What is a Fashion Mood Board?
In the simplest sense, a fashion mood board is a visual guide to your aspirational style. Like other mood boards, it’s a collection of images, videos, passages and other elements that have a common theme. In this case, that theme is your dream style.
By compiling images of moods and outfits you want to emulate, you’re creating more than something pretty to look at. You’re creating a plan for your style. A fashion mood board acts like a personal style compass that guides you while you keep taking steps on your revamped wardrobe journey.
It’s best to enter an endeavor as large as honing your personal style with a clear guide. And that is your fashion mood board.
Although, its uses can be extended beyond finding your personal style. A fashion mood board can be a good tool for creating a capsule wardrobe meaning a smaller collection within a wardrobe for a specific event (i.e. work, vacation). It can also be used in the way other mood boards are – a snapshot of your ideas and inclinations at a certain point in time.
How to Make a Fashion Mood Board
For the purposes of revamping your closet, a fashion mood board is a collection of images that reflect what you aspire to have as your daily style. The images you choose should represent moods, colors, silhouettes and combinations that you want in your dream daily wardrobe.
Notice: I’m stressing ”daily” in these definitions. The purpose of editing your current wardrobe is so the clothes you wear in everyday life reflect your true sense of style. That means we’re finding clothes for every day of the week not just special occasions or work.
You can of course create a fashion mood board for events other than casual wear. But, if your goal is to find your personal style, it’s best to start with what you would wear in a normal day. Once you learn your foundational style, you can apply it to any other occasion.
Now that you know the general idea of a fashion mood board, it’s time for the fun part: find inspiration!
Consider your favorite brands, designers, fashion icons and campaigns. I look to my favorite movie/TV characters, celebrity stylists and luxury designers for most of my mood board inspiration. I find these groups are known for the attention to detail, care and experience required to put a great outfit together.
Choose photos from each of your inspirations that show an outfit you want to wear or a mood you want to emulate. Consider cuts of clothing, silhouettes, color combinations and styling choices (accessories, hair, shoes, etc.).
When you have at least 15-20 photos, put them all in the same space. For example, I did this all digitally so I grouped all my photos together on one large workbook page on my iPad. You can have a tangible poster board with images taped on as well, but I prefer digital.
I find it easier to rearrange images or take notes on a screen for a project of this scale. But, ultimately the material of your mood board is up to you!
My Fashion Mood Board
I am very proud to present my first fashion mood board!
To me, these photos show looks I desperately want to own. Whether the complete look in the photo or its general style or its styling.
When I was making my fashion mood board, I didn’t see any similarities among these photos. It was only after I arranged them all to be on one workbook page that patterns emerged.
From my mood board I learned:
- I love statement pants
- I love rich, bold colors
- I love animal and floral prints
- I LOVE a strong shoulder
And those were just the first few observations!
Compiling these images and reflecting on their similarities was an extremely valuable tool for me. It made me realize my “casual” is not what most people would consider “casual”. And that’s okay! My “casual” is indicative of my personal style. We’re all entitled to define dressing occasion terms like ”casual” and ”formal” based on our own preferences.
The point is these images reflect my style aspirations. It’s a neat representation of the energy I wish for my future wardrobe to emulate. Yours will be the same for you!
Next Steps
Per our lovely guide, my next step in finding my personal style is building a color palette. It’s from this color palette that the majority of my outfit color combinations will originate.
My fashion mood board will be a great reference to get ideas on which colors to include. It’s also helpful in already seeing which color combinations work!
Whether you’re also honing in on your personal style, or you want to make sense of what kinds of clothes inspire you, I highly suggest making a fashion mood board.
It’s your personal style compass, after all!
