A little while back I introduced you to the concepts of Yin and Yang (or receding and advancing, or softer and stronger) ways of dressing. Here I want to show you a couple of ways that you can change the way you dress in some very common outfits to make them either more Yang (strong) or more Yin (soft).
Alternatively, here is a pretty standard work outfit of a pair of black pants and a white shirt. You can change how it feels from Yin to Yang depending on what you want to communicate.
Here I’ve made a couple of outfit options using a dress (which is naturally more Yin) but you can change up how it looks:
So when you’re thinking about working with your existing clothes, dressing them up more for work, or down more for weekends, you can use this concept to make it more formal and powerful, or softer and more approachable.
These are great illustrations!
What confuses me is how this relates to other axis you talk about, such as personality and roundness/angularity and colour schemes. In the examples, it looks to me like yang is more dramatic/angular/vivid/crisp, whereas ying is more feminine/rounded/muted/soft. I suppose every person can adjust within their natural range: e.g. go as angular and as dramatic as looks harmonious on them.
I do appreciate the theme. I recently acquired a clearer mental divide between my work and non-work styles, one being relaxed/elegant and the other relaxed/feminine. Touch of creative throughout, but just a touch.
O – yes – if you want to be more bold/strong then you need to wear more angles or straight lines. If you want to look more approachable, soften those lines (they don’t all have to be round, but they shouldn’t be sharp and angular). One person’s yang is someone else’s yin – depending on their personality! It does help when thinking about these concepts to understand how you want to communicate. You may naturally suit a more yin appearance, but it won’t give you power in the workplace. So depending if that matters or not to you, you may go outside what suits, to communicate differently.