May 22, 2023

How To Make a Mood Board (& Actually Use It This Time!)

…I promise it’s helpful

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They say you are what you eat and if that’s correct that I’m NYC-based fashion stylist Allison Bournstein, because when I tell you I have BINGED her content. I’ve watched every single one of her YouTube videos and am a paid subscriber to her IG. Like next level obsessed. If you are struggling style-wise then I highly recommend you doing the same, because it’s basically a masterclass in how to get the most from your wardrobe and how to actually enjoy getting dressed in the morning. I’d got into a bit of a rut of reaching for the same things every morning – sometimes my days are filled with soft play and being a personal chef to a tiny human and it doesn’t exactly require an Instagram-worthy outfit – but since watching her videos I have to say that I have worn some absolutely cracking outfits to soft play. And you know what? I feel amazing for it.

The first step for me, (aside from watching Allison’s videos), was to have a little wardrobe spring clean. It wasn’t a major declutter by any means, but more a sort-through; a chance to re-organise and make sure that everything in my wardrobe was ready to perform it’s functional well – see that video here. The biggest takeaway was that I had a huge pile for my seamstress to alter. There were so many trousers I wasn’t wearing because they dragged on the floor and just by actually getting that done I had like five extra pairs of trousers in my rotation.

Next up – mood boarding. I’d made boards before, but this time I feel like I really honed my skills and created boards that have become a part of my daily routine every morning. Here’s how I did it…

START WITH A THEME. I realised that I really only have two modes when I’m getting ready in the morning – one is ‘casual’ for when I’m working from home, or having a day with the boys. It’s easy, I want to be comfortable and I don’t need any element of my outfit to be particularly elevated. The second is ‘polished’ it’s my meeting/filming/events mode. I’m definitely in this mode a lot less, but when I am in it I want to feel a bit more put together and a little more formal. Having these two themes in mind before I started searching for images meant that I was able to categorise them easily into one of my two possible mood boards – I knew what I was looking for.

SCREEN-GRAB EVERYTHING. Before I’d used Pinterest as my primary image search source and this time it was my most-used tool too. However I did screen-grab anything and everything, whether it was from Instagram or TikTok. Pinterest can feed you the same image 1890 times sometimes, so it was good to have a bit more of a well-rounded image diet this time.

IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE PRETTY. I’d previously thought that mood boarding had to be picture perfect – like a page in a magazine. And if you have the skills for that then FAB. Go for it. However this time I didn’t get too caught up with it looking a particular way. I was more interested in the outfit formulas themselves, so I wasn’t too bothered if the image was a screen-grab from TikTok with text on the screen. It was better to have the image in there with the text on, than not at all. Inspiring? Yes. But perfect? No.

PUT IT TO GOOD USE. It might be a good idea to print it out? Or maybe save it as the background on your phone? I favourited my mood boards so they are easy to find on my phone, and I added them to my ‘Style’ page in Notion too. Once I did that I had my own try-on session that you’ll see in Sunday’s video. Trying things on, taking photos, adding the outfit formulas to Whering and generally just having a grand ol’ time. It really helped me actually utilise this inspiration instead of it being a fun activity, but ultimately going to waste.

So here are the boards – ‘casual‘ and ‘polished‘. I thought I’d put them here so you can save them to whatever device you want, make them your screensaver, edit them yourselves – do as you please!