Fashion in a Box:

Instagram must think I need help. Not help-help, but fashion help.

Dozens of styling apps fill my feed with promises to transform me into my best-dressed self or to reveal my feminine archetype. No one ever asks if I’d rather be Woman Who Owns Seven Pairs of Sneakers. No one ever asks if I’m Woman Mourning the End of JoAnn Fabric.

Identify your archetype and buy more clothes!

All these personality quizzes and archetypes exist for one reason: to sell clothes.

To convince you to click, Stitchfix takes a supposedly scientific approach that boasts professional stylists, artificial intelligence, and a team of data scientists.

One Instagram ad from Mosso features a lineup of style personalities. Style-wise, I can’t tell them apart–can you? Sure, “Queen” wears a dress, but everyone else looks dressed for a quarterly performance review: blouse tucked into high-waisted trousers, tasteful hair and jewelry, sensible confidence. None of them make me think, “Heck, yeah, that’s me!”

To categorize you, the app asks for hair color, eye color, skin tone, body shape, and age. I’m not convinced any of these details reveal anything! I want to know if I can sit at a book signing for three hours in this outfit. I want to know if there are pockets in everything. I need to know if dog hair will cling to it. Most importantly, is it itchy?

I’m a Sneaker Diva

My natural habitat is bookstores, dog walks, and coffee shops. My power color is whatever doesn’t show corgi glitter. My need is finding tennies that can survive a literary festival, a grocery run, and an unexpected invitation to dinner.

I haunt thrift stores, complain about the closing of JoAnn, own more fabric than good sense, and believe almost anything can be improved with a pair of colorful sneakers and interesting earrings. I value comfort, funk, and the thrill of finding a vintage shirt for with great buttons.

The styling apps want to curate an identity for you by shipping you a box of clothes. But thrifting and sewing are about discovering and making an identity. They’re creative acts, not consumer acts.

Besides, women don’t need to discover their mythical feminine essence. We just need to know if we can march for women’s rights in the shoes and if the pants have pockets.

Tell me how you’d describe your personal style. Have you ever tried a fashion app?

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Thank you for visiting!

My upcoming novel, Love and Other Incurable Ailments – An anxious overthinker’s fixation on a stranger pulls her straight into chaos, heartbreak, and the inconvenient unraveling of her carefully constructed life.

Serenity wears a basic wardrobe of white shirts, black Dickies and Converse sneakers, so she doesn’t get overwrought trying to match clothes. I wear whatever I want, whether it matches or not.

No matter what you wear, you can order the book here: Regal House Publishing | Bookshop | Amazon!