Style Yourself is a book full of fashion bloggers, such as Sea of Shoes’ Jane Aldridge, who writes the foreword, Style Rookie’s Tavi Gevinson, Style Bubble’s Susie Lau, The Glamourai’s Kelly Framel, and Keiko Groves of Keiko Lynn, among many other awesome bloggers. The book aims to be a guide to personal style with advice from many of the bloggers. While I enjoy having a tangible book to draw inspiration from and love the fabulous blogger photos, the book falls short in the strange graphics that are meant to illustrate the kinds of items out there and how you can use them to create your own style. These bloggers are known for personal style and my thing is, I don’t think you can teach it. There are a million style guides out there from Rachel Zoe’s Style A to Zoe to Tim Gunn’s A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style to Nina Garcia’s,The Little Black Book of Style, but whether you’re a fashion blogger or a fashion editor, I don’t think real style can be taught, only inspired. That being said, some of those books outline the basics of style for what is considered universally chic. If you feel completely lost, then by starting off with some style guides, you can have a starting point to creating your own style. Maybe I just feel like the bloggers are there to inspire, not teach because no one taught them, it was somehow innate through inspiration. Am I making sense? Style Yourself is informative in some ways (I liked the bra section!), but unflattering graphics of the clothes somehow puts style in a box, when bloggers are known to step outside them. If there were less ‘how-tos’ or ‘wearable options’ then we’d be left with an inspiration coffee table book, which is something I’d be way more into.
[photo: MTV Style]
