Cover Style is not about trends—it’s about knowing yourself, and dressing like it (Illustration: Pete Rich)
Style is not about trends—it’s about knowing yourself, and dressing like it (Illustration: Pete Rich)
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In this age of endless access, personal style feels endangered—now that dressing well has become a team effort
The names still shimmer when spoken aloud. The Duchess of Windsor, with her fondness for sculptural jewellery from Cartier and the clean, tailored lines of Mainbocher, always gave the impression of elegance thought through to the last button. Babe Paley, the socialite whose immaculate suits, pearls and playful mix of fine and costume jewellery made her the standard for understated polish, could secure the success of a dinner simply by being there. Gloria Guinness, born in Mexico but fluent in the ways of Europe’s salons, embodied cosmopolitan glamour, favouring Givenchy’s simplicity and Balenciaga’s architectural shapes, her wardrobe a passport stamped by Paris and Madrid. Lee Radziwill carried her grace lightly, known for her sleek shift dresses, effortless tailoring and that quiet refinement that seemed to run in the Bouvier bloodline.
In Manila, Elvira Manahan reigned with an unmistakable flair, her bold silhouettes matched only by a hearty, loud and utterly sophisticated laughter that was as much a part of her signature as her couture. Meldy Cojuangco leaned into a patrician elegance, favouring ensembles that signalled both wealth and discretion, her style a masterclass in knowing how far to go without appearing to try. Chona Kasten was remembered for her fearless chic, the woman who could wear Paris couture with a sense of play, and who understood that fashion was also theatre, especially in the Manila of her day.
More from Tatler: Asia’s Most Stylish 2025: Meet the Filipino fashion icons of elegance, heritage and reinvention
Above True style doesn’t need a spotlight (Photo: Unsplash / Hong Nguyen)
True style doesn’t need a spotlight (Photo: Unsplash / Hong Nguyen)
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These women did not simply wear clothes. They inhabited them. They did not need a glam team because the glamour was in the bones, in the tilt of the chin, in the quiet authority of knowing what worked and what did not. Their photographs suggest a secret code, not just of wealth or access but of sensibility sharpened over time.
Now look around. Every best-dressed list has become a group project. Behind each supposedly effortless look is a battalion of stylists, makeup artists and hair sculptors, even the occasional nail strategist. A look no longer evolves; it is built. It is scheduled, moodboarded, and uploaded. The question is whether what we see still counts as personal style, or if it has become a marketing campaign with human packaging—or if the essence of the wearer still shines through the polish.
And yet, there is nothing wrong with a team. The right hands do not replace your style; they amplify it. They help translate the choices you make, sharpening your story rather than rewriting it. The difference shows when the decisions are yours and the team simply brings them to light.
The old guard had their couturiers and their hairdressers, but the relationships were intimate, almost conspiratorial. Clothes were made to suit not just the body but the life. Taste was an education gathered from travel, from art, from hours of silence in a museum where the light fell just so on a Caravaggio. Style was a language you learnt through living, not through swiping. It did not arrive in weekly drops at the door.
Today, style is crowdsourced. TikTok can summon a trend overnight, and fast fashion can manufacture it in a week. AI keeps watch, noting every scroll, every pause, every second look at a sequined slip, feeding you what you did not know you wanted. Google has become a couturier without a soul, plying you with recommendations until your closet looks like everyone else’s. The promise is choice, but the result is sameness.
I know someone who ordered an entire look she found on Instagram—jacket, trousers, bag, even the earrings—only to arrive at a party where two other women were wearing the same outfit. She laughed it off, but later admitted she had never felt less like herself. On another day, she pulled out a ten-year-old dress she had nearly given away, and strangers asked where it was from. That night, she felt unmistakably her own.
“Style was a language you learnt through living, not through swiping”
The challenge today is not access but discernment. In the past, people read more, not only novels and newspapers, but art criticism, biographies, travelogues, the kind of writing that broadened the eye as much as the mind. Reading cultivated an interior life, a context for how one wanted to appear in the world. Without that richness, style risks becoming flat, a surface without story, more a reflection of what the feed dictates than of what the self demands.
So what does personal style mean now, when even the word personal feels suspect?
It begins with self-awareness. Not the performative kind, but the private sort that asks what makes you comfortable, what makes you walk differently, what makes you feel that you belong in the room without explanation. The icons of the past had this. It was why they did not need to chase the latest thing. Their sense of themselves outpaced the cycle of seasons.
Then there is curation. Not the fevered haul of every trend, but the deliberate assembling of clothes that tell your story. People speak of using three words—maybe classic, feminine, polished; maybe minimal, tailored, effortless; maybe edgy, androgynous, bold—to define their style. That can work, but the point is to know why you return to specific shapes, certain colours, certain fabrics. A wardrobe is not a costume shop; it is a diary.
Authenticity matters too. We scroll endlessly through feeds of so-called vibe checks and mirror selfies, forgetting that half of what we see has been lit, filtered or tailored for approval. Style collapses the moment it becomes a checklist of what others applaud. The truly stylish post less, edit less and still look like themselves.
What appears to be the most radical act today is restraint. Fast fashion has made it easy to buy novelty, but authentic style demands discrimination. One jacket you wear for ten years says more about you than ten jackets you wear once. A vintage find carries more meaning than the algorithm’s suggestion of the week. Clothes that endure, well cut, well made, ethically produced, are not just investments but refusals.
Above Style begins not in the mirror, but in the mind (Photo: Unsplash / Marcus Loke)
Style begins not in the mirror, but in the mind (Photo: Unsplash / Marcus Loke)
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The paradox is that we live in an age of endless access, yet individuality feels endangered. You can wake up and have the world delivered to your doorstep, but standing out now requires less, not more. The icons of old did not set out to be icons. They simply refused to be anyone but themselves.
Personal style today is still possible. It does not live in moodboards, drops, or trending tags. It lives in the pause before you buy, in the choice to wear what feels right even if no one else is wearing it, in the decision to look in the mirror and recognise yourself, not your stylist, not your feed, not your algorithm.
Think of Elvira Manahan sweeping into a room in a bold silhouette and jewellery that seemed to tell its own story, never for effect but always for truth. She did not dress to please the crowd. She dressed to please herself.
That is the kind of personal style we will remember a hundred years from now.
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Illustration: Pete Rich
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