By Bakare Mariam
There is a reason you can spot certain people from across a room without seeing their faces. Maybe it is the hair. The glasses. The perfectly cut suits. The stack of gold jewellery they never seem to take off. Perhaps they are always in black, never without a red lip or somehow manage to make an oversized white shirt look like it was invented specifically for them.
That is the power of a signature look.
Now that doesn’t necessarily mean a uniform, and it certainly doesn’t mean wearing the same thing every day. It simply means having enough personal style that, whatever you wear, there is something recognisably you about it.
When Everyone Is Wearing the Same Thing
Social media has made fashion wonderfully accessible, but it has also made it remarkably easy for everyone to start looking alike.
One viral outfit appears on Instagram or TikTok, and suddenly versions of it appear everywhere. The same sunglasses. The same shoe. The same bag. The same styling trick. Before long, what felt fresh three weeks ago has become the unofficial uniform of the season.
This may explain why personal style feels particularly appealing right now.
The people whose wardrobes we tend to remember are rarely those who jump on every trend. They pick and choose. They know that just because something is fashionable does not mean it belongs in their wardrobe.
And when they do embrace a trend, they somehow make it fit into their existing style rather than rebuilding themselves around it.
Start With What You Actually Wear
Finding your signature look doesn’t require sitting down and deciding that tomorrow you will become “the woman who wears red.”
Chances are, the clues are already in your wardrobe.
Look at what you wear when you want to feel particularly good. Maybe you own several versions of the same beautifully tailored trousers. Perhaps you always return to big earrings, fitted dresses, crisp shirts, bold prints or neutral colours. Maybe your wardrobe is full of dramatic sleeves, and you have never consciously noticed.
Those repetitions tell you something.
The same applies to clothes you constantly buy but rarely wear. We all have them: pieces that looked fantastic on somebody else, seemed like a good idea in the fitting room and then spend three years hanging untouched in the wardrobe.
Personal style becomes much easier once you stop dressing for the imaginary version of yourself and start paying attention to the real one.
Sometimes, It Is One Small Thing
A signature does not have to dominate an entire outfit.
Think of Anna Wintour’s bob and sunglasses, Iris Apfel’s enormous glasses and piles of jewellery, or Steve Jobs and his black turtlenecks. Their style became recognisable because certain elements appeared again and again.
Your own version can be far less dramatic.
It might be your preference for gold jewellery, a particular haircut, colourful shoes, immaculate tailoring, vintage handbags, an ever-present red lip or the fact that you almost always wear white.
Repeated often enough, small choices become part of how people remember you.
Repetition Is Not a Fashion Crime
Fashion has convinced us that repeating ourselves is somehow boring. Social media has probably made that worse. There is pressure to constantly produce a new look, new aesthetic and new version of yourself.
But great personal style actually depends on repetition.
You discover that a certain trouser shape works beautifully on you, so you buy it again. You know which necklines flatter you. You have colours that make your skin come alive. You find a tailor who understands exactly how you like your clothes to fit.
Why abandon all of that simply because something else is trending?
Consistency does not mean becoming predictable. It means developing a visual vocabulary. You can still experiment, dress differently for different occasions and occasionally surprise everyone. There should simply be a thread connecting it all.
Trends Should Visit, Not Move In
Having a signature look does not mean becoming stuck in a fashion time capsule.
Style should evolve because people evolve. Bodies change, lifestyles change, tastes change, and occasionally a trend comes along that is simply too good to ignore.
Wear it.
The trick is to incorporate it rather than surrender to it. If sheer dressing is having a moment, perhaps you wear it in the silhouette you already love. If leopard print suddenly returns, it could appear on your favourite style of shoe rather than taking over your entire wardrobe.
The question is less “Is everybody wearing this?” and more “How would I wear this?”
That tiny distinction is often the difference between following fashion and having style.
The New Luxury Is Being Recognisable
There was a time when luxury was largely about labels: the right handbag, the right shoes, the unmistakable logo. Those things still carry weight, of course, but there is something increasingly luxurious about not needing any of them to communicate style.
Being recognisable without relying on a recognisable label is its own kind of fashion currency.
And perhaps that is why the signature look is having such a moment.
