10 Things I ditched from my Style in my 30ies

While I have been stuck with Covid at home and I had too much time for too many YouTube videos. In that rabbit hole I watched the wonderful Leena Norms kindly roasting Vogues list of 15 items you should own by 30. Leena was not able to find too much of a common ground between that list and her wardrobe and I wasn‘t either. But that got me inspired to write about all the stuff that I actually got rid of in my 30ies when I leveled up my style. (Some of it Vogue recommends to all of us females.)

Please keep in mind that it‘s a personal list. So take what you find useful and ignore, what you don‘t.

1. Costume Jewelry

So in my teens and twenties I wore a mix of costume and real jewellery. And I always liked interesting earrings. So when I gave up fast fashion the costume jewellery had to go aswell. Most of it didn‘t look good anyway, was disposable and therefore bad for the environment and it was just a waste of money for me as it didn’t stand the test of time. At first I kept only the real jewellery that was left and I felt kind of meh about it. It was a bit boring and not really my style. Then I started to search on ebay for interesting silver earrings and found a beautiful pair from the 90ies for around 25€. (There is soooo much beautiful and cheap second hand jewellery on the market, definitly check that out first if you‘re looking for something.) Then I bought some handcrafted pieces from an artisan. Also very affordable. Problem solved!

2. High Heels

The beauty of getting older is that you stop caring so much about other people‘s expectations of you. And as an Eastern European woman I was expected to wear heels most of the time. Sometimes I even liked to wear them. Yeah… not anymore. If the heel is more than 5 centimeters, it‘s not for me. Because my feet are worth it.

3. Constricting Clothes

Similar story with clothes. I go for comfort paired with style. And I am not willing to suffer for beauty. So my pants have to respect my curves with either elastane or a wide enough cut. There will be no more constricting clothes that stop me from living my best life.

4. Most Patterns

On my personal style journey I tried to wear patterns over and over again. But most of them I just don‘t like on myself. The only patterns you can find in my wardrobe nowadays are florals and a little bit of plaid. That‘s it. I also avoid them when it comes to seperates. Floral dress, yes please. A floral skirt I tried and it just wasn‘t for me. My style essence blend is simply not compatible with most patterns.

5. Most mid-Tones and my other ‚bad‘ Colors

The more I dive into color analysis the more I understand which colors bring out the best in me and which do the opposite. And of course I started to buy only colors that make me shine. Most mid-tones, warm or very intense colors do not. So I don‘t buy them anymore when I need something new. But of course I still have pieces that are not in my perfect colors. And I will wear them until either I don‘t like the style anymore or they are worn out. But for now my ivory silk cami and mid-olive summer pants can stay.

6. Blazers

I tried so hard to wear and like them. But the truth is: A blazer is not everybody‘s best friend. In the past I had some that looked kind of okay but honestly, I never felt like my best self wearing a blazer. And now I understand why: it‘s my body type. I use the Kibbe body typing system and it works pretty well for me. But very tailored and structured pieces of clothing don‘t work well with my curved Soft Natural lines. And honestly, my hippie heart doesn‘t feel sad about it. So I just removed blazers from my personal style vision.

7. Corporate Clothing

Purely corporate clothing has a very similar reason not to be part of my life anymore. It just doesn‘t look like it belongs on my body. But also the dress code at my work place is pretty relaxed. And while I do have more dressy styles, I don‘t own anything that I don‘t wear outside of the work context, too. Which has changed because I used to have a separate corporate capsule in the past.

8. Trendy Pieces

Just to make it clear: I don‘t have anything against buying a trend if I genuinely like it and am planning to wear it for the next few years to come. But I don‘t buy anything just because it‘s on trend. That would only ruin my style and make my bank account very very sad. Did you notice that the most iconic styled people never follow trends? They do their own thing and I took that as an example for myself.

9. Lipstick

I have always loved red lips on other people. I think they look very elegant, provocative and powerful at the same time. But on my face they just look wrong. In general I can only wear a little bit of make-up without looking off. And it took me a while to accept that some things we can only admire from afar. And that‘s okay. That‘s life.

10. Fast Fashion

So my egoistic reasons were that fast fashion destroys our sense of style by telling us what to wear and make us feel outdated with our choices very quickly. Also the clothes and accessories deteriorate so quickly that it wouldn’t even be possible to wear the things over and over again and still look good. In addition to that most fabrics are low quality and don’t look good in general. And the simple cuts are not flattering for most people. So it is a pretty bad bargain. Not to speak about the true cost that the workers and the environment pay. We all learn at some point in our lifes that fast fashion is very bad for everybody involved except the top management and share holders of certain companies who rip off everybody including their customers. (Of course there are people who cannot give up fast fashion because slow fashion is not accessible to them or is not available in their sizes. So no judgement for you here.)