What are the best fashion styles and how to choose yours? Fashion is a very popular art form, aesthetic, vehicle for self-expression, and creativity, especially in lifestyle, apparel, footwear, and accessories.
There are so many different types of fashion styles to choose from. It can be difficult and overwhelming to pick the right one for you. Your preferred style can depend on your budget, taste, lifestyle, activities, location, culture, and current season.
I love the minimalist fashion style, keeping it simple with a small selection of shapes and colors. I do my best to protect the environment with a low impact wardrobe, a strong focus on sustainability, classic, durable, and timeless pieces of clothing I can wear for a long time.
Here is a list of different types of fashion styles for inspiration and to help you create a different outfit every day.
Artsy style
The Artsy fashion style might be for you if you like art, or prefer to avoid conformity and standards. If you want your clothes to reflect your opinions and choices, wear highly visual artsy pieces.
Biker clothing
Shirts, hoodies, jeans, boots, and jackets are trademarks of the biker fashion style. This style is sexy, flashy, glamourous, versatile, and casual. You don't have to ride a motorcycle to rock it.
Boho style
The Boho chic or Bohemian style is made of summer, casual, modern, and stylish outfits. It takes inspiration from various free spirits, bohemian, and hippie influences, with colorful, natural, and handcrafted clothes.
Business casual
The business casual fashion style typically includes shirts, blouses, skirts, dresses, jackets, sweaters, or blazers. It's considered casual wear with elements of lounge and informal wear.
Casual wear
Casual wear is a fashion style appropriate for everyday use. It prioritizes comfort and leisure making it simple to look stylish. This is a relaxed and informal style very popular today.
Casual chic style
Casual chic is an elegant and easy-going fashion style with classic and feminine clothes. It's a perfect combination to look stylish and laid-back with timeless and sophisticated pieces.
Classic fashion style
Classic fashion is a style that lasts several seasons up to many years. It emphasizes simple cuts, shapes, and silhouettes to create elegant, timeless, modern, and classy looks.
Cosplay
Cosplay or costume play is difficult to ignore today. This fashion style is trending in huge communities around the world. It's inspired by pop-culture and made of costumes and accessories representing specific characters.
Dancewear
Inspired by ballet, jazz, street dance, hip hop, tango, and salsa, dance clothes are very successful worldwide. Dancewear is a fashion style perfect to wear casually, in the ballroom, to exercise, or at home.
Elegance
The elegant fashion style displays unusual effectiveness and simplicity. Elegant outfits are high-quality, chic, classy, sophisticated, timeless, and smart. They compliment your features perfectly.
Evening wear
Evening wear encompasses a fabulous selection of elegant evening dresses, nightgowns, sleep shirts, and formal wear in many styles and colors.
Exotic fashion
Exotic fashion is a clothing style centered on colorful, rich, attention-grabbing clothes. It's often composed of vibrant colors, prints, or embroidery.
Flamboyant
Borrowed from French flamboyant (flaming and wavy), this fashion style is characterized by exuberance, confidence, and stylishness. Flamboyant clothes are extravagant in color or design.
Formal clothing
Formal wear or office wear is a traditional Western dress code for the most formal occasions. From beautiful dresses that standout to business attire.
Garconne
Modern, simple, and elegant fashion style from France. It includes classic shapes, clean cuts, and androgynous silhouettes.
Girly style
Girly is a very feminine fashion style to adopt to feel young and cute. It includes dresses, skirts, blouses, with lots of features such as laces, flounces, or ruffles.
Girl next door fashion style
Keeping things simple is how you dress like the girl next door. Often classic and timeless, the girl-next-door look comfortable and easy to wear pieces, as well as cool accessories.
Gothic fashion
Part of the gothic culture with gothic fiction and goth music, the gothic fashion style is beautiful, dark, and steampunk. It emphasizes strong, modern, and mysterious aesthetics.
Grunge rock
Grunge is an alternative rock genre. It's a hybrid of punk and metal inspired by rock music. This fashion style is casual with jackets, boots, jeans, crop tops, beanies, and sweaters.
Haute couture
High-end designers and fashion houses often make exclusive custom-fitted garments for celebrities. It's an expensive fashion style with beautiful and truly unique creations.
Hip hop clothing
Hip hop style is made of street clothing inspired by the popular music genre. It's the fashion style for those willing to stand out from the crowd and break trends.
Kawaii style
Kawaii is the culture of cuteness in Japan. It's associated with a pop-culture aesthetic of unique pieces with pastel colors. Kawaii fashion is very lovely, charming, and childlike.
Lagenlook clothing
Lagenlook means layered look in German. It's a popular way of dressing from Europe. This fashion style involves many layers of uniquely shaped clothing worn on top of each other.
Loungewear style
The loungewear fashion style focuses massively on comfortable clothing with sweatpants, sleep pants, lounge shorts, jumpsuits, harem pants, leggings, sweatshirts, and cardigans.
Maternity clothing
Maternity clothing is made of comfortable, stylish, and flattering pieces such as dresses, jumpsuits, swimsuits, shorts, skirts, pants, and shirts, perfect to wear during pregnancy.
Read up my article on maternity clothing to learn more about the importance of sustainable materials, especially during pregnancy.
Military fashion style
Military clothing offers distinct colors and shapes. With khaki and sand camouflage shirts, cargo pants, warm parkas, jackets, and coats, the military fashion style is comfortable and highly functional.
Minimalist fashion
Minimalism is all about simplicity, going back to basics, and your wardrobe-essentials. Remove what is superfluous to make every item in your closet a winner.
Modern urban
The urban modern fashion style incorporates contemporary looks. It can be minimalist as well as street-inspired. It's often associated with today's fast-paced city life.
Modest clothing
Modest fashion or modest dressing is a trend of less revealing clothes for personal preference. Modest clothing is very feminine and specifically designed to show less skin.
Nerdy and geeky
The nerdy and geeky style used to be unpopular but it doesn't mean overly obsessive or introverted anymore. This clothing style is now widespread with a passionate pop-culture community.
Preppy fashion
The preppy fashion style is most similar to the classic style with a simple look but with more bold colors and prints. It's made of sportswear, casual lifestyle apparel and outdoor gear.
Punk rock
Punk rock is a style of clothes inspired by the music genre. David Bowie is a great inspiration for the punk rock look, known for its bright colors, prints, and jackets.
Rock style
Heavily inspired by rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music, rock style can be chic, modern, glamourous, edgy, and alternative. It also combines influences from metal, punk rock, and gothic rock.
Sexy fashion style
The sexy style is all about showing off your best features. Mostly casual and trendy, sexy clothes offer a very seductive, hot, and sensual look highly effective to grab attention.
Streetwear style
Streetwear is a fashion style including casual clothing and sportswear. It's heavily influenced by hip hop, surf skate, punk, and Japanese street culture.
Sportswear style
Activewear, workout clothes, and gym clothing make the sportswear fashion style, popular outfits designed to transition from exercise wear to casual wear.
The large majority of sportswear manufactured today is made of petroleum-based materials, which are highly polluting. Luckily, many environmentally friendly alternatives exist.
Read up my article on what to look for in sustainable workout clothes to learn more about them.
Summer clothing
Summer wear, cruise wear, vacation clothing, and travel clothes are ideal for traveling and relaxing, on vacation, or during leisure activities. They are perfect to say cool in hot weather.
Surf skate style
Graphic tees, sneakers, baggy pants, and hoodies are part of the surf skate fashion style. These are functional, loose, and comfortable clothes for maximum freedom of movement.
Swimwear style
Swimwear and beachwear include fashionable clothes of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Versatile outfits help you transition from beach to street with style.
Traditional fashion style
Traditional clothing refers to clothes with significant inspiration from the culture and identity of a specific ethnic group. A traditional style is an important part of every region's history.
Trendy fashion
Every clothing piece that follows trends is trendy. By nature, trendy clothes are fashionable, up to date, and in style. They are influenced by or express the most recent fashion looks.
Vibrant style
The vibrant fashion style refers to anything rich, bright, loud, striking, and brilliant. This style is full of energy, enthusiasm, spirit, and confidence. Designs and colors are various and exciting but often only worn by minorities.
Vintage fashion
Old vintage clothes can be found in resale shops, thrift stores, and vintage stores. When an item is at least 20 years old, it is genuinely vintage or antique.
Wild West style
Inspired by the period with the same name, the Wild West genre is a country, cowboy, and Western aesthetic from America. This fashion style is very distinctive and unique.
About the Author: Alex Assoune
Alex Assoune (MS) is a global health and environmental advocate. He founded Panaprium to inspire others with conscious living, ethical, and sustainable fashion. Alex has worked in many countries to address social and environmental issues. He speaks three languages and holds two Master of Science degrees in Engineering from SIGMA and IFPEN schools.
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