COMMON THREAD
Style: It’s more than what you wear
Style. A word often folded into fashion-speak with shallow connotations. While some may consider it lacking depth, I’d argue for its richer points. Most importantly, we all have it. Whether you’ve cultivated your own or simply admired it in others, style is part of the package — you present it one way or another. By intention or default, it’s yours and always on display.
Style is perspective: an inner lens reflected outward, shaping how the world receives you. It’s your most personal expression. If you’ve ever heard anyone say, ‘She has interesting style,’ or ‘He has great style’—or even someone referred to as having ‘no style at all’—that’s still style.
While these may be judgments, they reflect two deeper truths: One — style is first rooted in how you see yourself. Two — style is a form of language. While the expressions differ for each of us, style becomes a common thread, linking us not only to our own identity but also to the larger human experience of how we live, communicate, and connect.
WHAT STYLISH PEOPLE HAVE IN COMMON
What stylish people share has little to do with following fashion and everything to do with embracing their perspective. Their aesthetic lens on the world is rarely narrow and almost always broad. They’re aesthetic creatures. They observe, constantly downloading inputs from physical and visual cues all around them. Their eyes have become trained to aesthetic stimuli; they don’t miss much.
A stylish person’s world extends to almost every choice in life, from how they dress and live to how they shape their environments. It’s not limited to what fits their bodies or flatters their image, though they are deeply self-aware of both.
Rather, their confidence extends beyond the surface into the spaces they inhabit, the objects they choose, and the homes they create. Real style is coherent: it’s a way of aligning one’s personal image with one’s personal world.
And yet, style isn’t just something we recognize in ourselves — it’s something noticed, interpreted, and often judged by others.
Have you heard the saying, "Women don’t dress for men; they dress for other women”? Outdated as it may sound, the truth beneath it still resonates: style is most often noticed by those who understand, appreciate, and see the world through a similar lens.
It starts with how a person carries themself — that first visual cue. Then, the moment they speak, you understand the rest: there’s either substance or not. For me, when there’s no substance, the facade, the carriage, quickly falls away.
That’s the differentiator when I meet a fashionable person versus a stylish one. Anyone can wear fashion (or better put, fashion can wear them), but the stylish one has a substance that belies the clothes. They’re self-possessed. Someone who both wears fashion well and exhibits great style and substance. That's the killer combo.
STYLE SETTERS
There’s nothing more fun to watch or admire than stylish women. Amal Clooney, Kate Moss, and Kelly Wearstler are a few standouts. They are very different women, yet they share a distinctive way of seeing themselves and the world, which translates seamlessly into how they live. These women are smart, accomplished, and tuned in to themselves. They curate not only their image, but their entire worlds, including their homes.
AMAL
Clooney’s intellectual elegance shows up as refinement and classicism in her consistent style choices. While photos are rare of her homes, in the few available images, one can glean that Amal leans toward order and tradition as an approach to decoration, which is perfectly fluid with her personal style. She always strikes an appropriate balance. Even the extraordinary privacy she commands is evident in the way she carries herself and protects her home life.
KATE
Moss’s style is a study in contrasts — rooted in British tradition yet undone in the most perfectly effortless way. Her bohemian glamour translates into interiors that feel moody, sensual, and more unstructured; they’re layered with the kind of eclecticism only she could pull off. The English heritage underlies it all — think Colefax and Fowler florals, classic plumbing fixtures, timeworn finishes — that collide with free-spirited finds from Portobello Road. The result is interiors that feel a combination of lived-in: part country house tradition, part supermodel nonchalance.
KELLY
If Amal is disciplined and Kate is nonchalant, Kelly Wearstler is bold. A model turned interior designer, Kelly’s style is fearless, architectural, and even theatrical. With her, pattern, shape, and color collide like pop art. Just as she dresses in bold graphics and sculptural silhouettes, her interiors are layered and unapologetically maximalist. California modernism and Hollywood Regency mingle with Brutalist forms, lacquer, and hand-painted murals. Polished brass meets raw stone; graphic geometry plays against sensual curves constantly in her work and homes.
What sets Kelly apart is the seamless way she fuses her professional persona with her personal style and home — there’s no separation. Her style embodies her work, and her work is her. The result reads like a perfect kaleidoscope: all-Kelly, boldly composed, instantly recognizable. A great study in personal branding and what it means to inhabit style as a total, integrated vision.
So, what’s at work beneath these women’s seemingly effortless choices? At the core, it’s a visual vocabulary — shape, form, color — that crosses fashion, interiors, and design.
VISUAL VOCABULARY
So, what is this language? It’s the building blocks of style, whether it’s fashion or interiors. History has shown us how these evolve to complement one another — think of Coco Chanel’s 1920s-30s tailored suits — the clean lines, geometric structure that mirrors architectural clarity in Art Deco interiors. Or the sharp tailoring of 1980s power suits finding its twin in mirrored skyscraper lobbies — or today’s luxe yet textured minimalism and padded shoulders giving way to curved sofas.
Designers across disciplines borrow, constantly crossing into each other’s worlds. Coco Chanel’s love of black-and-white was as architectural as Mies van der Rohe’s obsession with steel and glass. Memphis Milano furniture in the 1980s looked like Comme des Garçons came to life. When you develop your visual vocabulary, you stop seeing clothes and rooms as separate. They’re variations on a theme.
A terrific Substack account Driving Shoes by Taylor Barnett summed up advice that former Vogue editor Sally Singer once gave her colleague Lynn Yaeger: “If you’re interested in fashion, learn about everything except fashion.” Barnett added: “Design, structure, balance, proportion, color theory — the trained style eye recognizes these elements everywhere, seamlessly extending personal aesthetics beyond the wardrobe and into the spaces we inhabit. Once you define your style, it doesn’t stop at what you wear; it spills into everything you touch — a handwoven jacket, a vintage chaise lounge, even your iPhone wallpaper.”
I loved this observation because it’s so true. Also true: once you see this visual vocabulary, you can’t unsee it.
For me, this visual language started young. From early on, I was an observer of style before I knew what style was. I noticed everything.
SEEDING STYLE
I’m not sure if you’re born with a sense of style or if it's entirely developed (back to the nature versus nurture debate), but I’ve loved clothes for as long as I can remember. Even as a kid, I wasn’t just picking clothes; I was testing whether they felt like me.
I have no idea where it came from, but I had opinions about what I wore even then. Back-to-school shopping was something I looked forward to every year; it was a bona fide field trip for me!
I was particular about how things fit and whether I liked them. Maybe we all begin to explore this as we step out as young social beings. What I know for sure is that I was zooming in on self-perspective early. My parents had opinions, too. My mom let me be me, while my father was more concerned with perception. He was proud and always wanted my sister and me to look nice and dress well, which meant no torn jeans, even if we had paid extra for those rips.
What I didn’t know at the time, which I only grew to understand later, is that while I always loved clothes, it wasn’t fashion that I was drawn to, it was style. I loved to watch women and men who carried themselves with distinction. I often say I’ve been a student of life, my whole life. This extends to style, too.
I’ve always studied people who exhibit it in all forms of design. It’s palpable; it can be the oddest mix of components, but if the confidence and execution are there, it's unmistakable. It’s singular — a rarity or curiosity you’re drawn to –to examine, to understand. To me, that’s style in a nutshell.
ROLE MODELZ
Of course, none of us develops style in isolation. Role models inevitably shape us — figures we admire, borrow from, and reinterpret until their influence becomes part of our own.
We all have them. Personal style is what draws us in, allowing us to compare ourselves to others, to try things on— role models aren’t just aspirational aesthetic figures — they do psychological work. When we admire someone’s style, we’re mapping out what’s possible for ourselves: what presence might look like, what confidence might feel like, what congruency between self and space can achieve.
The mimicking or borrowing from role models isn’t about copying — it’s about selecting specific elements that resonate with us, then internalizing them, and making them part of how we carry ourselves. It’s the highest form of flattery, provided we synthesize it into our own self-reference.
SHUN THE SUPERFICIAL
Stuff and Lab Coats
Somewhere along the way, caring about how we look — or how our homes look — was branded as superficial, even vapid, frivolous. Though science says otherwise.
Two psychologists, Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern and Columbia Business School, introduced the concept of enclothed cognition. Their work cemented the idea that, in addition to how clothing and style affect how others view you, your behavior affects you, too.
Their academic research centered around a series of experiments that had participants wear white lab coats associated with a doctor’s attentiveness or the seriousness of a scientist; and when they did so, participants' alertness and performance on tasks improved. It underscored how external choices like clothes systematically influence meaning and experience, which trigger internal psychological processes like self-perception and behavior.
This suggests that when you adopt style inspiration from role models, it doesn’t just change others’ eyes — it shifts your own sense of presence, confidence, and behavior. You metaphorically and physically transform yourself.
WELL, STYLE IS BEING TOO
Here’s another interesting, fun fact: Caring about how you present yourself is good for your well-being. In a large cross-national study between Germany, Poland, and Sweden that distinguished between style orientation (owning a coherent visual language, personal identity in the way you dress) vs fashion orientation (following trends) CBS Research Portal, found that participants more oriented toward style rather than fashion reported higher scores on subjective well-being.
Materialism actually played a stronger, more negative role in fashion orientation, whereas style orientation was more linked to authenticity, uniqueness, and congruence. This supports the idea that role models of style, not just trends, help people feel more like themselves, not just more “in vogue.”
HOME COMPOSITE
Style has never been limited to what we wear. And nowhere is this more revealing than at home. Clothes may signal how we want to be seen, but home tells the deeper story of who we are and how we really live. There’s no dressing up at home; you can’t slip it on and off. It’s pretty much as you see it; it reflects the choices we’ve made and the life we lead.
Herein lies another thread: not only do aesthetic people extend their style to home, their home is more often than not, very similar to their personal sense of fashion and style.
The person drawn to clean, tailored silhouettes tends to favor structure and order in interiors, while the one who layers textures and prints gravitates toward eclectic, collected rooms. Our homes, like our wardrobes, become self-portraits — lived-in expressions of our values and temperament. How we weave our possessions and preferences all come together in a larger composite that speaks volumes about us.
What makes a home truly stylish is the same thing that makes a person stylish: confidence. Just as you wear clothes with ease, a home styled with authenticity feels effortless, not overdone. It doesn’t feel decorated, and it's uniquely your own.
STYLE LITE
Playful style can be meaningful too
Of course, style isn’t always so serious. Sometimes it’s about the small calculations we make to justify what we love — what I like to call NB Style or Fashionomics! A playful reminder that while style carries meaning, it also carries something more fun, a sense of humor.
The truth is, fashion and style are among the rare places where math meets mood. A true must-have — whether a great coat, a pair of shoes, or an object for the home — carries a charge. It can whisper, or it can scream I-must-have, and in that instant, emotion takes over reason. Suddenly, a handbag is amortized like an investment, or a rare piece of pottery becomes an ROI, with pleasure as the big return.
Call it girl math, Vogue math, whatever it is, it's the games we play to get us closer to what we love. You never know, the purchase might spark enough pleasure to be worth it for years to come. That’s the lighter side of style — sometimes it's superficial, sometimes it’s not, but both can be fun.
Beneath the playfulness lies something more enduring. Style, at its core, is the synthesis of everything — your clothes, your home, your presence — all tuned to the same note.
STYLE, SYNTHESIZED
The French often allude to the indefinable quality of women’s style as je ne sais quoi — literally, ‘I don’t know what’ — meaning it’s beyond words. While I like to place deeper context on what really makes a person stylish, I’ll leave you with this: If you want to develop real style, it extends far beyond what you wear. It’s about the atmosphere of your home, your rituals, the way you move through a room. It’s the way you synthesize all the pieces of you. It’s not only style---it’s presence.
There’s a famous Coco Chanel quote that I love: “I don’t do fashion. I am fashion”. Most think this is just a quote about clothes, but I think it’s about something more: ownership. To me, it says my style is not something I put on and take off. It’s who I am, and it extends to my entire world.
That’s the common thread the stylish share — not trend, not position, or even wealth, but perspective. A larger point of view, lived with confidence and depth that’s woven into every layer of their being. It’s certainly the kind of style I aspire to.
If you want to read more about style and establishing your own visual library, check out our piece Fashion as Identity Architecture, The Tool of Style on The Living Edit.
What a wonderful post ❤️❤️❤️ Thank you for including me
What is your advice for someone that has always had a challenge with putting together their daily outfits. Mixing and matching. Having some sort of style.
You make it look so easy.