What "Signature Style" Actually Means (And Why the Experts Get It Wrong)
A formula assumes you're a fixed point. In my experience, that's not how people actually work.
I used to think I didn't have a signature style.
I'd scroll through some perfectly curated "find your aesthetic" post, the kind that tells you to pick your colors, build a capsule wardrobe, land on one word that describes your whole vibe forever, and I'd feel a familiar little pang of I haven't figured that out yet. My closet didn't look like a mood board. My taste has changed more times than I can count, and I'm willing to bet yours has too. If signature style means picking one look and sticking to it, I clearly missed the memo. But here's what I've noticed, both about myself and other women I've talked to at a market table with a tray of earrings between us:
Signature style was never about picking one look. It's about the one thing that stays true, even while everything else changes.
The earrings were always there.
For a long time, I chased the formula anyway. A couple years back, I went down a total rabbit hole and taught myself color analysis, determined to figure out my own palette without paying someone else to tell me. Turns out I'm a true summer: cool undertones, soft but not too muted, more depth than the palest seasons but still nothing too bright or too warm. It clicked immediately. I started leaning into my colors more intentionally, and for the first time in a while, getting dressed felt easy instead of like guesswork.
But here's the thing I realized looking back. The clothes were never really the constant. The earrings were.
Even on the days I wore something I wasn't totally sure was "me," something more muted, more safe, more "this is just what was clean," I always had earrings in. They weren't always bold or colorful, not until Anam Cara came along. But they were always a little different. A little more me than whatever I had on. That part never wavered, even when the rest of the outfit was a question mark.
Almost two decades in a professional kitchen. Years of teaching dance. A stint running arts and crafts at a girls' summer camp in college. A handful of years substitute teaching, which is its own kind of chaos. Every one of those chapters asked something different of me. Different uniforms, different rooms, different versions of "professional." If you lined up photos of me across all of it, you'd think you were looking at several different people. But if you looked closely, my ears would give me away every time.
That's the thread I didn't clock as a signature for years. Not the palette I eventually nailed down. The earrings I never once talked myself out of wearing.
The formula doesn't actually work.
The "find your signature style" advice out there is mostly a formula. Get your colors done. Build ten interchangeable pieces. Land on three adjectives and shop exclusively within them. And look, some of that is useful. I know my own palette. I dress in soft, muted, cool tones because that's genuinely what feels good on me.
But a formula assumes you're a fixed point. That the "real you" is a stable thing you can identify once, in a single session, and then just execute forever. In my experience, that's not how people actually work. Your job changes. Your body changes. Your confidence ebbs and flows. Some years you dress for who you're becoming, other years you dress for who you're grieving, and some years you just dress for laundry day. A formula that assumes none of that is happening isn't really describing you. It's describing an aesthetically pleasing mood board that doesn’t help you one bit.
And honestly, even if you could nail the formula perfectly, why would you want to? A Pinterest board is curated by someone who deleted every messy, contradictory, "this doesn't really go but I love it anyway" moment before you ever saw it. Real people aren't that tidy. We're allowed to be a little inconsistent. We're allowed to like two things that supposedly clash. The whole appeal of a signature style was never about looking like everyone else's version of "put together." It was about looking like you, contradictions and all.
Find the thing that doesn't move.
What I've noticed, at least in my own life, is that there's usually one small thing that doesn't move even when everything else does. Not a whole aesthetic. Not a whole wardrobe. Just one thing, quietly consistent, while everything around it shifts.
I see it constantly at markets. A woman will be standing at my table, maybe dressed head to toe in something neutral and practical, the kind of outfit that says nothing in particular about her. And then her hand goes straight for the pair that has nothing to do with any of it. Something bold, or a little strange, or completely unlike what she'd normally call "her style" if you asked her to describe it out loud. She'll pick it up, hold it against her ear, and I'll watch her face shift. Not because it matched. Because it felt true.
That's the tell, honestly. A signature isn't the thing that matches everything else you own. It's the thing you reach for even when it doesn't, the piece that skips right past logic and goes straight for something more instinctive.
You probably already have one.
If you don't have a "signature style" figured out the way the experts describe it, color palette named, aesthetic labeled, ten-piece capsule built, I don't think you're behind. I think you might just be looking for it in the wrong place.
Ask yourself instead: what's the one thing you've kept reaching for, no matter how much the rest of your style has shifted around it? Maybe it's a color you've worn since college. Maybe it's always something a little too bold for the room. Maybe it's simply that you've never once left the house without earrings in, even on the days everything else felt like a guess.
That's your signature. Not because a quiz told you so. Because you already know it, you just haven't clocked it as one yet.
Want help finding yours?
If you read all of this and started thinking about your own thread, that color, that shape, that pair you always reach for, that's exactly the point. Recognizing it is the first step. Naming it is the next one.
That's why I put together a free guide, The One Thing That Stays True. "It walks you through eight simple ways to spot the signature that's already hiding in your closet and/or jewelry box, no quiz, no formula, just a little help paying attention to what you already know.