, cry once” situation. It took me many hours over the course of multiple, separate days (I just had to break it up, stamina-wise) to get everything into the app. By my time stamps: 3-ish hours for all my trousers and tops, 1-ish hour for my sweaters, another 1-ish hour for my dresses, and a final 3-ish hours for my outerwear / shoes / jewelry. Not included in the app were things I don’t use for “fashion” purposes (workout gear, Taylor merch, pajamas, etc). I can’t overstate how long this took. Not least of which is that I think I was also set up to tackle this task more efficiently than most (I keep a spreadsheet of the clothes that I’ve purchased and have done so since 2022 so inputting things like “date purchased” and “cost” was easy). And yet it still took many many many hours. Part of my completionist, data-nerd driven ways also made me put in as many factors as possible so that I have as much information to work with. Here’s what I input:

• Brand

• Size

• Colour

• Date Purchased

• Cost

• Secondhand (Yes/No)

• Location Purchased (Online/In Store/Gifted)

• Material

👥 Referral: If you also decide to check out Indyx for your closet organization needs, use my code “taylorswiftstyled” to receive $10 at sign-up.

• Identify wardrobe gaps

• Build a wishlist

• Window shop

Now that I feel I know thyself better and I have the data to back it up, going through these two exercises really set me up well for Future Me. Aka the me who will be shopping. There were a lot of things I knew about myself that felt great to reaffirm — like how I’ll always love a blazer. But there were other things that I learned in going through the motions of this organization process that I think are really going to guide my style in the next year. Read: More animal print incoming. I also suspect as I populate more outfits into Indyx and I get more acquainted with the items I wear often or the types of ensembles I put together, I’ll get challenged to come up with new combinations I hadn’t thought of before. The goal really is to utilize more of the inventory I already have - and Indyx has the capability to actually tell you that you are using a certain percentage of your wardrobe. I also suspect I will be pushed into scenarios where I say aloud, “Oh XYZ would go really well with this outfit” and I really look forward to being able to name the gaps in my wardrobe.

By the Three Word guidelines, your second word ends up being a great starting place to tackle. It’s the area where you want to move your style towards. Perhaps you couldn’t name the word before. Perhaps you felt a little too nervous to try it on for size or that it was outside your comfort zone to explore. I think that in giving myself the label “edgy” I’m giving myself the permission to start shopping accordingly.

Here’s a peek at my “edgy” moodboard.

I think doing this during a no buy is also really working in my favour. It gives me the time to reflect on all the lessons I’ve learned in my closet organization process, build a wishlist, and ruminate in my picks before hitting “buy” on anything. I think for a lot of problem solver Type A types, we want to create a to do list and immediately start whittling it down and away. The check marks humming happily in our brain as quantifiers of our productivity and goodness. In a way, the no buy is operating as enforced window shopping time to actually absorb the lessons I’ve learned about myself in this process.

My stretchy goal was three months, with a minimum of one month without buying anything new in the clothing and beauty categories. (Note: I gave myself permission to replenish beauty items that ran out. Repurchasing my favourite serum when I ran dry was obviously okay. Buying a brand new blush just because I wanted a new blush was not).

Currently, a sneak peek at my wishlist below. Part of the beauty is that I’m sure it will change a lot as I continue to stew on where I want my style to go over the next year. Much like your Three Words acting as both guiding light and stop sign, I feel a wishlist functions in the same way. Writing down my greedy grubby little “wants” gets it out of my brain and out of a tab on my desktop and into something I can analyze and take both an emotional and a mental step away from. It gives me the gift of time to think and creates a hurdle standing in the way between me and the dopamine hit of “buy”.

In the meantime, a smattering of some of the outfits I’ve pulled together in January. Expect more to come on a more regular basis *hint hint*

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Shop the looks: Listed everything in one convenient page HERE.

• Classic + Edgy: I loved combining this bright shot of red with leopard flats. Expect more animal print in 2025! Shop the look: Cardigan / jeans / flats

• Minimalist + Edgy: One of my favourite things to do is create tension with soft and ‘hard’ textures. Like a cozy knit with a leather mini skirt and soft suede boots. Shop the look: Turtleneck (similar) / skirt / boots (similar)

• Classic: Some people tout not combining black and brown as a fashion rule. Which I hear and then ignore because I love combining neutrals. Shop the look: Sweater / belt / skirt / boots (similar)

• Classic + Edgy: See above for soft and hard textures like a cozy coatigan and leather pants. Shop the look: Coatigan / sweater (similar) / pants / boots (similar)

• Minimalist: Truly sometimes nothing hits like black and white and sandwiched all over. Shop the look: Sweater (similar) / belt / pants / boots (similar)

Do you know what your Three Words are?

Are you planning any closet reorganization for 2025?