#NotoriouslyYou Style Challenge

3–4 minutes

There’s fashion and then there’s style. Fashion is corporate brands telling you what to wear to be “in”. Style is curating what to wear to be uniquely YOU.

Notoriously You

I’ve loved expressing myself through my personal style dating back to picking out my outfit and accessories for my 5th birthday party at McDonalds.

When The Notorious K.I.A. dropped her Notoriously You Style Challenge, I was thrilled to participate. Challengers become their own muse and inspiration curating and documenting their outfit creations. The catch is you must do your best to avoid drawing inspiration from algorithm-led platforms, like social media, when creating your looks. This includes Youtube too.

Kia argues that apps like Pinterest, Tik Tok, and Instagram will just keep showing you more of the same things it thinks you like. They don’t expose you to new and different ideas and styles as much. This can result in us dressing exactly the same as other people instead of in our own unique style expressions.

I’ve been having fun with the challenge so far and, per the guidelines, shopping my closet. I haven’t bought anything new unless it was an essential that needed replacing. This also promotes sustainability. We often don’t need a new outfit for every new occasion. Most of us already have too many clothes and wear the same 10 pieces anyway. Notoriously You implores participants to get creative and reimagine what they already have to pair and wear their items in new and different ways.

Here are some of my looks during the challenge so far. I’m documenting my creations on my personal style IG account @quantum_quaintrelle.

My personal style

My personal style evolved recently after I was introduced to the Kibbe Image Identity system last year and I’m loving where it’s at right now and headed. I had already been experimenting with my style and outfits based off of what I’ve learned about the system. This challenge is more runway to deliberately experiment with it more.

The system helped me better understand how to dress MY body and how to adapt trends I wanted to explore to fit my style and my body’s flesh and skeletal structure. It also helped me understand that if looking effortlessly put together most of the time was my goal, then some styles, cuts of clothing, and trends weren’t necessary for me to try to force myself into. That felt very liberating.

People deserve to dress and express in ways that speak to their authentic selves.

Like anything, the Kibbe Image ID system won’t always meet everyone’s needs or ideologies. Also, some people don’t dress for their frame, proportions, or lines. They wear what they want to wear irregardless of any of this and that’s powerful too. People deserve to dress and express in ways that speak to their authentic selves. However, if you want to understand your body’s lines and flesh and skeletal structure to create looks that celebrate and showcase the body you have, consider researching it. Check out this article and read about it from the creator himself, David Kibbe, in his new book, ‘David Kibbe’s Power of Style’ (affiliate link).

This week’s assignment

This week’s assignment is to determine a uniform or outfit formula for an occasion, i.e. brunch, in person business meeting, in the office, etc. Extra credit is to create a mood board on Canva using pictures of clothes from you wardrobe and pictures of you in outfits styled from it. I’m definitely doing the extra credit!

Milan Noelle