The "Personal Style" Apocalypse Is Here
After years of being told it was the ultimate menswear goal it's clear that some of us aren't so sure anymore.
Recently, an image of fashion illustrator extraordinaire Richard Haines, taken somewhere outside of Todd Snyder’s most recent NYFW show, caught my attention. In it, Haines leans causally against a garage door in a vintage M51 field jacket, khaki jean jacket and chinos, New Balance 574s (aka their most underrated model) and an oMA Design Studios hat with a subverted Yankees logo. The look was several things: relaxed, cool, understated. But more than that, what jumped out to me was what it wasn’t. Haines didn’t look like he’d dressed up to stunt for cameras at a fashion show, and he didn’t look like he was on the receiving end of an influencer gifting program. He looked like he was wearing clothes he felt very comfortable in, his daily wear. He looked like, well, Haines, a guy who’s known for creating decades of work in his instantly recognizable artistic style who just happens to also have great personal style to boot.
“Personal style”—defining it, finding it, cultivating it, expressing it—has been the go-to directive in menswear for a while now, all up and down the food chain. From brand content to editorial guides to influencer how-tos, it often feels like everyone really, really wants to help you to find your personal style. And that seemed like a noble and worthy pursuit. After all, no one wants to look like the Patagonia vest bro, everyone wants to look like Bill Cunningham, or James Baldwin, or David Lynch.
But when I’ve been asked to describe my personal stye, I’ve struggled. That’s in large part due to the fact that I don’t wear a daily uniform (like Cunningham), I’m not especially adventurous (like Baldwin), and I don’t have a signature look (like Lynch). I’m a little all over the map and I tend to prioritize the familiar and the practical over getting a fit off. When I was on the Acre Shop podcast recently, I was asked if I felt like it was more difficult these days to create a personal style. I rambled a bit, as I do, but I managed to eke two thoughts out. One, I feel like the “starter pack” meme is evidence that we’re not as unique as we think—and that’s ok. Two, true personal style, in the most genuine sense, requires a level of dedication to a look that’s hard to maintain (I know I can’t). I mentioned Amy Arbus’s excellent collection of ‘80s street style photography, aptly titled “On The Street,” as evidence of this.
The exchange got me thinking: could it be that I failed the assignment? Had I never developed a personal style? Was it even possible or was it a fool’s errand, a Sisyphean task? And most importantly, did I even care? And that’s when I noticed that it wasn’t just me.
Clayton Chambers runs Sprezza, here and on IG, where he’s built a huge following for his menswear breakdowns (my suggested feed is always flooded with them). So it was with some surprise that I watched a recent Reel of his where he pushed back on the pursuit of personal style. Right from the jump Chambers declares, “finding your personal style is the wrong approach,” and then goes on to namecheck a number of famous artists and writers as evidence that “personal taste came as the byproduct of the interesting stuff they were already doing.” I asked Chambers what inspired it.
“I made the video because I think people should step away from the Explore page and back into real life,” he told me. “Find outlets that stoke curiosity. Get obsessed with something. Chase experience, not aesthetics. Style will follow.” That’s essentially the advice he gives at the end, which is solid, but how did we get here? “Today, style has become a box to check, a formula to solve,” he observed. “People sense that, and they’re pushing back. The reaction isn’t a rejection of style itself, but of the forced, overly self-conscious pursuit of it.”
Had it really come to this? Had we over-indexed on personal style to the point where the corrective was to abandon the pursuit altogether in favor of, as my friend Paul likes to refers to it, the paradox of no style? I decided to throw it out there and see if anyone else was feeling similarly.
Several readers chimed in, all with thoughtful responses, including
. “In the same way personal style was the answer to micro trends,” he commented, “living an interesting life makes sense as the answer to the over-obsession with personal style.” There it was again, the endorsement of a life well-lived vs. a wardrobe well-curated.“Most of my life is so fraught with either bad decisions [laughs] or not making decisions or hasty decisions. As long as I can remember, the one thing I instinctually knew was what was gonna work,” said Haines of his style. Since Haines provided the initial inspiration for this topic I figured I’d ask the man himself what he thought about it. Unsurprisingly, as if to prove the rule that to have great style one must not think about style, Haines struggled to put his thumb on the specifics. “It's really the most uncalculated part of my life,” he told me with a slight apology in his voice. “I hate to disappoint you.”
I asked him about the outfit in the image and why he chose it. “Comfort and a lot of pockets,” he said. “I go to these shows and I want to draw, I want be able to find my pencil. I wanna be able to find a pad.” It was as simple as that. A means to an end, the natural result of his lifestyle and interests. No mood boards, no celebrity inspo, no how-tos, no overthinking it.
As for that vintage M51, Haines told me, “I'd just come back from Europe and I bought that jacket at a surplus store, and I love the jacket. It's great. I knew it was too cold to really wear it and everyone else was there in their beautiful coats. I was like, I am such a schmuck [laughs].”
A “schmuck”? Quite the opposite. If anything, more and more it seems like trying to find your personal style is the real schmuck move.
Whoever was writing Esquire’s advice column around 2009 said this really well to some poor chump who wrote in asking how to figure out what clothes he liked. The gist was - Travel, get in trouble, play an instrument, make lots of friends and don’t worry about it.
This clothing-first thing we’re doing makes a lot of sense because the entire internet is just lead gen for someone’s Shopify somewhere now, but it’s backwards as fuck and it shows in the endless duplicative swag bros on the explore page. It’s a vintagey hat with a tall crown, a sleazy button up worn open, high waisted full legged jeans with a break over a pair of loafers. Real free thinker shit 🙄.
Every niche has its own version of that copy-paste guy, and all of them are making GRWM from the pastiche of PR gifts from the same agencies that juice everyone else.
The people who are the Holy Grail's of style, are interesting people. The people who care about finding a "personal style" are those who are fashion obsessive, and really have no interest other than clothing, consumerism and chasing trends.
The people in my life who dress the best have no interest in clothing as a hobby. Their look is influenced by the interesting life they participate in, not watch and make notes about from the sidelines.