Fashion Psychology: Are Your Clothes Changing The Way You Think? | Emily Paulsen & Ellie Richards

Fashion can get a bad rap for being shallow or rooted in consumerism and waste. But annual spending on women's apparel is over $1 trillion globally. That number shows me that fashion plays a huge role in our lives.

I sat down with Ellie Richards, a stylist and founder of Nuude Studio who approaches fashion through the lens of psychology. Ellie helps women understand not just what to wear, but why we wear it.

The White Coat Study

In 2012, a study called enclosed cognition became the breakthrough for fashion psychology. Researchers had two groups wear the exact same white coat. They told one group it was a lab coat. They told the other group it was a painter's coat.

Then they had both groups do cognitive tasks. The lab coat group significantly outperformed the painter's coat group.

That's how powerful the meaning we assign to our clothing can be. It's not just a shallow thing to care about what you wear. You're sending signals to your brain every single day.

When you put on a blazer, your brain registers authority. Time to work. Time to be confident. When you wear a cozy cardigan to a test or presentation, your brain signals comfort, sleep, rest. Your brain relates that to the scenario.

We never think about this. We have our brain, our skillset, our capacity to do work. And then separately we get dressed every day. We don't think about the one impacting the other.

First impressions happen in a split second. Your clothing really impacts your body posture, your eye contact, your confidence.

If you're not confident or not feeling good in what you're wearing, if it doesn't feel like your true self, then you're going into a situation not representing who you are. Think about job interviews. Think about social situations where you're trying to meet people and show up as the best version of yourself.

If you have that disconnection, it's called cognitive dissonance. It's the gap between who you are and what you're wearing. You're not showing up as your best self. You're not showing your personality.

Ellie talks about self-concept clarity, which says that when people feel the most confident, they have a clear, stable sense of who they are. When your identity changes but your wardrobe doesn't, there's discomfort.

Your career changes. Your age changes. Your confidence and lifestyle change. But your wardrobe doesn't. You're showing up in a state of discomfort to others and in social situations. There's that underlying sense of being unsure of yourself.

It really does start with the choices you make in your wardrobe and the pieces you decide to bring in.

The Pandemic Brought It Into Focus

The pandemic created two sides to this. First, we were all working from home. Why would you put on a nice outfit? Everyone was in sweatpants and cozy knits. People were lethargic. They couldn't work from home. It was unmotivating.

You're sending signals to your brain where it's like, you're in a calm state right now. Of course your brain's not going to be switched on.

Then coming out of that world, back into reality, people were like, I don't know how to represent myself anymore. You've changed. It's been three years of growth. That time alone really allowed people to think about what they want to be doing, how they want to be spending their time.

When you've made those decisions to progress and be this new version of you and your wardrobe is from two years previous, it doesn't represent you. You don't know what to wear and you don't feel right in what you're wearing.

I felt this. Before COVID, I was younger, going into an office, walking to work every day. I had this specific role. I had a specific style and I felt good about it. Then there was this stretch where my job changed, my weight changed, I got older, I was going out less, I started working from home.

On the other side, none of this stuff feels like me anymore. I don't want to go back to what I was wearing in 2019, but it's all I have in my closet.

Ellie created a framework called the minimalist wardrobe formula. It's a pyramid with four tiers.

The base is one to two foundation pieces. Your second skin. For Ellie it's a white t-shirt and blue jeans. It might be black pants or a dress. Anything that's just a neutral. These are pieces you never get rid of.

The second layer is your capsule. Around 16 pieces. Neutral basics. High quality across all categories. Outerwear, shorts, jeans, everything.

The third layer is around 12 personality basics. This is where you start to inject some personality. Through color, through things you gravitate towards. If your style is eclectic and creative, there might be embroidery or unique silhouettes. This is where style words and archetypes come in.

The top of the pyramid is six to eight dopamine pieces. Dopamine is that neurotransmitter that's released with pleasure and reward. You can get that from dressing in pieces that provide dopamine hits for you. Not the dopamine when you buy something online. It's when you put it on, you feel something.

Ellie can't tell you what will be dopamine pieces for you. You need to be the one that decides whether this piece makes you feel amazing. That might be through color, shape, sentimental value. A piece passed down from your grandma. A piece that makes you feel amazing when you wear it or whenever people compliment you.

Ellie limits those pieces because dopamine runs its course. We need to replenish it. These pieces can rotate, maybe every six months. They might be really bold or you wear them a lot, so they don't release that trigger as much.

That's the wardrobe. Hardly any pieces. 18 at the bottom, 20 at the top. Everything can have a point to it.

The Paradox of Choice

There's a theory called the paradox of choice. Researchers looked at shoppers buying jam. One group had lots of different flavors. Another group had just one option.

When we have choice, we're suddenly overwhelmed and dissatisfied with our choices. When we limit the choice, we feel more satisfied.

The same approach works in our wardrobe. When you have a decluttered wardrobe and a minimalist wardrobe, you're removing any decision when you're trying to get dressed. If you're wasting all this time and energy trying to pick an outfit, think of the whole rest of the day.

You shouldn't have to think that hard.

Social Media Makes Us Look Like Everyone Else

Social media has made us more like everyone else. All the influencers are really promoting consumption. They're promoting pieces and shop this.

When you're constantly looking at other people's style, you're not having any personal agency in your decision making. You might look good, but you don't actually feel good because your brain hasn't made the decision.

If you're not searching for the style that represents you and you just get served other people's style, suddenly that must be your style because you've been consuming it so much subconsciously. Then you go out, you buy things, you put them in your wardrobe, you don't wear them.

That's where the disconnection starts. You're buying pieces that don't represent you.

Ellie's clients are often that mid-thirties, older demographic because they've gotten past the phase of wanting to look like their friends or the people online. They've gone internal and decided they now know who they are. They want to be sure of themselves and their decisions.

Ellie shared practical guidance on fashion psychology and personal style. Here are a few places to begin:

Get rid of clothes that don't fit properly. If they make you feel bad, they taunt you every time you open your closet. Saving clothes for when you lose weight is toxic.

Use the minimalist wardrobe formula. Build your pyramid with foundation pieces, capsule basics, personality basics, and dopamine pieces.

Check yourself on Pinterest. Why are you pinning this outfit? Is it because it would be amazing for you, or because you want to be the woman in the photo?

Find your style words and archetypes. When your wardrobe represents your personality, you show up as your best self.

Buy less, but buy right. Maybe buy more expensive because it's high quality. It's the investment, the understanding.

Remember that your clothing sends signals to your brain every single day. When pieces represent a past version of you, there's discomfort.

Let's Stay Curious Together

What stayed with me after talking with Ellie was the reminder that we work so hard on personal growth. We want the promotion, we want to grow in our relationships. Everybody's doing the work, going to therapy, progressing emotionally and intellectually.

This is an important piece of that. If we leave our wardrobe behind, we're missing out on living into the full potential of all this work.

First impressions happen in a split second. Your clothing impacts your confidence, your body posture, your eye contact. Investment in personal style can be life-changing.

You can listen to Episode 66 of Curious Life of a Childfree Woman wherever you get your podcasts, and find more reflections on Instagram @curiouslifeofachildfreewoman.

Let's stay curious together.