10 Style Mistakes You Constantly Make (and how to fix them)

You don't have to stay stuck in a style or wallet war with yourself. Today I am sharing the style mistakes that I have made over the past 20 plus years. Learning from my mistakes will save you time, money and maybe even a little bit of sanity. Or maybe that one's just for me. I'm going to share the exact solutions that I put in place. These solutions create clarity around shopping. They cut my expenses in half whilst doubling my confidence. After watching this video, your future is full of success and far fewer style mistakes. Especially the last one. I know some of you are out there still making that. By the way, I'm Libby and I love sharing the little life lessons that help you live a more positive, fulfilling and purpose-driven life. This first mistake is something I know many of you are going to relate to. Being aware of this and being able to fix it in your life is probably the most important lesson from this entire video. Mistake number one. Buying clothes that were too big or too small. For many years, I used my body as a weapon against myself. I thought if I purposely bought clothes in the wrong size that it would be a way to forcefully motivate myself to change my body. I struggled with my own body image and clothes were the way that I was silently sabotaging myself. But that was a pretty torturous mistake that I made for many, many years. Anytime I would get dressed and go shopping, I was constantly reminding myself that I apparently wasn't good enough, slim enough or acceptable enough in the body that I had. My clothes were symbols of who I wasn't and it fueled my lack of self-confidence and self-doubt. Then one day, I heard a quote from TikTok of all places and it was a beautiful woman and she said, you cannot hate yourself into a version that you love. I get goosebumps saying that now because it was such a pivotal, profound lesson for me even though it seems very simple. I realized maybe all of this negativity and forceful change isn't doing my mind, body or my wallet any good. So I reframed my approach. I firstly stopped buying incorrect sizes and then also stopped buying any new clothes for a period of time. Instead, I started to empower myself with knowledge. I used psychology to help me out of my body and style war. Many of my videos already touch on some of these aspects, but this video wouldn't be a Libby video if I didn't continue to expand on that. In the times where I started to fall back into those same behaviors, I implemented a circuit breaker, a pattern interrupt, writing, journaling, drawing, organizing or cleaning. The point was to specifically use my hands. I found I could start to release some of my negative emotions and all of that emotional charge through doing a completely separate activity in the moment that I was being triggered. So much of personal style is tied to our self-perception and I'm a big fan of using whatever tools are available to transform the relationships that we have with ourselves. Undertook a personal self-transformation and I have experienced some dramatic shifts in my life. This next mistake is painful to admit, but here we go. Mistake two, buying clothes just because they are on sale. If I had a dollar for every time I bought a clothing item on sale, regardless of whether I needed it or not, I would be a billionaire. And I'm going to bet my hypothetical billions, you absolutely 100% have done the same. I used to be very easily convinced by sales, particularly online sales. As soon as I saw my favorite brand was having a sale, I was the first one on their website to buy anything and everything that caught my eye. I know you've had the same thoughts that I had, but it looks great on the model, but it's 30% off, it's such a good deal and this brand never has sales. When you don't realize what's happening to your brain behind the scenes, it keeps you trapped in impulsively buying things that you just really don't need. That results in you having endless items in your wardrobe with tags still on, they're unused. To empower myself to stop making this mistake, I learned about loss aversion, a powerful cognitive bias. Science has studied this very well. It's essentially the idea that people feel the loss of not getting or having something more intensely than the pleasure of gaining it. That's why when you see a sale, you have this strong, intense drive and urge to buy something because you desperately don't want to miss out. So to counteract this, I use the overnight shopping cart method. It's so simple and it works surprisingly well. I simply add all of the items that I think I want to my cart, but then I leave my cart overnight and I come back to it the next day. By not actively purchasing the items right then and there, it helps me feel that loss aversion just a little bit to help me realize that my life is not suddenly infinitely worse because I don't have these products. I find that this helps me get clarity over my decision and prevents me from acting from a highly emotional, triggered and influenced state. Creating that gap and that distance to just kind of break the emotional triggers is really, really helpful. Honestly, it works almost every time. If I then decide I do actually want the item, I try not to make this next mistake. Mistake three, focusing on the item, not how it fits in your wardrobe. When I hyper-focused on a singular item, it was incredibly frustrating to get dressed. I know the pain of going to your wardrobe, staring at all these clothes and thinking, I literally have nothing to wear. Despite looking at a wardrobe packed full of items, I was so annoyed at clothing and it was a huge shame because it didn't give me an opportunity to express who I am through my style. I'm a huge fan of lifestyle curation and style and your wardrobe is a huge part of that. I would honestly prefer to have way less stuff, but each of those stuffs serves a very highly intentional purpose in my life. So now I try my very best to focus on items that complement rather than distract from the lifestyle that I'm trying to create for myself. As I mentioned in my looking put together video, there are three questions that you can ask to help you create an intentional wardrobe rather than hyper-focusing on singular items. What one to two items do I already own that I could pair this with? Does this fill a gap in my wardrobe or duplicate something I already own? Will this match my style goal? If you want to learn about the style goal part, I will put a link in the description for you on a video that goes into more depth on that topic. When I can't properly answer those questions, I will leave the items in my cart and do that overnight shopping cart method. There's no point owning an item that doesn't go with anything else in my wardrobe. All right, let me in on some secrets. Do any of you have questions that you like to specifically ask yourself that help you build a more intentional curated wardrobe? Let me know what they are in the comments because they're definitely going to help me and everyone else who watches this video. This next mistake is one I know so many struggle with. Mistake number four. Buying clothes to cover up or hide my body. This is similar to buying clothes in the wrong size, but it goes a step further. It meant that the items were too big, too baggy, incorrectly fitting and definitely didn't flatter my body shape. And it fueled the idea that my body was bad or a problem because in my mind it didn't look right or fit right in certain cuts and shapes. Then I started to learn about body shape dressing. I discovered that my body shape is an inverted triangle with narrow hips. My goal is to create more volume around the bottom half of my body. This means I now wear wide leg or slightly flared bottom half styles. And then I like to soften my neckline with scoop neck, v-neck and sweetheart necklines. That draws attention to the center line of my body and down towards my waist and my hips. Now when I get dressed, I'm working with my body and I'm using cuts, shapes, angles, fabrics to enhance the parts of my body that I love to create more balance and to create more visual harmony. This makes me feel empowered by clothing and transforms how I feel about myself more importantly. I seriously love body shape dressing because it takes the blame of your body and off the clothes. And there are endless ways that you can dress to create the visual experience that you personally want to create. If you're interested to learn more, check out the video I have on body shape dressing. This will answer some more questions and give you a little bit more of a guide on how to do this. Part of body shape dressing is another element that ties into proportion and balance. It comes down to fabrics, but there is a mistake I made here that I didn't realize I was making for a very long time. Mistake number five, choosing the wrong fabrics. I never used to pay attention to fabrics, simply because I didn't actually understand why they mattered or how they could impact my outfit. If I saw two tops that were relatively similar, I'd either buy the one that was cheaper or the one that looked better on the model, or because I felt like I didn't have anything similar to it. Not terrible reasons to buy something, but also not the best reasons when we're trying to create a curated wardrobe and one that really flatters our body shape. Fabric weight and its composition can sometimes make or break an outfit. It can be the difference between an outfit that looks really, really good and an outfit that just doesn't look quite right. Certain materials can give the appearance of elegance, sophistication, classiness, luxury, or whatever it is that you are trying to create. So I want to show you this in a really practical way. These are two relatively similar tops. They are both black, they're both cropped to some degree, and they have a similar neckline and similar shoulder width and length. But the way these two tops sit on my body, and therefore how they make my outfit look, are two totally different experiences. The materials used in this top means the item is lighter and it has less elasticity. It doesn't fit or adhere as well to my body, and it crops a little too high, which actually shortens my torso instead of lengthening it. This top, on the other hand, the materials used make it feel and look heavier and thicker. It crops below my belly button, creating and highlighting a natural waist curve, and the appearance of the material gives it a more luxurious, elegant, and classy look, which is the style that I'm going for. These tops are the same price and they are the same size, but the differences in the fabric and a little in the cut change how they look on my body. So knowing this, I now pay attention to the weight, the composition, the material, the fabric of an item. I can dramatically change the experience my outfit creates, and that changes how I feel when I'm in my outfit. The next mistake is one that I see very often. I made this mistake for a long time as well. Mistake number six, not paying attention to the styling details. I didn't pay attention to things like the metal color I was wearing, whether my shoes were cleaned or scuffed, or if the details of my belt, my jacket, my shoes, my other accessories followed the same style story. I didn't really look at my outfit and think, consistency is the name of the game, which meant my outfit always felt a little bit off. And sometimes that actually made me feel a little bit off too. The reason this matters, and why you should care about this, is because style is in the details. And I'm going to say it, I care about the details a lot. I found that when I ignore the style details, I prevented myself from looking stylish and put together, and it stopped me from building a truly curated wardrobe. To correct this mistake, I pay attention to two key categories. The first being the metal and leather color that I'm wearing. I have a rule of thumb with the color of my accessories. Pick one in your outfit and commit to it. Having a consistent metal color throughout your outfit, gold, silver, rose gold, is like the chef's kiss of your outfit. It creates simplicity, visual cohesion, and adds a beautiful balance to your outfit, that when people look at your outfit, they won't realize why it looks so good, but something about it just looks really good. It's not to say you can't ever mix metal colors, but honestly, I just prefer not to do it because I find it too difficult to get right. I'm sure there are much more stylish people out there in the world that can do this and nail it every time. But I'm about making life simple and keeping my outfit choices very simple and practical. The second category of details is cleanliness. Simple things like giving the front of your white shoes a clean, cleaning the bottom edge and the shoulder straps of your bags, cleaning up the edges of your tops, or repairing any small rips and tears or fraying, and cleaning up your jewelry where you can if it has tarnishes on it. These are simple things that take no more than a couple of minutes at most, but they make your outfit look more thoughtful, intentional, and put together. You will appreciate the details as you start to notice them. We all pick up slightly different things when we see someone else's outfit. For me, I always notice jewelry color. So let me know in the comments what's something that you notice. Because I notice the color on things, this goes into my next mistake. Mistake number seven, not paying attention to the color of my clothing. For my returning friends, you know I'm obsessed with color theory, but I have to say it again for all of the new friends here. I made the mistake of not understanding that color could impact my outfit and impact the way that I felt when I was in my outfit. 99% of the time I used to wear black and because of that, it always made me feel a bit more dull and gray and I didn't radiate from the inside out or the outside in. There is nothing inherently wrong with any particular color, but it was a problem for me at the time because I only wore that one color and it didn't make me feel good. It kept me stuck in a negative frame of mind and it didn't teach me how to use color and clothes to get out of that negative frame of mind. Then I learned I can dress based on my color season and I can start to feel differently about myself and my body because of that. Now I dress in colors that flatter my skin tone. It took a second to learn and understand it, but I realized I have warm undertones and I have an olive complexion. The colors that I wear are mostly warm autumn type colors. Sometimes this can fluctuate depending how much sun exposure I've had. I take color dressing a step further and I use psychology. When I want to feel more bubbly and bright, I wear the warm, vibrant, rich colors in my color palette. When I want to feel more sophisticated and professional, I wear slightly darker and bolder colors in my color palette. When I want to feel more calm and at ease and peaceful, I keep it warm but lighter and more neutral toned. This helps me use clothes and their color as a tool for my personal and mental success. Just like not understanding colors, mistake number eight, buying clothes based on hypothetical life scenarios. I bought clothing items based on idealized scenarios in my life that I hoped would one day come to fruition. The beautiful dress that I was definitely going to wear to my next cocktail party, the high heels that I was going to wear to accompany it, only to realize after making these purchases that I had wasted money and they were not realistic life scenarios for me. I just got fixated and whisked away by these hypothetical scenarios. It actually creates a really big divide in your life and it highlights the gap of where you are and where you wish you were. That gap is not a nice place to exist in, doesn't empower you to make any change in your life. I identified the life that I actually do want to live, the personality I want to embody every single day within that life and within the clothes that I wear in that life and buying for those scenarios instead. They're not random purchases based on impractical life scenarios. It doesn't mean that you can't buy more extravagant or beautiful things. It's again about being very intentional in your choices and curating the life that you want to live based on the person that you want to become. Mistake number nine, buying the essential wardrobe. I made the mistake of buying into the staples, the essentials, you know the items, a fitted blazer, collared shirts, loose semi-ish fitted t-shirts, classic fitted pants, the items you constantly get recommended when you try to build your style or build your wardrobe. Now, there is nothing wrong with any of those items individually, nor is there anything wrong with capsule wardrobes or anything like that. But in my opinion, to standardize a set of items and apply it to everyone else's life is not that helpful. In my case, these items in the standard wardrobe never worked for me. Owning these items is kind of a waste of money. So if you have been in this same boat, there's a better way. You can build your own system just like I have. Maybe this is obvious, I don't know. But I now create my own staple wardrobe and they're based on the cuts, shapes and styles that flatter my body, I personally like and they complement my lifestyle. I no longer buy what I'm supposed to buy or what I'm supposed to wear that's being recommended to me. So I highly encourage you to break away from these standardized items if you feel like they just don't work for you. And now we are here, last but not least, mistake number 10, doing too much. This won't apply to everyone, but for the ones that it does apply to, this is going to be a game changer. I used to think adding more, adding more accessories, colors, styling details, clothing items would make me look more stylish. More is better, right? No, the reverse in a lot of cases is actually true. When you add too much to an outfit, you clutter up the area and it makes it hard for your brain to scan and make sense of what it's visually looking at. Too much color, too many accessories, too much distraction, too many calls for attention. It doesn't know how to interpret what it's looking at. It doesn't know what to focus on. This is what can create the illusion that your outfit looks messy or not put together because there's no central focal point. Our brains are highly visual and they're always seeking out visual equilibrium and visual balance. It's how we make sense of the world around us. This actually comes from the foundations of good design. White space and negative space is something designers use that allows spaces, art, designs to breathe. So I have a bit of a philosophy now when I get dressed. Less is more. Remove, don't add. So when I am struggling with my outfit, I bring it all back to the basics and I apply my philosophy. I remove something. This could be removing a color, removing an accessory. It could also mean that I switch out the color for something that already exists in my outfit. That gives the illusion that I've removed something but all I've done is create some sameness and some likeness in my outfit. Visual cohesion. This is such a simple easy hack. Seriously, try it out. It will make getting dressed so much easier and you'll instantly look more stylish and put together. There's some nuance here. Certain styles will use conflicting colors, conflicting accessories to create different experiences. That's not exactly what I'm talking about in this less is more approach. Be empowered in whatever style suits you and flatters you. Alright friends, if you got value out of this video then let me know by subscribing. Thank you so much for being here. As always, I appreciate you. Thank you for joining me once again and I will see you in the next video. Bye.