January Style Challenge

When I first started up the blog, it was intended to be a personal style diary – documenting my daily outfits alongside stories about my life, no matter what those outfits or stories might be. Over the past few years, blogs, particularly fashion and style blogs, have slowly become more and more magazine-like meaning that their photography is becoming more polished (or they hire photographers) and the writing becoming more and more minimalist.
For a while, I tried to push more in the styled fashion blog direction and really enjoyed this at the time – I was at uni and had plenty of time to spend on working on photography and finding better locations and lighting to take these photos. But that changed when I started working full time, it became really difficult to do that and I felt like any daily outfit photos I took were rushed and weren’t as stylised as they “should” be, so my outfit photos have been on the decline on the blog.

One of things I did when the blog was in its early days was a Daily Outfit Challenge (see the culmination of it here) where I took a photo of what I was wearing every single day. The photos were terrible, the outfits were somewhat strange now I look back on them, but I loved the fact that it gave me the challenge of wearing different outfits everyday. One of the popular things in personal style blogging at that time was to “remix” your clothes – showing how you wore different pieces in various different outfits instead of always wearing new things on the blog, and this challenge (along with others like the 30 for 30 that I did later) really made me rethink clothes I already had, which is kind of the point of remixing them.

As you probably all know from my constant moaning, I’ve got a bit bored of my personal style recently. I’ve cleared out a lot of my wardrobe so it’s hugely pared down at the moment but I’m still not enamoured with what I’ve got. I know that winter doesn’t really help with that as you just tend to pile layer upon layer to beat the cold, but I’m finding myself in the same couple of pairs of jeans day after day with a variety of roll neck tops and jumpers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m finding that it’s not feeling very creative.

SO, my point is that I’m going to try to do a January Style Challenge! It’s very unlikely that I’m going to be able to take photos every single day like I did before, especially as I’ve got Brownie pack holiday one weekend, but instead I’m going to challenge myself to snap some quick photos of what I’m wearing when I can and not only because I like the outfit or feel like I “need” an outfit post for the blog. I want to do this to get more out of my wardrobe again, to show myself that I can still be creative with what I wear and to get back into the habit of snapping quick photos rather than trying to get perfect photos every time. Let’s see how it goes!

I’ve actually managed to take a photo every day this year so far! ….Not so much of an achievement as it sounds when you look at the date then discover that both of these days are still my “Christmas holidays” from work XD
So here is my New Years’ Day outfit. Ben and I had a quiet evening at home for New Year watching Humans and various other TV programmes (I thought it was fun!) then on New Years’ Day, my sister and I went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at the cinema (it was awesome! I’d go again to see it) then the parents came over for a tea of ham, butternut squash pasta and homemade garlic pizza – very random selection, but it was good! I actually ended up not wearing the shoes in the photos to go out to the cinema as I wasn’t sure I could drive in them and didn’t want to risk it, but I bought them for only £17 from Dorothy Perkins the other day – I’ve been wanting some 3 straps chunky heels forever (really, about 5 years I’ve been looking for some!) so I insisted to Ben that I needed these when he rolled his eyes at yet another pair of shoes!
I wore this skirt on the blog here once before (it’s also just as creased here from sitting down – not good for creases apparently!), also with a roll neck top then, but this one is from Lidl in a pack of 2 – I seem to wear a lot of Lidl clothing somehow! Then the brooch was a Christmas present from Ben’s sister – the flying car from Harry Potter (so I had to wear it to see Fantastic Beasts!). I’m also wearing a necklace from the stash from my elderly relative who went into a home – there were so many beautiful things that I imagine you’ll see lots of them on the blog at some point!

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Outfit Details

Top: Lidl | |