TikTok influencers no longer have us blindly following a dizzying slate of microtrends – cottagecore one week, dark academia the next, the mob wife aesthetic days later. In place of the churn of trends and overconsumption, a new mindset is emerging: the search for personal style. Finding your personal style, the thinking goes, allows you to shop more confidently and less frequently. By looking more skeptically at fast fashion and fancy labels, you can rise above the whims of brand marketing – and find contentment with pieces that speak, uniquely, to you.
But the search for personal style has become a complicated affair. Methods include distilling your entire being into three words, holding various colors up to your face and…