23. April 2026
Dressing mindfully
Bringing a sense of calm and control
What is mindfulness? (if you know, skip to 2nd paragraph!). Mindfulness is a skill, a way of living your life that means you notice more about what is going on around you in the here and now. Being able to do this takes practice (a lot if you have the attention span of a nat like me). But mastering it can bring you such calm, such control over your decisions and a more meaningful engagement with others. You can be mindful about everything in your life, from eating, relaxing, reading and what you choose to wear of course.
Why is this important? Well if you are interested in perhaps the way you are influencing or interacting with others, then of course the messages you send out to them are important. That’s not only how you behave but also how they see you. Your behavior will be affected by what you wear – the comfort of your clothes, the colour of your clothes, even the personality of your clothes - just consider what you choose for a romantic night out or how you might feel if you stood out in a meeting for being underdressed.
Being mindful about what you choose to wear also can benefit you too, your mood, how organised and on top of things you might feel, how calm you feel. Research shows that colour can have a profound effect on our behaviour. Red induces courage and energy for example, blue calm and clarity of thought. Colour is chosen carefully in a variety of settings, hospitals, retailers, prisons, and schools all to encourage certain types of behaviours. Uniforms and clothing too for this reason.
The process of looking at your wardrobe, how it makes you feel, and more importantly comparing this to how you want to feel is a great basis for starting to build a more mindful approach to what you wear. Describing your personality out loud; being honest about your shape and looking at what you would want your clothes to help you feel and say about you is part of what I do. In colour analysis we would look at what colours would be best in harmony with your skin tone. In a shape analysis and wardrobe edit we would look at how your clothes make the most of the wonderful body you have.
Some guidance to get going yourself now.
Allow yourself 15 minutes or so in front of your wardrobe, in a comfortable chair or on your bed.
Take a look and understand how you feel about what you see in there - what clothes make you ooze with joy (I hope there are some in there) and what clothes makes you wince – wrong choice, wrong size, wrong decade?
Then take the clothes you don't like and those you don't wear out and put them to one side.
Create space in your wardrobe for what is left.
Separate the hangers so the clothes can ‘breathe’ and you can see them.
Straighten the clothes out, ensure they are hanging properly. Face them all the same way.
Then tomorrow when you come to choose what you are wearing for the day (if you aren’t obliged to wear a uniform that is) take a few minutes to go through everything you have and think about how it is going to make you feel and what might others think about you because you have chosen it. This is a great place to start for mindful dressing.
For an informal chat on building a more mindful wardrobe around you please get in touch.