But what has actually influenced your wardrobe shopping choices?

[DeHumanaeMentisApatheia]

There are intermittent threads asking for lists of where people shop - I’m not sure how compelling these are for readers. (And where the OP takes no active role in the thread it’s hard to believe they’re not just some sort of AI generated thing.)

Surely the crucial thing is what shapes a person’s tastes and preferences - all the more so for mature women who have more hinterland. Whether that’s your parents’ interests when you were a child, or shopping with friends as a teen, or a revelation at university or in early jobs. As much as life stages, health, environment, finances.

My ‘reading Vogue from 13’ history is all over S&B.

What influenced you, before ‘influencers’? And how does that affect how you shop now?

My insulin tech I just don’t like it on show, even though as a society we have come a long way in accepting difference I think there is still an element of stigma attached to it. I still love clothes though but just means that I’m limited in the things I am comfortable wearing. The shoes are the biggest issue but most people think it’s a personal choice that I always wear flats. At a ball last year I wore a black velvet tux with a white shirt and an unfastened dickie bow draped round my neck, shoes were black and white brogues. I lean towards an androgynous style because it works with the shoes and trainers that I wear.

I always wear high necks, especially in summer due to a skin cancer scare.

I was a 1980s goth, leaned a bit more Indie in the 90s and have broadly stayed in that vein ever since. I do read Vogue, I love to see what's happening, but for the most part, I wear what I like and sometimes that intersects with what's current.
I wear predominantly black, feel equally as comfortable in DMs, trainers or heels and would never wear a blazer, a scoop neck top or anything lilac, beige or yellow next to my face. If I go out somewhere smart, I love to dress up and don't care in the slightest if I'm the most overdressed person there.
I'm not a shopper. I don't like fast fashion and keep my clothes for years (periods of fat me/thin me have sadly meant the loss of things I wish I'd kept). I buy very little and 90+% of the time in person, I like online browsing but cannot bear online shopping.

Ha not quite! They learned and plied their trade - along with many other working class women - in north west England in the early-mid twentieth century. But they certainly knew their stuff. Sadly, once I got to about 11, I didn't appreciate their talents and wisdom at all because all I wanted was a dress from a shop

I have never ever seen a seamstress in my life!

Don't know where to start with this - beyond reminding myself that there must be plenty of skills I’ve had no direct contact with.

@HollyhocksandPeons if you live in or near a town in England or Scotland you’re almost certainly very close to a seamstress, or tailor, or more likely a general alterations service. If you use a dry cleaners they’ll probably have someone either on-site or on hand to carry out minor alterations.

Like @Floisme generations of women on one side of my family earned their living as seamstresses - though not in this country. I’ve described elsewhere growing up wearing incredible smocked and ruched frocks made by my mother (seemingly overnight as she had a full time professional job that was nothing to do with sewing). I had years and years of intermittently accompanying her to fabric shops - John Lewis, Laura Ashley, Liberty, and countless little places discovered via word of mouth. Turning over fabric rolls and picking out the right colour threads and buttons … Her needlework skills passed me by - I would honestly cry if tasked with turning on a sewing machine - but an understanding of fabric and structure seems to be in my blood.

I guess it doesn’t matter so much if one wears mostly stretchy fabrics, but otherwise, I’d strongly suggest you find out where you can get clothes altered locally. Mass market clothes cannot possibly fit every single body - knowing you can have things tailored to fit better means you can shop much more freely.

Oh OP, what a lovely thread. I am very visual and like @Notsosweetcaroline I have a great eye for interiors and fashion. My DM was a hairdresser so I was surrounded by magazines and visual style from a young age. And like @MyManinCaracas I was always on show. DM was very stylish and elegant. She dressed my sisters and I beautifully. Her friends said they always loved watching us come into Mass (Irish Catholic!) as we were so beautifully dressed.

I learned early on what suited me - I loved the preppy look of Aly MsGraw with jeans, a shirt, a waistcoat and tweed blazer - but I felt like a trussed up turkey when I tried it. I am only 5ft 2 so I find it hard to buy clothes that fit. Unlike my mother I am not good at sewing. I spend a lot on getting clothes altered.

I loved the styling of Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan and since I already had the perm, I dressed like that for a summer. I was very influenced by grunge and wore Dr. Martins with black tights, a shirt floral skirt and leather jacket - from one of the many second hand shops I spent my time rummaging in when I moved to Dublin for college.

watching old movies with my
mum influenced me. As I got older I managed to work out which style I could admire but didn’t suit my personality (Audrey Hepburn) and which felt like me (Katherine Hepburn).

I worked in a very male dominated area as a young graduate (newspapers) and I had beautiful skirt suits. However, when I found out that the older men at work loved watching me walk by in my skirts, I started wearing trousers. To this day, I wear trousers to work. In the heatwave this Summer, I wore a few midi dresses, but I still prefer trousers and either trainers or loafers. I like to feel like I can run away from danger at short notice!

My great grandparents were drapers. I think some style instincts must be genetic (like @Floisme family) or maybe a love of clothes is passed down.

I read Vogue and Marie Claire but now I prefer Pinterest; Instagram and I still read Sunday Times Style. I love people watching and am like a magpie for ideas. I studied in France and became obsessed with the jeans blazer and white t shirt look. That is still the foundation of my style. I had a beautiful pair of soft Levi’s jeans in college and I try to find that type of soft jean still.

This Summer I had a hernia flare-up in my upper tummy and I had to wear loose clothing. I found some amazing trapeze style cotton shirts in Pennys (Primark in the UK) and wore them to work styled with some old resin necklaces. My colleagues all adored the look and trotted off to find the shirts.

I am also influenced by the great posters of Style and Beauty - my favourite part of MN! I have found great online resources through you guys. As a fair skinned blonde I no longer wear black - it drains me. My dark base is navy and I love most shades of blue and green. I never wear red - I have enough red on my cheeks (🙁). I never wear brown and I hate sludgy colors. I had my colours done years ago and while I don’t use it like a bible, and I hate the corals and pinks, it did push me to eventually ditch black.

I know I’ve rambled - I don’t get to talk fashion with many people anymore!

@hurtandconflicted - your outfit sounds epic. Were your shoes anything like these?

https://simonerocha.com/collections/shoes/products/brg21-0740-black-cream

https://simonerocha.com/collections/men-shoes/products/brg21m-0740-black-cream

(I love the fact that much of her stuff is unisex and the shoes come in larger men’s sizes too.)

Interesting point about insulin tech @hurtandconflicted ..

Interesting point about textiles and good cuts being in the blood. My own mother was a great seamstress in her day too and made her own - and that of many other’s - wedding dress.

such an interesting question and thread !
-i grew up in a violent place - so as a previous poster feel i need to be primed for escape
-brought up religiously so have a lot of sexual apathy /shame
-bullied a lot when younger for being tall
-in a very male dominated aggressive profession
-forced to be very visible in my job when i am very introvert
-very socially uncomfortable
-feel very unattractive to men so feel like wearing anything feminine looks ridiculous on me and also - even worse- looks like i am trying to be attractive when i am so grotesque
-so many clothes too small for me so oversize helps
all of those things mean - black and dark clothes, androgyny.

on the plus side - the women i think are the chicest have a distinct French vibe - wearing men’s shirts etc - so i feel like that’s what my version of style is - not trying hard

I have had an epiphany reading this!! At the centre of everything I like and aspire to is the Dior Bar suit. It might be a full pleated midi skirt with merino or cashmere sweater or a nipped in jacket or cardigan rather than the full suit but that is the silhouette and aesthetic that will never be surpassed. When the Dior exhibition was on at the V&A I went 11 times and just used to stare at that suit for ages.

Oh … That’s a complicated inheritance @seaskysand. I won’t attempt to wave it all away in a post - but your observation on shirts reminded me that yesterday, walking home, there was a woman in front of me in a gloriously oversized white shirt, with the collar up. My hand automatically went to the neck of my own white blouse (which has a big collar cut to be folded down at the back) to turn up the collar.

Cutting my professional teeth in the late 80s City I was surrounded by men dressed from Savile Row, and even as a trainee I saw no reason why I shouldn’t be just as well dressed. And as, generally, the only one of my kind in any building I couldn’t help but be noticeable. I embraced it.

@DeHumanaeMentisApatheia I was a few years later than you (so early 90s City) but you’ve summed it up perfectly. I was a working class girl from a Northern comprehensive who moved to London as a grad and was suddenly surrounded by all these privately educated wealthy people (mainly men) who came from a different world and had very different standards and ideas. It was fascinating (and intimating at first) and I learnt so much. My parents and grandparents had always drilled into me “buy the best you can afford and look after it” and being in the City took that to the next level. I still prioritise quality and avoid any obvious labels like the plague. I am very much “if you know, you know” when it comes to brands.

I never had any issues with standing out (which goes back to that embracing being different), and still don’t. I wear what I like and don’t really care what other people think. I have (late diagnosed) ADHD and that seems to mean that I hyperfocus on certain items or brands for a while and then lose interest as I move on to something else. But I always keep the quality stuff from the previous obsession which means I have an eclectic wardrobe to draw on which as a 50 something is actually a huge plus. So that has meant Chinese influenced items from Shanghai Tang (I worked in Hong Kong for years as the only Westerner in a local Chinese team) to shoes from Tracey Neuls (I lived walking distance from her first shop and I love that her shoes have an edge) to recycled Army parachutes/surplus as bags and clothing (I live near Christopher Raeburn’s pioneering first studio and know him).

My recent obsession has been outdoor clothing (so hiking, sailing etc) from Scandi brands (Helly Hansen, Norrona, Fjallraven) as I had to get some for an off-grid remote island up past the Arctic Circle I was staying on this summer (with a hot man!) and I discovered the joys of pockets and waterproofing and climbing in and out of boats. Prior to that I was obsessed with capes. I turned up to work (at a City bank) wearing a bright green cape and matching bucket hat one day…my boss was “that’s quite a statement”. 😂 I actually just wore them because it was raining heavily and it seemed practical to walk to work in and I really like green.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I’ve lived in Paris (twice) and that has also influenced me. I can’t seem to break the habit of pulling an outfit together with a beautiful scarf and wanting to look chic at all times.

Music has been my biggest influence. I LOVE music and my dad's love of motown I think means I lean towards a sort of 60s style. I've always been interested in what people wear to perform in and I think that influences me. I have always loved clothes, patterns, utilitarian and well made things... clothes and shoes that look like they would improve with age. I have never been 'glossy'. As a teenager I loved going to Covent Garden to wander around the shops and markets to see what creative people were wearing.

I am in my 40s now and still think it's important for your clothes to represent who you are in some way. I see lots of insta stuff about looking sleek, stylist, polished etc and it feels very...not me! I still have lots of clothes from over the years... some I still wear and some I have passed to my dd.

@Floisme this is a really good point!! I grew up in working class Lancashire and you made me realise this is probably a contributing factor in my obsession with quality and cut of clothing.

Someone above mentioned ‘Nova’! (Such a brief, glorious star and such a revelation on a Sunday morning.) And then decades later ‘Frank’ - how I grieve for that outstanding magazine.

As it’s Saturday, and I can’t be bothered to type it out again, I’m copying my own post from another recent thread:

‘The first thirty years of my wardrobe shopping life was entirely predicated on knowledge gleaned from Vogue: where to find the best vintage / secondhand stores and what to look for; More Dash the Cash; where to buy the perfect black suit; how to mix High St and Sloane St in one outfit; the treasures to be found in the men's department of M&S. The second thirty has been all about the FT How To Spend It (now HTSI) magazine and eager Saturday morning burrowing down rabbit holes. If Matches Fashion still existed in its original form my shopping would still be hugely influenced by the emerging designers they championed. Without them - and particularly since I ceased to need black suits - l've been on a more and more focused quest for craft driven design. (Sounds wank but it's true.) I don't overly care about me in the clothes - and most of my clothes could stand up by themselves anyway, I just want to discover everything that creative ambition can do with the maddest fabrics.

I'm also quite fond of the odd Zara purchase.

The last thing I bought (delivery today) was a pair of brightly coloured Wales Bonner shorts that I'm planning to wear to yoga.’

The shorts didn’t work out (a very rare return for me). But this morning’s HTSI burrowing has turned up this totally delightful runway show from a designer who’s completely new to me: (Scroll.)

https://www.jsalinas.pe/collections-virreinato-del-peru/

I’m sure imitations of this will be all over Zara in a couple of months …

When I was younger, never saw myself as attractive, so used to wear ‘alternative’ clothes as I didn’t think ‘regular’ clothes would look good on me.

As I’ve grown older, my clothes are still about covering up a body that doesn’t fit into what’s ’in fashion’. I have big boobs and belly, terrible legs and saggy arms. So my clothes choices are always ‘something with sleeves’ and ‘something that disguises’. I often wonder what it must be like to buy clothes that don’t have to ‘cover up’ your body.

Im not influenced by anyone or anything. I just try and find something that covers in a colour that suits me.

I adore this thread! I, too, grew up in a textiles background - tailoring in my case. As a child a lot of my clothes were made for me & since i was tall & skinny it was great as the clothes fitted me properly. But like a pp at a certain age all i wanted was the same as my friends & clothes from the shops they bought from. My parent would turn the dress / top / coat / whatever inside out to examine the seams & stitching etc & i'd be begging 'i don't care that it's shoddy...it's cool...xyz has one....pleeeeeaaaaase!' 🤣

I was a teen in the 80s & when i was about 14 / 15 i found Benetton on a trip to a big city & it was love at first sight for me! As a brand it was in its hayday for sure. It was expensive & much coveted as an aspirational look in my class in school. I begged & plotted how to expand my collection & over a couple of years i did end up with quite a lot of their clothes (birthdays / christmas / pocket & babysitting money etc)

Even my fussy parent approved because the quality was so great.

I loved the colours, textures & patterns - i'd never seen anything quite like it before

Then i got to university - a red brick one - and i was exposed to a v wide pool of people from all kinds of backgrounds v different to mine. It was really exciting, eye opening & formative.

In the early 90s i think there was a lot more individuality in style. I had a great friend who dressed like she was a character from the 1930s - she wore laura ashley floral teadresses with chelsea boots & a grandad wool cardigan with pockets or actual jodphurs (cream) with the chelsea boots & a fitted hacking jacket & shirt & tie - i was fascinated by her style

I began evolving mine but always retained a deep love of cut, tailoring, fabric & colour. I am v fond of embellishment - embroidery, beading, the odd sequin etc

I studied & work in a v creative field & i am now v senior in my niche area. I am in my 50s & still have my own distinct style

Again, like pp, this spills across into interiors too. I love old things but mixed with contemporary. I am not afraid of colour either in my house or clothes

I love volume & architectural pieces of clothing. I'm 5ft 9 size 12.

And on top of all that i love mannish tailoring & most days have a nod to androdgny in my clothes, for instance i adore & suit flat front men's cut trousers (me+ em are great) & wear with brogue, loafers, derbies, monkstrap, or trainers but often paired with a super embellished essentiel antwerp shirt etc

I love French & Scandi brands & i buy 99% of my clothes online

A friend once said i dress like its from another era & l loved that!

I love tweed, corduroy, velvet, jacquard, merino, cashmere, mohair, tartan, damask, lace (sparingly)

I wear only trousers in work but wear a lot of skirts & dresses outside work.

I asked ChatGPT to define my style & it said 'scandi creative director mixed with rive- gauche paris' guess that sums it up!

Fashion!
A couple of years ago some great barrel leg jeans made me play with that style and shape. Last year I bought a more extreme version in a dark Japanese denim. That was a jumping off point last year.
This summer I looked at wearing beiges which I usually avoid but I have a safari coming up. So that pushed me out of my comfort zone and into skirts and shorts I would have normally avoided. Summer dressing is less easy for me. So it tends to be comfort led.
This autumn I walked around Dover Street Market and found and amazing jacket. It’s this winters jumping off point.
I buy from mixture of places and price points. Keep those things I treasure forever. Favourite place to shop is Vinted.
My natural style is dramatic. Almost costume especially in Winter.
Hair and makeup I experiment less with. Good colour and cut for hair. Face is all about skin care and looking fresh and healthy.
In my 50’s I do have bits of my body I don’t love but that’s not a driving force in my clothes choices.

‘Fashion’ is definitely the starting point - I wouldn’t know where to go to find clothes that are deliberately unfashionable - but it took an artificial correspondent (90% predicted not to kill me and everyone else on the planet!) to point out that what really excites me is the craft and skill and ambition and thought expended on any garment. Whether Dorothy Perkins at 16 or DSM twenty years later, I’m there turning the thing inside out, peering at the seams and stitching, weighing the heft and flow of the fabric, assessing the construction of the shoulders …

What makes me ecstatic is discovering a new (to me) and preferably somewhat obscure designer who seems to have looked inside my head and drawn out the most unreasonably crunchy possibilities and proportions for a piece of cloth.

I think I must get that from my father - men, as well as women in his home country are far more inclined to extravagance in their way of dressing. And much more likely to commission individually designed outfits in order to stand out.

I just wish it had inspired me to learn to sew properly but I actively resisted because I was 13 and thought it was a feminist act. By the time I realised how dumb I'd been, there was nobody left to show me.

There were also (I'm into post-war fashion at the moment so I've been looking into this) some fantastic ready-to-wear houses, some of them producing clothes that weren't far off couture standard, until the '60s threw it all away.

How does a person become friends with you? Do you have any friendship vacancies … you sound great. I love androgyny and mannish tailoring although I don’t work in an office now so have fewer places to wear tailoring. Obviously you can dress up for a trip to the library but I much prefer an “ event” like an exhibition and will spend quite a while trying to project the right image. I don’t really have friends who are into fashion / style so much and only one into thrifting so i spend a fair amount of time picking apart style elements on ChatGPT. I load couture / catwalk images and we identify why Im drawn to them and how to recreate them ( kind of) from my own wardrobe and the street style looks that appeal to me.

thank you for your sensitivity to my weird combo of things- the great thing about getting older I find is that once I realise these type of things about myself , I feel liberated from them- how fabulous is that ! and I always wear my collars up ! I really feel fashion is an artform and I take great pleasure in people who have any sense of style - no matter what their taste is. how nice it is to read everyone's comments on this thread 💜

I had my colours done many years ago and then found out that there was a course run by WEA by a lady who had trained with CMB. I am a plus size and because I know so much about colours and style I get told I am stylish quite often. I love getting bargains from Vinted and charity shops. eBay is worth looking at as well. The prices amaze me on Vinted as some people just want to clear some space and the prices can be just a few quid. I have a great set of clothes and often look round charity shops. I go to a lot of places now I am retired so I like to be able to think I am casually smart.

There were also … some fantastic ready-to-wear houses, some of them producing clothes that weren't far off couture standard, until the '60s threw it all away. (@Floisme)

This is very true. I grew up with photos of my mother in the 1950s dressed like a film star - though she would have been shopping from department stores and smaller High St shops in London and the SE, on an ordinary student / trainee salary.

She had spectacular evening wear, and wonderfully sober fitted wool twill suits - whose style I was able to replicate from Dorothy Perkins in the late 1970s. But what I most admired were some voluminous printed skirts constructed from what looked like acres of heavy cotton. The only contemporary things I’ve ever seen to match them were from Casey Casey - so I don’t know how manufacturers were able to produce such loveliness 70 years ago at prices accessible to young women on tiny salaries.