Not Just an Outfit: The 4 Superpowers of Your Wardrobe

I have always loved clothes, I just could not put into words exactly what and why. Sometimes I would find a pair of fabulous socks and would not sleep until I had an entire outfit built around them. Even when I buy trendy items, like a pair of massive, tractor-looking Prada shoes, it is never about fashion or trends. It just fits within my aesthetic preferences.

I am driven by strong contrasts, combining what at a glance seems conflicting: colours, fabrics, genres, balancing masculine and feminine. I call my personal style “Teenager Meets Aunty.” If you have seen my "She Ready" social media posts, you know what I am talking about.

I use clothes as a creative outlet. Every time I post a “She Ready” selfie, it is about the excitement of a well-chosen outfit that reflects some part of me, how I feel, or how I want to feel that day.

I recycle some of my go-to looks frequently because they make me feel a certain way or highlight the parts of myself I like most.

Half my wardrobe is curated around my fit, Alo-wearing, iced americano drinking persona that mostly comes out between 6:00 and 9:00 a.m., usually at the gym. Those same outfits are the ones that give me the motivation and a boost of strength to perform at my best, crushing the PBs.

The moment I take up a new hobby, I start by assembling the right wardrobe for it. It runs in the family. When I have an important meeting or a job interview, my mom always asks me what I am going to wear.

And while it all might sound silly, unimportant or even vain to most, there is some very real science behind it. Psychologists even have a term for this: “enclothed cognition,” which is how what you wear can shift how you think, feel and perform.

I have been using my wardrobe as a tool for my entire life, and so have my mom and her mom; I come from a long line of clothes-loving women. What we wear carries four very real superpowers:

1. Mood: Clothes can be used to elevate (or reflect) our mood. You can use certain outfits to make you feel better. This comes from fun colors, your favorite brands, fabrics, or even happy clothes that carry a lot of good memories.

2. Performance: They can be used to enhance our performance, from the gym floor to the boardroom and everything in between. In one experiment, people did better on attention tasks simply because they were wearing a white coat they believed belonged to a doctor. It showed that the same person could have a different level of focus just by changing their attire.

3. Perception: Your outfit has a significant impact on how others see you. Research on first impressions shows that people make judgements about confidence and competence in a fraction of a second based on appearance alone, which means your style speaks volumes.

4. Self-Expression: Clothes are one of the most powerful tools for self-expression, and for communicating a part of, or even our whole, identity before we say a single word.

While a lot of my dressing up has been intuitive, I wish I knew sooner how to intentionally use my wardrobe for the power that it carries.

Do you know what your happy clothes are?