Dressing For Yourself & Your Body

How many times have we seen a clip where a woman can’t fit into her dress so she talks about how she should have worked out more, completed the latest crash diet, or she’s totally bummed out? We grew up with the message all around us and it is so totally wacko! I say, if the dress doesn’t fit, find one that shows off your curves in all the right places!

Now I’m not going to say I haven’t been down this road of self destruction before because I absolutely have, numerous times. However, I started to recognize how belittling and cruel this was to myself. I have a gorgeous body, it does incredible things for me so why should I shame it because one measly dress didn’t do it justice? I started thinking about how I could focus in on understanding my body shape (I’m totally an hour glass) and align with my personal taste.

Jacket: BLANKNYC (similar) | Dress:  Yumi Kim| Earrings: Gifted (similar) |Shoes: Steve Madden

To start my perspective changed, I started focusing on styles I liked and asked if I truly liked the style because I knew it would look good on me or if I liked it because of how it looked on the model/mannequin or even my friends. This changed everything! For all the times I saw something I loved because I knew I could rock the crap out of it, I forced myself to go a step further and figure out ‘why‘ I loved it. Was it the silhouette, length, how I felt in the piece? For the items I liked but felt wouldn’t work for me, I thought about what drew me to the piece in the first place. Was it the drape, the colors, the trend? Soon I started to see trends and was able to make minor adjustments on how I searched for clothing. I found so many more options and shopping started to become fun again. I loved what I was seeing in the mirror, me.

-Rachel