Your style, your story: building a style board
By the Blogness editorial team
Style is rarely a single decision. It is a collection of small choices: a colour you keep returning to, a fabric you love to touch, a shape that makes you feel like yourself. A style board gathers those choices in one place, so you can see the story they tell together.
At Blogness we believe your portfolio should feel like you, page by page. This guide walks you through building a style board step by step, with a short checklist at the end and a few ideas for turning your board into a portfolio entry.
What is a style board?
A style board is a mood board dedicated to your personal style. Designers have long used mood boards to set a direction before they start creating: the Remix guide from the University of Notre Dame describes them as arrangements of images, colours, fonts, textures, patterns and descriptive language that evoke a style or mood. A style board applies the same idea to you: what you wear, how you dress a room, the details that make your everyday aesthetic recognisable.
It can be digital or on paper, polished or deliberately rough. What matters is that it helps you see clearly, and that it can grow with you.
Step 1: Collect without judging
Start wide. Save anything that catches your eye: outfits, street-style photos, the corner of a café, a postcard from a trip, a book cover, a scrap of fabric. The Remix guide suggests gathering a large pool of images without limiting yourself at this stage, and keeping everything in one folder, with separate spaces for images, textures and notes.
Give yourself a week or two. Inspiration rarely arrives on schedule, and the most revealing images are often the ones you save without quite knowing why.
Step 2: Edit with intention
Now lay everything out and start removing. Keep the images that make you feel something, and let go of those you saved only because they were fashionable or because someone else loved them. Ask of each one: would I wear this, live with it, carry it with me? If the answer is no, it can go.
Aim for around fifteen to twenty images: enough to show variety, few enough to stay readable.
Step 3: Find the through-line
Look at what remains as a whole. What keeps coming back? Perhaps relaxed tailoring, soft knits, or crisp white shirts with faded denim. The through-line is the thread that connects your choices, and it is usually the most personal part of the board.
Try to name it in one sentence, such as “easy, coastal, unhurried” or “structured, with one playful detail”. If you can’t yet, that’s fine: the board will tell you over time.
Step 4: Build your palette
Colour is often the quickest way to make a board feel coherent. Pick the shades that appear most often in your images and narrow them down. Adobe’s guide to the colour wheel recommends a focused palette of three to five colours, with neutrals such as black, white or grey for balance. Colours that sit next to each other on the wheel (analogous colours) feel harmonious; colours directly opposite each other (complementary colours) create contrast and visual interest.
The same guide mentions the 60-30-10 rule used in interior design: 60% neutral, 30% secondary colour and 10% accent. Borrowed for a wardrobe, it might mean a base of grey and white, a secondary slate blue and one bright accent worn sparingly. Treat it as a starting point, not a law.
Step 5: Add textures
Texture turns a palette into something you can almost touch. Add close-ups of the materials you love, such as linen, wool, leather, silk, raw cotton, ceramic or wood, and notice how they change a colour: the same blue reads very differently in denim and in satin. The Remix guide recommends at least three textures on a board, a simple target that works well here too.
Step 6: Write your notes
Finally, add words. Remix suggests up to five words or short phrases that capture the feeling you’re after. On a style board they could be adjectives (“calm”, “curious”, “grounded”), a place that inspires you, or a reminder to yourself (“fewer, better pieces”). Notes are what make the board yours: they turn a collection of pictures into a point of view.
Your style board checklist
15–20 images, edited down from a larger collection
One sentence that names your through-line
A palette of 3–5 colours, including at least one neutral
At least three textures you love
Up to five words or short phrases
A title and a date, so you can see how your style evolves
From board to Blogness portfolio
On Blogness, your portfolio is a blank canvas for your story, and the evolution of your personal style is one of the things you can share there. A style board fits naturally. Here is a simple way to turn yours into a portfolio entry:
Give it a title that sounds like you, and add the season or year.
Choose a cover image: the one picture that sums up the board.
Write a short introduction, three or four sentences built around your through-line.
Show your palette and textures, with a line on why you chose them.
Use your own photos where you can, and only share images you have the right to use.
Come back to it. Add a new board each season and let your portfolio show how your style changes.
To give you an idea (this is an illustrative example, not a member’s board): an entry called “Autumn in slate” might pair grey wool, white cotton and a single deep-blue accent, introduced by one line about wanting a calmer, simpler wardrobe.
Your turn
What story does your style tell? Build your board, add it to your Blogness portfolio and share it with the community. We would love to see the colours, textures and words that make you, you.
Cover photo: Victor Volkov on Unsplash.
Sources
University of Notre Dame, Remix: Mood Board
Adobe UK: Colour wheel combinations
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