The art of balancing aesthetics
5/29/2025
In reality, you are not one size fits all. Your personality may be outgoing and spontaneous one day, to be introverted and quiet the next. You may have friends you can adventure with, and friends you can relax with. One day you might want to jump out of an airplane for the adrenaline, and then want to read a book - you see my point. All of us are too complex as human beings to be categorized into one box. All of us have multiple boxes which we can choose to jump in and out of on any given day. I do it on the daily.
The same can be applied to fashion and its aesthetics.
In the era of clean girl aesthetics, it feels like all the content we consume on social media is tailored to looking one specific way. While dressing like a “clean girl” for a day with a slick back and tight athleisure might work, it feels a bit boring, and possibly unrepresentative, to dress that way every day to always fit into a certain mold. Especially if you’re not feeling like that aesthetic matches how you’re really feeling.
Maybe one day you’re not feeling your clean girl energy, maybe you’re feeling more brat instead. Both valid, very different.
I struggled with this as I was trying to find my own person style (if you haven’t read that blog post yet, I encourage you to do so!) In college, I felt like I always had to give off the same vibe, a cool beachy girl aesthetic, especially living in San Diego. I always wore all the surf brands, sneakers, swimsuit on 24/7, you get the picture. Until I noticed, I liked dressing in many other ways too - clean girl, feminine, city-inspired, corporate style, etc.
That’s when I understood that I no longer wanted to give off one certain aesthetic, I could be all of my different aesthetics and styles and instead just give off “Courtney”.
One day you can dress like a total surf chick, and the next you can dress like you’re roaming the streets of NYC. Both are amazing in their own ways, and you’re dressing as your multiple different personality styles. Your aesthetic should not be molding to whatever is popular on social media, it should be just you - what you like, what you think looks good, etc. It can change every day because you can change every day!
Your fashion sense should be fully representative of who you are. And I know for certain, you are not one size fits all.