Today’s post will deal with vision boards, and how useful they can be in laying down the groundwork for your style. Yesterday, Jenny wrote a fantastic and thoughtful post about using clothes to express your identity. Her post and mine are both lead ins to an initiative we’re announcing tomorrow, something that I’m quite excited about and hope you will be, too. I’ll give you more details tomorrow, but I’m letting you  know now that reading today’s post about vision boards will be very useful to those of you who choose to participate (and I hope all of you do!).

So, now that you’re sufficiently intrigued, let’s talk vision boards. If you’ve read this blog before you’ve seen our previous posts about brainstorming, creativity, and collages as a style tool. How are vision boards different, and why are they helpful?

If you think about the difference between a collage and a vision board, think in terms of sprint versus marathon. A collage is a brainstorming tool. If you have a specific issue, or an area you’d like to explore in narrow terms, and want to come up with ideas quickly, creating a collage is very helpful. A vision board (at least the way I see it for our purposes here) is something that you should take your time with. It’s broad and all encompassing. You can dedicate a longer period of time to it (let’s say a month). During that month, you will come back to it many times, in different moods and under different circumstances. Thus, your completed vision board will reflect a much broader range of inspiration, ideas, and thoughts than a collage ever could. A vision board will help you create a long-term strategy for your style.

The ultimate goal of your vision board is to capture the many facets of your stylistic expression. A vision board can also help you see the big picture, learn more about yourself, and bring to light connections and patterns that were previously hidden. It’s fantastic for self-knowledge, which is the cornerstone of genuine style.

One key concept I want you to adopt when working with a style vision board is that of no limits.  This means that you can put on it whatever items you want, no matter their cost, size, color or style; don’t be afraid to dream big! As long as it’s something that is representative of how you feel, how you’d like to look, or something that inspires you, put it on the board.

At the same time, for a style vision board to be useful, you need a defined framework in place. You will need to narrow the objects you put on the board to the images of clothes, shoes, accessories, prints, patterns, and fabrics. This is because your ultimate goal is creating a vision of your style that can be translated into reality. If your goal was general self-knowledge and exploration, then perhaps your field of inspiration wouldn’t need to be this focused.

There is another benefit to dedicating a month to the creation of a style vision board. During all that time, you will maintain a constant connection to your vision, and hopefully, you will develop a habit of observation and awareness that will become incredibly helpful in the future. At the end of the month, once your vision board is complete, you will have a tangible representation of what you aspire your style to be.  How far this vision takes you will be up to you, but I hope you all consider using this fantastic and useful tool.

Tune in tomorrow to learn about our upcoming initiative which involves using vision boards for style inspiration, and translating that inspiration into reality!