Feeling Confident in Your Clothes

What makes you feel confident in what you are wearing?  For me, it is knowing the reasons; in other words, if others think I am goofy in what I am wearing but I know why what I am wearing is right and they are wrong, from a theoretical/logical framework, I am utterly okay with it.  But, as much as I think about it, I still have moments – or, more correctly, outfits – that give me pause.

Listening the other day to an old interview with Andrea Siegel, author of Open and Clothed: For the Passionate Clothes Lover, I came across the following fascinating insight:

There is a real issue for women … in feeling safe in a new garment that’s different from what people expect of you or what you expect of yourself.  There needs to be a period of acclimation, of getting comfortable with something that makes you feel beautiful.

In our culture, it’s really okay to be anonymous and invisible, but then when you take a step and say, “I want to stand out, I want people to actually see me,” it takes alot of nerve.

Andrea Siegel

How does that strike you?

• In your world, is it smiled or frowned on to call attention to your personal beauty?
• Does it irritate you when someone else dresses to either blend in or stand out?
• Where is the line between expressing yourself through appearance and being immodest?

For me, the hardest thing to get over is that moment when someone in my own household is surprised by what I am wearing.