Before you buy clothes or accessories you need to have a solid vision of the style you want. But how do you get there? What if you’re starting from scratch and you have no idea how you want to dress?

You probably have some style preferences already, but you might not know what they are. You need a way to bring them out. A foolproof way to see what is going on in your head is to make a collage (some people call them vision boards). Collages help open up our creative sides. They are a straight line from the cloudy depths of our unconscious to the bright light of day. They let us tap into our most important dreams. Collages or vision boards help us define who we are now or who we wish to become.

Look at magazines or newspapers or catalogs. Cut out pictures that reveal who you are or who you would like to be. Take your time and be honest. Don’t look with any specific image in mind. Try to look with your heart. Rip an image out if it speaks to you. It can be a picture of anything, not necessarily clothes. You are looking for what inspires you or calls to you. Once you have a pile of images, arrange them on a piece of paper. You don’t have to use scissors or tape unless you want to.

What jumps out at you from your collage? My last one was full of blues and greens and white. There was also ocean and blue sky, black and white geometric print, blue stones, and an owl. I like this group of images because it is practical and also aspirational – it shows simple things like what colors I like to wear in the summer but also more complicated ideas like what kind of life I want. For instance, I gravitate toward those colors in the summer. To me they are summery and soothing, like the blues of the ocean or the sky. But I’m also a water person. I love the water and want to spend as much time by it as possible. I want the kind of life that people have when they live by the water. In that way the color blue and a picture of the ocean is about much more than what I wear. This is one of the reasons I think clothing is so fascinating – there are layers of meaning in even the simple choice of colors.

So try making a collage. Collect pictures and see what they tell you about your dreams, both style and otherwise.