How to Plan Your Personal Style with Concept Boards

I’m dishing up something a little different over here today- after I started posting more moodboards, Nicole approached me about talking to you guys about how you might make your own moodboards to define your personal style.  How cool is that?  I couldn’t wait to read the post myself, and I hope you guys get as much out of her tips as I did!  Take it away, Nicole!

Hi everyone! Nicole here, from The Wardrobe Code.

Back when I was an interior designer, we had a practice of making what we called “concept boards” for new clients.

The idea was to capture an abstract idea, a feeling – something to get them emotionally committed to the project. It served as kind of an unspoken contract between designer and client; without telling them exactly what I was going to present, in terms of design, I was already telling them with the concept board.

I didn’t know it back then, but those concept boards would prove mighty useful when it came to building my own personal style. So, in this post, I’m going to show you how to use design concept boards to plan your own style – and I’m going to use myself as the example.

But first, let’s take this back to Design School 101 so we’re all on the same page …

A concept board isn’t like a vision board. We’re not pinning motivational phrases and pictures of swimming pools. Instead, we’re giving life to an abstract concept. We’re going to gather up both mood-inspiring images, plus some real-life materials that could possibly be used on the project (a.k.a. clothing and accessories).

We’ll also be using some fun tools to make this concept come to life: Pinterest and Polyvore. More on that in a second.

So, how do we get this concept? The easiest way (for a style concept board, at least) is to plan it around a season and add some kind of significant event you have coming up.

For me, we’re going to use:

Winter + a trip back to NYC to visit family over the holidays

For the mood: it’s winter and the holiday season, in the big city – so the first feelings that come to mind are: nostalgia, comfort and excitement.

Tool: Pinterest. For me, we’re looking for photos that convey these feelings. So I’m going to search for and pin the things I might see while visiting family, going out for dinner and sightseeing around the city on a virtual pinboard I created specifically for this exercise.

For the materials: it’ll be cold, much colder than I’m used to in Southern California – so I’m going to need a good selection of outerwear, sweaters and boots.

Tool: Polyvore & Pinterest. I like to use Polyvore as a search/shopping tool because it’s an easy, efficient way to search for specific things. For example, I started with the items I knew I would need – like boots and coats. Then I built this “mini-wardrobe” as I thought of the additional things I would need – like pants, sweaters. Lastly, I finished with accessories.

This is where you want to let the “mood” images inspire the choices you make for the materials. In my example, I’ll be in New York: the classiest place on Earth. So, as I browse Polyvore, I’m going to select a mixture of items that match my existing style – but also evoke those feelings I mentioned earlier (nostalgia, comfort, excitement).

Tip: when you find an item on Polyvore that you like and want to add to your style concept board, first you want to “like” it on Polyvore so that it saves it to your “My Items” file. Then, click through to the image to pin it to your concept board on Pinterest.

Now, you should have a Pinterest concept board full of mood-evoking images and clothing to go along with it. It will ensure that your “client” (a.k.a. YOU) will be happy with the final outcome!

Thank you so much, Nicole!  Have you guys ever used a Pinterest concept board for your personal style?  I have one general style board, but I must admit that I’ve neglected it recently- this post has me dying to get pinning!