Style Inspiration: Create your own Look Book

Style Inspiration: Create your own look book

You maybe asking what is a look book exactly? Well, walk into any fashion house’s boutique and you’ll probably find one. A look book is a collection of looks put together by a designer to showcase how their collection works.

How can a look book help me?

I believe look books are fantastic for anyone who is looking to improve their image. Take a leaf out of the women’s magazines who have been putting together mini look books to help inspire their readers for years.

One of the most effective ways to improve yourself is modelling. Imitating those that are already good at something will help you improve faster. The same applies with your style. Although you want your look to be unique, imitating stylish people or those that can put stylish looks together will allow you to develop your intuition. So you’ll then be able to go off and automatically pick what you want and be sure it will look great.

Look book’s can also help you when shopping. Instead of going out and wandering around until you find something you like the look of, you can flick through your look book find what you want then go out and look for it. That’s effective shopping which will free up time for you to then focus on doing other things, rather than roaming around the shops all day.

To start you need to become open to the stylish people around you, just be aware of what people around you are wearing. See if you spot anyone who’s style you like and make a mental note of what it is that you think makes them ‘stylish’. Also be on the look out for people you don’t consider very stylish and try and figure out what you think it is that is holding them back, it maybe they haven’t ironed their shirt or their shoes are dirty.

How to create your own look book

The best way to start your look book is to go out and grab some magazines like GQ or have a look on the net. Flick through the magazine and pull out any of the pages where you find a look that you like and put it in a folder. They can be from adverts or just a magazine article on an individual piece, whatever you like the look of cut it out. The looks you’re pulling out will have been put together by stylists, before long you’ll have a collection of looks that have been put together by professionals. You’ll start noticing patterns and certain things that are done again and again which will help build your own sense of what looks good together. You can use it to completely emulate the outfits featured or just as a learning tool of what pieces look good together and what it is that makes the look stylish.

Once you’ve built a look book up, you can arrange it however you want. You may want to arrange it according to seasons or casual and more dressy looks.

If you want to take the look book idea to the next level you can create a look book for yourself. Take pictures of your own outfits and store them in a folder on your computer or print them out and make an actual book. You’ll be able to see the progress of your own style journey along with being able to go back and remind yourself of pieces you have that you may have forgotten about. It can also work as a tool to show you the different combinations you can create with your own clothes.