"San Francisco has no style." Ask anyone. It's all over X. It's the first thing you hear when you tell someone in NYC that you live in SF. Tech t-shirts, Patagonia vests, the same gray hoodie on every founder from here to South Park. It's the city where Mark Zuckerberg brags about owning five identical outfits so he can "focus on more important decisions."
Counterintuitively... It's because SF has no style that I fell in love with a style of my own.
I was recently in Paris. Paris has style. There's a cohesive Parisian aesthetic. You can spot it immediately. It's the same with New York, London, Berlin, etc. In those cities, style is about fitting in. You find your peer group, you match their vibe, you blend. Your clothes become a way to belong.
Two words I'll use in this post: fashion and style. These are two unique concepts, not to be confused.
Style - Expressing yourself through clothing, regardless of price or prestige
Fashion - relating to designer labels, trends and the fashion industry
"SF doesn't have style."
A walk through the neighborhoods of SF and you're bound to see a:
- Woman wearing a national parks hoodie and sweatpants
- Man wearing slacks, blue button up and Patagonia vest
- Marina girlie dawning a Lululemon athleisure fit
- Tech bro with a MongoDB teeshirt, blue jeans and ratty sneakers
There are few peer groups I found to be worth fitting into, style-wise. No template to follow. The default aesthetic otherwise is aggressively uninspired. If you care about how you present yourself, you're kind of on your own.
At first, that felt like a loss. Everyone around me was dressing like they'd given up.
Over time, I wanted more. I wanted to look good. How do I do this? When there's no template worth following... you have to build from scratch. You can't blend in. This inability to conform became a forcing function.
The search for my own look
I started thrifting. Digging through racks of stuff I didn't want until I found that one piece that felt right. Learning what worked on me and what didn't. Figuring out why some outfits made me feel confident and others fell flat. Less attention on trends or brands, more on discovering what actually represented me.
Over years of gradual improvement, small change at a time, I built a cohesive aesthetic that truly defines who I am. From first glance, any passerby has somewhat of an understanding of who I am. I like it. People who don't appreciate my style are less likely to approach me. People who like how I express myself are more likely to say hi!
↑ confidence in expression
↑ affirmation in identity
↑ unique personal brand
↓ energy spent on incompatible people
Eventually I got to a place where I was very happy.
"So what? I don't care about style"
We've all felt that feeling when you get a new shirt and it fits just right. You look good, you feel good, you've got a little extra pep in your step. Maybe someone complimented you! It's great. And then after a few wears, that feeling fades.
Finding your style is chasing that feeling forever. Why did that shirt work? What made it fit? How do I do more of that? Recursively loop until next thing you know your closet is full of your own unique collection.
But in my experience, in the process of fiinding my style, I grew so much as an unintended consequence.
Finding my own style taught me to form my own opinions. When you can't look to a peer group for what to wear, you stop looking to them for what to think. You start building from first principles. What do I actually like? What do I actually believe? What matters to me?
SF's lack of fashion culture accidentally created the conditions for real self-understanding. The city that doesn't care about style forced me to care deeply about my own.
In turn, having such a strong sense of self has tremendously benefited my life. Decisions are easier- they either align with my identity or they don't. I've found that oftentimes people are very attracted to the confidence that comes with strong identity. It becomes easier to lead, easier to be remembered, easier to exist.
I am no special case
I'm not alone in this journey. In the above list of San Francisco creatures, what I left out are the people who experienced similar stories of curating their own look. People who were otherwise upset with the San Francisco uniform and explored their own style, unbounded. In your same walk around San Francisco, you'll also find:
- Goth girls in Golden Gate Park
- Men in leather on Folsom Street
- People in drag throughout the Castro
- Faux fur coats on Ocean Beach
Perhaps what's special about San Francisco is that...