Why wearing the "right clothes" can still feel completely wrong

We've all bought the thing everyone else was wearing. The jacket. The dress that looked effortlessly cool on Instagram. I still do it occasionally (although absolutely not barrel-leg jeans. I don't run and gym to voluntarily make my legs look like barrels). Then I get it home, wear it twice and then exile it to shelf 101 of my wardrobe. (Please don't look in there, I’m too ashamed.)

I irritate myself with these situations. Why can't I just wear the clothes that everybody else seems to love? But I can’t change how I identify just to fit in with the latest trend.

Fashion writer Elizabeth Wilson argued that clothing has always carried far more meaning than people often give it credit for. In Adorned in Dreams, she described fashion as something that reflects the depth of human self-awareness rather than existing as a superficial concern. More recently, psychologists have even coined a phrase for the way clothing influences us: enclothed cognition.

The idea is that clothes don't just change how other people see us. They can change how we experience ourselves. Researchers believe this happens for two reasons. Firstly, because we attach meaning to clothes. Secondly, because wearing them creates a physical experience that reinforces those meanings.

Which explains a lot… Why some people feel more capable in a sharp suit, when someone else feels trapped in exactly the same one. It’s the meaning they have attached to that suit. Why one person lives in colourful prints, while another reaches for black every single morning - probably more the physical experience of quite literally surrounding yourself in different colours and tones.

There's no such a thing as universally "right" clothing.

There are only clothes that tell your story well, and clothes that tell somebody else's.

Sometimes I meet people whose wardrobes are “technically right”. They’ve had colour analysis, discovered they are an Autumn and their wardrobes are full of rich oranges, dark reds, khaki green and silky browns. They know they should be accentuating their waists and elongating their legs and their wardrobes do this job for them perfectly.

But yet, they still open the wardrobe every morning feeling stuck.

The problem isn't the wardrobe.

The problem is that somewhere along the way they started dressing for expectations, or fashion styling rules or someone else’s idea of great style, instead of their own identity.

The fascinating thing about enclothed cognition.

It doesn't suggest that a blazer can magically make you more intelligent, or that a pair of heels will suddenly transform your confidence.

Enclothed cognition suggests it is the meaning you attach to those clothes matters.

If you've always associated trainers with freedom, you'll probably feel different wearing them than someone who associates them with looking scruffy. If you've spent twenty years believing black makes you feel powerful, you're likely to experience wearing black differently from someone who sees it as gloomy or safe.

The clothes themselves aren't doing the work. Your mind is. And that's exactly why styling can never be reduced to a list of rules. Because no colour analyst, stylist or fashion magazine can tell you what your clothes mean to you.

Only you can discover that. So I think the most powerful question to ask yourself, instead of "Does this look right on me?"

is… "Does this feel like me?"