It Was Never an Aesthetic. It Is My Identity.

On style, identity, and the things that make us feel like ourselves.

What most people assume, or get wrong about me, is that they think or label me as bougie. It’s actually so funny to me because the things people ask are so silly. “Do you wear anything other than neutrals?” “Do you own any colors?” Which, by the way, isn’t black, white, tan, brown, blue, and green “colors”? Lol. Just saying. Even towards my business, I’ve had people say, “You don’t need to be so polished all the time.” I take these comments as a compliment because they’re reflecting back an identity I fully own.

But I need to be honest. I wasn’t always confident, able to receive compliments, or turn a negative comment into a good one, especially around my style and how I looked. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a Victoria’s Secret Model (didn’t we all)? I never had money for nice things growing up. I would spend hours at the mall admiring the pretty window displays, trying on clothes I knew I couldn’t afford, and go to the nearest bookstore to flip through magazines, read the latest gossip, and see what celebrities were wearing. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved clothes, beauty, and beautiful things.

I’d go to my favorite thrift store, buy things that weren’t quite right, but they were the style and quality I wanted. So I’d take them home and figure out how to turn them into something I was confident in. I’d cut off dresses, pin up tops, and alter whatever I could. I genuinely loved the creativity of it, but underneath, I was hiding my truth.

People would ask me about my clothes all the time. I even got voted “Best Dressed” in the high school yearbook, which I didn’t even know I had been nominated for. Every time someone asked me where something was from, I couldn’t answer. My heart would race, my stomach would turn into knots, and I’d quickly respond with, “I’m not sure,” or “I don’t know,” before walking away or continuing with another conversation.

I gatekept everything, even the things I did buy full price or receive as a gift. Looking back, I had a lot more insecurity than I realized at the time. I wasn’t just protecting where my clothes came from; I was protecting myself from getting made fun of or judged. This was something I had dealt with most of my life, so when I got to high school, you best believe I would do anything to prevent that from happening again. I wanted to look like I belonged and walk out the door feeling confident, even when I didn’t necessarily feel that way. That continued throughout my early 20s until I finally gave in and shared my favorite finds with my closest girlfriends.

Something happened to me just the other day that I need to share because it ties directly into this story. I was waiting for my hair appointment, and I was asked by a kind middle-aged woman if I was a model. As she asked me, I politely responded, thanking her for the compliment, but followed with, “No, I’m not.” She promptly replied, “Well, you should be.”

This wasn’t the first time someone has asked or suggested I should be, but it made me think about receiving that type of compliment. I had been told countless times before then that I should be a model or influencer. But anytime someone would bring it up, I would think to myself, that’s just not who I am. What would make them think that? Why do people keep saying that to me?

Then it dawned on me during my 3-hour hair appointment, staring at myself in the mirror: the little me, the younger version who didn’t feel pretty, worthy, or deserving, was the one still showing up in my life today.

The 3rd grader who got made fun of for an ugly ponytail tied with a rubber band because that’s all my dad knew how to do (I’m sure he didn’t even brush it, and I know for a fact it wasn’t straight). Then, in middle school, when my grandma cut off all my hair and gave me a short bob with short layers (keep in mind I had curly hair, and that was not the style), so this was just bad all the way around.

And then the 20-year-old who was pregnant. I felt ashamed. My family didn’t agree with my decision to keep it, and so I hid it from everyone until I couldn’t. I didn’t take any photos because back then young moms were looked down upon.

So this whole time, I was hiding who I really was just to be accepted by others. Ugh.

As I allowed all of these feelings to surface, I then brought myself back into my current reality. My hair was still in a million foils, processing. I gave compassion to myself; I loved who I saw in that mirror, the version of me today, the one who can take the comment and see and believe I am beautiful.

And I realized something else: I’m not saying I’m going to become a model. That’s not really the point of the story. What matters to me is that I’m finally accepting this version of myself enough to let her be fully seen for all that she is. I’m no longer holding myself back, hiding the things I love, or making myself smaller because I’m worried about what someone else might think.

I spent so much of my life trying to be accepted by other people that I’m finally at a place where I’d rather be fully myself than perfectly understood.

Internally, though, I was still facing a lot of self-doubt and limiting beliefs around visibility. Not to mention, I was also running my business and unknowingly hiding behind it. So the idea that I could actually share myself fully online wasn’t even within my realm of possibility.

Okay, so before we continue, you need to know this post isn’t really about the compliments, the projections of others, or even the clothes I wore. Actually, quite the opposite.

I was never able to accept compliments from anyone. I’d downplay every comment, every nice remark, and every gesture because I simply couldn’t see it myself.

Someone else could see something in me that I hadn’t learned how to see in myself yet.

I think that’s important to say because it’s easy to look at someone from the outside and assume that because they look confident, they must feel confident. That’s definitely not how it works, for me at least. I knew what I liked, what I wanted, and what I desired before I even knew how to love myself.

So when people ask me, “Where do you shop for your trousers?” “How do you always find things that look so well put together?” “What do you use in your house that smells so good?” or “How do you keep your closet so simple?” I’ve always found these questions interesting, and they almost always catch me off guard because I’ve never really thought my style was that different from other people. I’ve just always gravitated toward what I like.

My simple internal checklist when I shop is whether something checks off one or more of these things: a good basic I can wear with anything, a style I don’t already have, a timeless staple, a quality piece that will stand the test of time, beautiful fabrics, good texture, and most importantly, the way it sits on the body and how it makes you feel when you wear it.

My closet has always been relatively small, not because I was forcing myself to be a minimalist (I didn’t even know what this term was until someone described my business brand as such). Over the years, I have become more intentional about the items I buy. Not just to slow the rate of consumption, but so I can really appreciate each piece I buy.

I also purge my closet every few months. Nothing major, just a simple flip through to ask myself if I still like it, if it still feels like me, and if I can still see myself wearing it. If not, it’s time to go.

I’ll donate most of my clothes or resell the more expensive pieces on a third-party site like Poshmark or Depop. I have a huge heart for sustainability and recycling clothes specifically. I think it has a lot to do with the way I was brought up. The times I’d be in a thrift store and find something that I had seen in a magazine or at a store would make me so happy; I feel it is only right to do the same for someone else.

I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember, long before quiet luxury or minimalism was ever a thing, long before everyone suddenly wanted a neutral wardrobe, and long before minimalism became an aesthetic you could buy into. The older I get, the more I realize that it’s because this isn’t an aesthetic I chose.

It was always my identity.

I didn’t realize how much of this was an actual part of my design until I discovered Human Design. When I first learned that I’m a 2/4 Manifestor, with a Pisces rising and double Sagittarius placements, so much of what I had already known about myself suddenly had language around it.

Human Design gave me another way of understanding who I was. The part of me that has never really understood why I’m supposed to do something simply because everyone else is doing it. The part of me that has always needed to follow what feels right internally rather than constantly looking outside myself for permission. The part of me that has always felt a little different and slightly deviated from the societal norm.

Human Design didn’t give me an identity. It gave me language for one I was already living.

There was something about seeing things like beauty, spaciousness, natural light, and home reflected back to me that made me laugh a little because, of course, I thought. OF COURSE this makes complete sense because these are the things that matter to me. Of course the way I create my environment is part of how I express myself. Of course aesthetics aren’t superficial to me; they’re how I experience the world. They’re how I make sense of things. They’re how I communicate myself without having to say a word.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been so sensitive to when something feels off. For example, when a brand looks polished but doesn’t actually feel like the business or when someone is trying so hard to look a certain way they’ve forgotten to ask themselves what they actually like.

I think we’re taught to construct ourselves from the outside in. Look at what everyone else is doing, see what’s popular, what’s trending, buy the right things, say the right things, build the perfectly curated life, and then maybe you’ll feel like yourself. HA.

We’re supposed to love ourselves first, notice what we’re naturally drawn to, what feels good, what we keep coming back to, what we don’t need to be convinced of, and what makes us feel more like ourselves.

For me, that has always been neutrals, simplicity, beauty without excess, things that feel intentional, inspiring, and the way it changes the way you carry yourself.

I think it goes all the way back to being that little girl who would take something home from the thrift store and figure out how to make it fit. I wasn’t just trying to figure out my own style and how to make myself feel good in whatever I was wearing. Somewhere along the way, I actually became confident, not because I finally became the woman I thought I was supposed to be, but because I slowly stopped trying to become her.

Maybe that’s why aesthetics have always mattered so much to me. They’re often the visible expression of something much deeper. When I work with a brand, I’m always looking for the gap between who the business actually is and what it currently looks like. That’s what makes me crazy about branding that is all surface level with no depth. A pretty logo isn’t enough. A beautiful website isn’t enough. A color palette isn’t enough. If the outside doesn’t reflect who the founder is underneath, eventually they become disconnected from their own brand identity. Because it was never theirs to begin with. The work, for me, has always been about bringing those things back into alignment.

I’ve done this in my own life. I don’t have a closet full of clothes that represent who I wish I was. I have clothes that represent who I am today. My home doesn’t exist to prove that I have good taste. It feels like home because it reflects what makes me feel good. My work doesn’t look a certain way because I decided I needed to create a personal brand. It looks the way it does because that’s how I see, how I notice, how I communicate, and how I move through the world.

So call it whatever you’d like, but at the end of the day I’m just me.

I think that’s the part I didn’t understand when I was younger… I thought I needed to hide the things that made me different. I thought standing out meant people might see too much. I thought compliments were something to deflect. I thought I had to make myself smaller in some ways while simultaneously trying to look like I belonged.

When I look at my life now, I see the same thread running through all of it. My closet. My home. My work. My writing. My love of beauty. My need for personal space. My obsession with how things look. It’s all a reflection of my internal dialogue.

And that’s when I finally realized: it was never an aesthetic. It is my identity.

With that being said, doing something simply because you love it has become a form of self-expression for me. For me, that has always looked like styling, shopping, curating, rearranging, finding beautiful things, writing, sharing my thoughts, and helping others. I can lose hours doing it, and I realized I didn’t need to turn it into something more productive or explain myself. I can just be me and let it exist. That’s part of why creating my ShopMy felt so exciting. It gave me a place to do exactly that.

I spent over 10 hours putting it together, and it really lit me up in a way I had completely forgotten about. And I’m so proud of it because for the first time, it feels as if this small part of the internet is a true extension of the things I love in one place. I went through my closet, my home, my beauty products, the things I actually use every day, and the pieces I’ve collected over the years that still feel true to me. I didn’t want to just throw a bunch of links onto a page because it was easy to just click every suggested item. It’s truly an extension of everything I just wrote about: intentional, curated, loved.

Honestly, sharing it with you all here feels strangely vulnerable because, for most of my life, I gatekept these things. I didn’t want people looking too closely at me or asking too many questions. I had spent so much time protecting the parts of myself that are different that I didn’t realize how much energy I was leaking by keeping people out.

I don’t want to hide the things I enjoy just because they might tell people something about me. They do tell you something about me, and that’s the whole point. And now I’m finally answering the questions I’ve been asked for years.

Maybe what people have mistaken for being bougie, materialistic, or overly polished all these years was simply me being deeply connected to the things that make me feel like myself. What looks like an aesthetic from the outside is often something much more personal underneath.

I’d really love to hear your thoughts on this one. Have you ever spent years trying to hide or downplay a part of yourself, only to realize it was actually a part of you all along? If this post hit a vein around something you’ve been navigating in your own life, I’d love to hear about it below. What are you finally letting yourself own? 🤍