Fashion passes, style remains. -- Coco Chanel

I love shopping.  I love clothes.  I love dressing up.  But what is my style?

I'm 29 years old and sometimes I get really confused when it comes to style. How should I dress?  Where should I shop?  Does this outfit make me look 15 or 40 or my actual age?  I think I've reached the time in my life where clothes become very confusing.  And I don't like it...  Maybe a style journey into my past might help.

As a child of the late 1980s and early 1990s, I wore some truly ugly clothing.  Bicycle shorts, neon shirts, hairsprayed big hair, scrunchies, etc.  If it was fashionable, I wore it.  Except dresses.  I've always hated wearing dresses.  Once I got to high school, my style was all over the place.  I could wear a polo and nice jeans one day and the next show up in goth/punk complete with vinyl pants and concert tee.  College turned me into a tshirt and jeans kind of girl.  I lived in them.  Why dress up if you're going to roll out of bed and stumble to class?  Just not worth it.  Working during college, I had the required Shoe Carnival and Best Buy uniforms of khaki pants and work polo.  And then I had to do student teaching.  What does a 23 year old student teacher wear?  Do I dress like I'm 40 to give the illusion of professionalism?  Do I wear what I want to wear and run the risk of having the same outfit as a student?  I think I did a little of both.  I know I wore some ugly "teacher clothes" some days.  And some days I really did show up in clothes my high schoolers were wearing.  It was a confusing time.

Once I actually obtained a teaching job, I tried create a real, professional wardrobe.  I didn't get just pieces willy nilly.  I treated to coordinate.  I thought I did a pretty good job.  A lot of it was bought from the Goodwill which gave me a lot of clothes for not much money.  Unfortunately, used clothing doesn't last that long and many pieces had to be thrown out within two years.  I thought I dressed fairly well during my teaching.

Now, I am out of a job.  I have been living in tees and jeans.  I try to dress nicely, but many days I fall back on standbys.  I don't have a dress code.  I just wear whatever.  But I don't want to just be a tees and jeans kind of person.  And soon I will need to get a job.  The kind of job determines my wardrobe.  What if I get a job as an executive secretary?  I don't have anything that would work.  What if I get a job in retail?  Stuck in uniform land, gross!  I don't know where to go with my style right now.  I'm in that weird in between age.  Too old to shop at Charlotte Russe, but too young (and broke) to shop at Banana Republic.  I guess I'll continue to buy my clothes from Target (Merona line) and H&M and Old Navy and sometimes Forever 21.  If' I'm dressing too young or too old, please tell me.  Because I can't really figure it out!