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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Many of us start our mornings in a very similar way we brush our teeth and maybe drink a cup of coffee or two, we head over to our closet or chest of drawers and pick out an outfit for the day. While we all get dressed, how many of us thoughtfully consider why we wear the clothes we wear? How often do you think about your personal style? While you might think caring about fashion is a trivial pursuit, be it due to your busy lifestyle, or maybe the societal tendency to devalue things that women typically enjoy, but fashion is a deeply important way to non-verbally communicate with the world and with yourself.

Every morning when you get dressed you're deciding how you'll feel about yourself for the day on one level, and how you want everyone else from your family and co-workers to strangers on the subway, to feel when they see you. The question is, what do you want to say with your clothes? Well, our guest today, wardrobe stylist Allison Bornstein suggests you start by choosing three words. She's become really big on social media for this if you don't already know. Hi, Allison, welcome to WNYC.

Allison Bornstein: Hi, thank you for having me. That was a great introduction.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. You popularized the three-word method for figuring out your personal style. What is the three-word method? What are you getting at by having people identify three words?

Allison Bornstein: Essentially, I created the three words to give a system or a method to help clients and really anybody who needs help to identify their style. Essentially, it's just distilling your style into three adjectives. Should I explain how you find them?

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Allison Bornstein: Yes. Okay. The first word that you are going to pick is a practical word, and define that you want to pull out all of the pieces that you wear all the time. These are your go-to pieces. I think that sometimes it's really helpful to put these pieces on a rack or put them on your bed, just to see them out of the context of your closet. Then I want you to ask yourself how would you describe these things. I always say like, for better or for worse, your personal style is in your closet, so we just have to find it. This is how we do it. Pull everything out that you wear all the time, and just ask yourself how would you describe it.

Let's say, for example, I don't know you have a lot of really simple things, maybe one of your words could be minimal or simple or classic. Maybe these pieces are really brightly colored, or have geometric prints or patterns. Maybe you want to use words like vibrant or bright or artful or geometric. It's all just like describing what you're seeing. I also want to say that, I feel like often we will see these things and will maybe be disappointed, or we'll be judging ourselves, but this is just a good starting off point, to just figure out like, "What am I actually wearing? What am I really presenting to the world currently." It's a good place to start.

Brian Lehrer: All right, listeners, call up with your three words. What would you use to describe your personal style? Listeners, we have about 10 minutes for this. Let's see how many we could get in. Maybe you follow Allison Bornstein on social media and you want to ask her a question about the three-word method for identifying your personal style or maybe even using that as a guide to improve in some way, your personal style when it comes to clothing. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Let's take one right away. Oh, no, no is that-- Okay, yes. Forgive me, I wasn't sure if we had a caller on the topic. I think we do. Maria in Woodstock, you're on WNYC. Hi, Maria.

Maria: Hi. How's it going?

Brian Lehrer: Good. You have a three-word style phrase for yourself.

Maria: Yes, for me, and also for my vintage clothing business, I tend to describe it as Stevie Nick's biker gang.

Allison Bornstein: I love that.

Brian Lehrer: There we go. Yes, that's kind of one phrase that takes four words, but okay, Stevie Nicks biker gang. Why do you love it, Allison?

Allison Bornstein: I love that. I think that's great. I feel like it doesn't of course have to be three words. I think as long as you have just a nice guiding light or a guiding phrase, I think that's really helpful. I love that one.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Here is Lisa in East Brunswick, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi. My three words are second-hand class. I wear a lot of second-hand vintage clothes, but it adds even more potential for style because you have clothes from across the ages. That's my three words.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. I think we see from these two callers, Allison, and we got it from our team too when we were all sharing our own three words that it feels to people like there are different ways to do this. You could have three discrete adjectives, or you can have a three-word phrase. On my team, we were sharing our words, and people came up with versatile boy mode layers, edgy, girly, preppy, Bushwick, blend in. Here's a three-word phrase one, somebody had slightly conservative chic. Slightly conservative chic, I know who that is. Someone else had a three-word phrase confounding pattern mishmash. Haha. [unintelligible 00:06:08] were very boring, understated, casual, flexible, but talk about that. Can you do it with the three words together?

Allison Bornstein: Yes, absolutely. It could be a phrase, it can really be anything. The point is, it's just for you. It's just something to give you, like I said, either a guiding light or even just guardrails to help you figure out what you want to wear and also what you want to buy because there's so much out there and I feel like having these three words to guide you can really help you be a smarter shopper as well.

Brian Lehrer: Sarah on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah: Hi Brian. Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Got three words for us.

Sarah: Yes, I do. My three words are modest, colorful, and trendy.

Allison Bornstein: I love those.

Sarah: Thank you. How would you perceive that?

Allison Bornstein: I really liked that. I liked the idea of the modest with the trendy. I think sometimes having words that almost seem like they're in opposition is really nice because it creates this tension in your look. I liked the idea of having words that seem just similar. To me the modest and trendy, I would love to see how you create looks using that and I love the idea of colorful. I think having the idea of colorful is nice because maybe when you're putting trendy look and you're looking in the mirror, I think it's always nice to see like, "Do I have something colorful here?" If you don't, I think that's maybe a nice thing to add to make the look feel more like yourself.

Brian Lehrer: Chester in Brooklyn, has an interesting looking three words according to what's on my screen. Hi, Chester, you're on WNYC.

Chester: Hi, how are you, Brian? Mine is aspirationally, or what did I say? What did I say?

Brian Lehrer: Pastel?

Chester: Aspirationally pastel yo. I think about my style as on a journey to calmness. Right now I wear mix of darks and really really bright colors, but I try to get over time, I'm looking to get to a calmness. I'm incrementally getting there.

Brian Lehrer: You cheated because yo isn't an adjective. [chuckles]

Chester: I know. [chuckles] I was saying that that's a blocker. I'm way too Brooklyn to be Southwest.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, but you got a sense of motion there, right, Allison? Aspirationally pastel yo.

Allison Bornstein: I love it. I love that.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you if you watched the Super Bowl last night and saw Rihanna and had a thought on what she was trying to express in her outfit.

Allison Bornstein: Love Rihanna, loves that performance. I feel like the first word that comes to my mind is powerful. I think she always has a very sexy and powerful element to her look and obviously last night was no exception. If I had to pick Rihanna's three words, just off the top of my head, I would say maybe tailored, edgy and powerful.

Brian Lehrer: Keisha in Islip has a question. Keisha, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Keisha: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much. I'm a long-time listener and fan, but I'm especially excited to talk to Allison today. I actually have an email that I started and saved in my draft folder to send to her. I'm recently retired, not that recently, but since retiring I'm struggling a little bit with finding my style now that I'm no longer in the workplace and that I'm getting older. I did, as Allison suggested, and pulled out my go-to's, which are all blue jeans and classic blue jeans, dark blue jeans, and black turtleneck sweaters. I try to get that-- the words that I picked from that were classic and elegant. Then now that I'm no longer in the workplace, want to reflect a little bit of the boho spirit from my hippie past. I do that with accessorizing, with jewelry. I wondered if she had any other suggestions for me for times that I'm not wearing jeans and a turtleneck.

Brian Lehrer: What a great question from our classic elegant boho caller from Islip. Alison.

Allison Bornstein: I love this question and totally a lot of times I feel like when we have big life changes like retiring or starting a new job, we have to change our style to reflect that. I love the turtlenecks and jeans and the vintage jewelry or boho jewelry. I like the idea of maybe adding some more layers. For example, perhaps some more boho or vintagey feeling. Jackets, I think that's always a nice way to just add a nice touch, a nice like layer texture.

Think of other things that we could add to the mix. I feel maybe even varying up the silhouette. For example, maybe instead of a black turtleneck, we could even just do a black crew neck or something. I think that sometimes these very small changes will actually make a really big--

Brian Lehrer: You know what, we're out of time. Alison Bornstein, just tell people where they can best find you.

Allison Bornstein: Yes, you can find me on Instagram at Allison Bornstein six and TikTok at Allison Bornstein.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for sharing this with us, Alison. Really fun.

Allison Bornstein: Thanks.

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