I don’t understand Pinterest

[NeedleWielder]

I’ve been trying to get style inspiration (you know the drill, suddenly found myself mid-40s and feeling frumpy) and I thought I’d try Pinterest.

I love Vogue’s Sarah Harris but I’m short and chubby. Pinterest will either show me pics of her or totally random pics of women in their 20s wearing beige everything.

How can I do an effective search? What should I even search for? “Short stubby Sarah Harris” is not quite doing it at the moment 🤣

I'm the same ( so no help whatsoever) I don't understand Pinterest either.

You are not alone. It's really not user friendly in my opinion.

I had scammers contacting me through the messages as well so I just deleted it.

You might do better on instagram, there's lots of 'midsize fashion' or '40 + style' type # to search for inspiration.

I like annacascarina & fabfatand40plus as starting point then you can follow some of the # and instagram will suggest other similar accounts for you.

Yes I use Instagram though so fed up with all the reels these days

Glad it's not just me - I cannot see the point of it.

Try Wears My Money on Instagram. I really like her, very relatable and realistic fashion.

Pinterest is literally like an online pinboard, instead of ripping pages out of magazines you're "pinning" them.
I have boards for things I want to buy, I save the image direct from online retailers, then when it's payday I can see the photo of the top or jeans or whatever. Instead of saving links or bookmarks, the Pinterest boards are visual.

If I'm going for a manicure I can refer to my nail pins, and decide what colour I want, I'm not having to look up different colours on various websites, the images are all there together.

Then my other boards might be recipes or home decor ideas. The idea is that when you click on a pin it should take you straight to the original website, to read the full recipe for example. The problem is that whoever put the pin up needs to have linked properly rather than just entered a dead-end photo.

I use Pinterest for ideas on putting outfits together. For example, I’d search a specific item and put ‘outfit’ on the end, so ‘brown dr martens outfit’ to see pictures of other peoples outfits. Also for decor, so ‘narrow hall’ for ideas and inspiration.
I do find it a bit American though, and a lot of the images are older.
I try to use Instagram in the same way but I don’t find it works as well, I’m not sure why!

Same here.. it seems to take me to other styles and I find it hard to navigate

I'm obsessed with Pinterest. Do you have any boards? The idea is really to curate the images you like, and then the algorithm will start showing you more of what you like on your homepage.

Create some boards and start saving things you like. It's not a search engine.

It's also not magic. An algorithm isn't going to understand what a 'chubby Sarah Harris' is.

I just searched 'Sarah Harris style' and got tons of fab pics. Then you need to be creative. Look at elements of what she is wearing and use that to search. e.g.:

city style petite
long skirts outfit petite
sneakers blazers outfit
sophisticated petite style

etc..

Yes as pp said you need to create boards and treat it like an online magazine that you pin pages from. You can also add your own photos or images that you find online, which makes it a useful place to gather ideas.

The more you use it, the more the algorithms will find images you like.

When I start a new board I tend to pin lots of things, then go through and see if patterns have emerged in my choices - e.g. lots of the same type of trouser. I then whittle the board down a bit and delete things I'm not so keen on.

I really love Pinterest and am a frequent user, but not for style things. It is just a handy place to pin recipes, ideas for my new house and garden, activities to do with DC etc. It is a virtual drawing board for me. Any time I see something I like it interests me, I pin it.