A Fashion Rebel’s Confession

What if the colors and styles you’re wearing don’t reflect the real you? What if the beauty you could be is hidden just beneath the surface, waiting to be discovered?

My Confession

For almost a year, I wore the wrong colors, the wrong fabrics and the wrong design lines and didn’t know it. I was faithfully following a system that seemed to have led me astray.

The Background

About a year ago, I discovered the Dressing Your Truth system which helps you identify your type and then offers a course personalized to your type so you know exactly what to wear. It was love at first sight and I eagerly took the initial beauty profiling course to identify my dressing your truth type.

There are four Types and they are based on the four elements found in nature, commonly known as air, water, fire and earth. Though we all have each type, we lead with a dominant Type and that Type should be our guide when deciding what to wear.

After watching the hour-long online course, I decided that I was a Type 2 because I really resonated with the description of what Type 2′s were like. I felt like I recognized myself. So I took the next course and immediately began wholeheartedly following the instructions for my Type.

But after almost a year, I was ready to walk away from Dressing Your Truth because I just couldn’t do it anymore!

Here’s What Went Wrong…

Finding your Type means using several criteria to match yourself to your dominant Type, including facial features, body language, voice, personality characteristics and typical behavior styles.

Well, in addition to having a dominant Type, we each have a secondary expression and unfortunately, without knowing it, many of us identify more with it than with our dominant Type. So when we try to identify our Type, we identify the wrong one.

That’s what I did! I “recognized myself” in all the Type 2 descriptions because I was living my secondary Type. But I found out recently that I am actually a Type 3 and apparently, hid behind the softer Type 2 for a year instead of living my truth.

Hiding Out in Your Secondary Type

Might you be doing that, too? The way it happens is that when we are young, we often get negative feedback, push-back, rejection for being our normal, natural selves. We hear messages to stop being that way and begin to refine the way we express ourselves so that what we say and do will meet with approval and acceptance.

If we do that long enough, it gets really comfortable and we forget that that’s not really who we are. Psychologists often call that the false self and suggest that the real self gets buried way down deep where we can’t see it anymore. Or if we can, we don’t take it seriously as a message about who we are.

What’s that got to do with fashion?

Well, I believe that what you wear and how you look should be an expression of who you are. Do you agree?

As soon as you walk in the door, you are sending a silent message about who you are and if you are living your truth, it will be an authentic one. The Dressing Your Truth system is meant to help you do that, but if you are not ready to know who you are, you may not recognize yourself!

A Mis-use of My Type 3 Determination

Though I didn’t know I was a Type 3, I was acting like it. Determination is one of a Type 3’s strongest characteristics and when they are on a mission, they will not give up until they get it done. So I didn’t give up for almost a year.

But finally, I admitted to myself that something wasn’t working and I began to rebel (or so I thought), wearing the colors that called to me. A friend suggested to me that if I was feeling the need to rebel, then maybe I wasn’t really a Type 2 after all, and that led to my happy discovery that I wasn’t!

Your Authentic Personal Style Might Be Hiding from You

What I learned from my experience is how stubbornly we can refuse to see or know the truth even if it might lead to what we want or need, even if it might free us to express who we really are.

Could you be hiding out, too, like I was? If you long for a more authentic personal style, be open to the unexpected. You can find out more about Dressing Your Truth at my blog. But with any fashion system you explore, and there are many, use my story as a cautionary tale.

I refused to even consider that I might be a Type 3 because I was so sure I couldn’t be! So with any system you encounter, start there, with the descriptions that make you uncomfortable, or don’t at first sound like you. Because maybe there’s a gloriously beautiful you hiding behind the one you think you are.

Jeanine Byers Hoag is a personal style blogger and a passionate advocate for the Dressing Your Truth system. She has created a free eCourse called Discover Your Style: A Signature Style Starter Kit for Women Who Don’t Feel Beautiful in Their Clothes, which you can register for at her blog. http://dressmytruth.blogspot.com