Yahoo Lifestyle 25 ways to improve your style in 2025
We are a quarter into the 21st century - the future, or so we keep hearing! - and in many ways, shopping has never seemed more infuriating or complicated. Leaving the house pleased with your appearance is far more work, or more elusive, than it should be.
But life - or at least putting on clothes to live it - does not have to be this way. There are simple and affordable ways to upgrade your closet, your clothing and even your relationship to getting dressed. Here are 25 ways to start.
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Buy secondhand
It has never been easier or less expensive to acquire an Armani blazer, fancy pants that would dress up a T-shirt or jazz up a button-down or a smart vintage handbag. Feel less guilty about shopping, invest in things you are less likely to throw out after wearing twice (and which aren’t a waste of money to tailor or have repaired) and make your daily ensembles a lot more interesting.
You can make repair work into something more interesting by finding someone who gets creative with their mending. Satellite Repairs will make your worn jeans or ripped Patagonia into something tender and original, while Eva Joan can morph any faded garment into a quirky Cinderella.
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Try a no-buy month - or more
If you find yourself in a cycle of buying things that never solve the problems you want them to solve, or pieces that are fun in your mind but duds on your bod, challenge yourself to buy nothing for a month, or, if you really want to find your inner fashion Buddha, several months. You’ll learn to know when that deeply discounted jacket, or very expensive scarf, was actually the one that got away instead of an easy fling you would have forgotten in a matter of days.
In the midst of this acquisition hiatus, put on a wonderful podcast or some good music - the soundtrack to “The Bodyguard” or “The Last Waltz” are my favorites - and scrutinize what you’ve already got. Once the possibility for slightly better or more interesting new pieces is no longer on the table, you can be realistic about the regrets in your own closet.
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Shop in person
Shopping online is very easy, yes, but shopping in person makes it easier to scrutinize your purchases and avoid regretful ones. Flip the garment inside out and study the seams, examine the fabric for imperfections or shoddy quality, look at the fabric tag, inspect the care instructions - you’ll save yourself from buying an ill-fitting, 90 percent polyester and 10 percent cashmere sweater that is dry-clean only.
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Organize a clothing swap with your friends or neighborhood
The fastest route out of a clothing rut is to raid your pals’ closets. Ask everyone to bring gently used and laundered pieces that no longer fit into their lives, make some snacks and let the trading begin. Prepare to barter.
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Make getting dressed into a ritual
If bringing new clothes (even free ones!) into your life just isn’t an option, try making the daily chore of getting dressed into something more enjoyable. Carve out 15 or 20 minutes to dress. Lay your outfit out on a scarf or colorful towel before putting it on. Encourage yourself to integrate jewelry or accessories. Put on music. Spray Febreze evocatively through the air! Keep fresh flowers or a plant on your bathroom vanity table, even if it’s a single bud in a tiny vase!
And don’t forget to hang up your clothes at the end of the day, airing them out for a few hours, if you can. As Cheryl Mendelson writes in “Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House,” airing out your clothes allows excess moisture to evaporate, making them less likely to deteriorate and smell, or attract moths.
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Read more magazines
Head to your local Goodwill or junk shop, find that pile of dusty Life Magazines or yellowed Harper’s Bazaars, and take in the clothes. You’re not looking for didactic advice to take to heart - who needs a diet of hard-boiled eggs and white wine for breakfast?! - but the pictures and stories might provide some useful advice on fits, fabrics and pairing colors and silhouettes.
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… and more fashion books
Claire McCardell’s “What Shall I Wear,” Elizabeth Hawes’s “Fashion is Spinach,” and Jacob Gallagher’s “The Men’s Fashion Book” are like the smarter, much more fun answer to those mid-2000s television shows that told generations of women sobbing into three-way-mirrors to wear palazzo pants.
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Get dressed up
Who cares if you’re overdressed? Take a night out at a concert, a fancy or casual restaurant visit or just a meetup with friends for lunch, coffee or cocktails as an opportunity to wear something that makes you feel great. (And if anyone asks you why you’re so dressed up, just tell them, “Why not?”)
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Start an outfit diary
Let’s say you put your pants on one leg at a time like everybody else, but being like everyone else is leaving you dissatisfied. You keep returning to the same jacket with the same pants over and over again, and that wonderful printed shirt you bought three months ago to spice up your office ensembles is still studded with its price tag.
At the end of everyday (or every couple of days), jot down in a notebook what you wore, the occasion, and what worked or bothered you about it - you know, “Those comfortable shoes actually gave me a blister because I was running between the third and fourth floors of my office all day,” or “Got a lot of compliments from the visiting clients on my snappy corduroy blazer.” You’ll start to remember what works for which circumstances. Think of this the way you might annotate a recipe you regularly revisit - you’ll want to remember that the called-for two cups of sugar is a half cup too many.
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Wear some nice pajamas
Maybe you sleep in a nightgown, or an ex’s ragged T-shirt or a la odalisque. (Nude, with an ostrich feather covering your sensitive bits.) But you can still add pajamas into the mix. They will help signal to you mentally that you’re beginning to wind down for the night, even if you aren’t doing any of that other stuff you’re supposed to do before bed like not look at your phone, abstain from alcohol and caffeine or avoid staring at social media wondering why your dog isn’t as cute as your ex’s dog.
Put them on after dinner, or even after work, to announce to yourself and your loved ones that you’re really off the clock. (This is the kind of thing a butler or valet might do, but a pair of pajamas is much more cost-effective and machine-washable.)
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Get a bra that actually fits
Did you know that 124 percent of American women are wearing the wrong bra size? Just kidding, but not really. My life, and the lives of many other bra-wearing people, has been changed by the subreddit A Bra That Fits, perhaps the most supportive (in more ways than one!) online community in which I’ve ever participated. Wearing a better fitting bra won’t only make your clothes fit better, but it can relieve your back pain and improve your posture.
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Try a hat
Fashion designers, high on the cigarette and martini fumes of that tawdry miniseries “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans,” started churning out hats in 2024. At last: a silly trend you can try on the cheap! Etsy and eBay abound with great vintage hats. Give it a whirl. If it doesn’t suit, no problemo - save it for the next costume party.
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When the people in your life look great, tell them they look great!
Dole out compliments like Santa Claus. Appreciate the details, or merely the effort, of your friends, family and colleagues’ clothes. Great jacket! Wonderful outfit today! Those are cunning trousers - where did you find them? Noticing the sartorial delights around you will make style feel less like the enemy or an unfortunate necessity, and more like a pleasant addition to your days.
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Buy yourself 20 pairs of socks right now
You will never, ever regret this. Muji and Front General Store have particularly good options.
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Try Jean Rhys …
The best advice on how to improve your style comes not from social media decrees or hacks but from refining the eye and mind. Many fiction authors have written stylishly about the irresistible pull of women’s clothing, but Jean Rhys - in books such as “Good Morning, Midnight” and “ Voyage In the Dark” - may have done it best.
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… or Tom Wolfe
Likewise, Tom Wolfe wrote brilliantly on the power dynamics of menswear. A great place to start is “Bonfire of the Vanities” - even if you’ve already read it, rereading with a fresh eye out for fashion details will make the experience all the more pleasurable.
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Ditch your fancy sweatpants
Cashmere sweatpants and $200 cotton joggers were the stuff that got us through the peak of the pandemic. You don’t have to forgo comfort, but switch those wearable safety blankets out for a pair of silky trousers with an elastic waistband, baggy chinos or super soft corduroys.
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Wear your band T-shirt under a blazer
Now is the time to reshape the office wardrobe. Goodbye, business-casual, hello, great T-shirt you spent $80 on a Dave Matthews Band concert under your wool suit jacket!
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Get something really stupid …
Everyone is always telling you to buy more intelligently, more thoughtfully, more responsibly, as if you getting that tank top made out of recycled bamboo is going to save us from environmental peril. We can all be more conscientious with our purchases, yes, but for the love of laughing, feeling good and simply being alive - let yourself get that shirt with the enormous bow, bright pastel coat or pair of ridiculous shoes once in a while. Everything in moderation isn’t just about pizza and ice cream!
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… and something you can imagine wearing for the next 10 years
This should be your goal with everything you buy, yes, and yet it is the most impossible thing to achieve. But when I acquired, for example, this House of Dagmar jacket, a recycled newspaper handbag or a secondhand Lafayette 148 dress, I felt a sense of such immense contentment and joy that I knew I’d never get bored of these pieces, and would want to wear them in a million different ways for the next decade. Don’t look for merely simple clothes because you believe you’ll wear basics again and again. Look for pieces that are flexible, but have one or two unusual details. That way, you’ll get more use out of fewer clothes.
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Give up the heels
You can still look really fancy and chic in flats. Why suffer?
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Replace your mediocre hangers with good ones
Put sturdy wooden hangers in your coat closet and velvet-covered wire hangers in your wardrobe. Everything will look neater, and when your clothes are easier to access, you wear more of them, more often, in different combinations.
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If you want to be more sustainable, just learn what you really like
Recycled dresses, clothes made from plastic bottles, shoes made of gasoline - these are all just marketing techniques, more formally known as greenwashing. If you really want your clothing and shopping habits to be more sustainable, learn what you like, what clothes make you feel good and allow yourself to feel delighted by clothes - and you’ll find yourself more discerning, buying fewer things and more excited about what you own.
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Brush your clothes
Sticky rollers and fabric shavers aren’t always the answer. Having a brush on hand designed to clean clothes will remove mud and pet hair, keep moths at bay and maintain the spiffiness of your shoes, knits and tailored pieces.
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Remember that fashion is not your enemy
Clothes are intended to delight, distract, charm and enhance your life. At their best, they improve your life with pragmatism and beauty.
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