The fashion influencer shares personal style tips, from building a foundational wardrobe to using accessories and trusting your instincts
Credit: Courtesy Carla Rockmore
NEED TO KNOW
- Carla Rockmore helps women of all ages discover their personal style through trial and error
- She encourages starting with wardrobe basics and using accessories to add personality and creativity
- Rockmore says her content resonates across generations, bringing families together to explore fashion and self-expression
Carla Rockmore wants to help women find their personal style, no matter their age.
The influencer and fashion designer, 58, has been helping women of every generation learn how to build a closet that truly resonates with them and how to put all the pieces together.
Rockmore tells PEOPLE that one of the biggest tenets she believes is that "you're not born with personal style," but rather it's something that "needs to develop with your character and with your personality."
"I think it's all trial and error. I think as you age, there's no way anybody on this planet ever looks back at every photo that they see of themselves 10 years ago and doesn't think, 'What was I wearing?'" she says. "But it's also not that serious. I never considered fashion to be something I absolutely had to get right, and it allowed me the room to play, make mistakes, and slowly come into my own."
While the clothes in her closet have changed over the decades, she notes that "the DNA of personal style doesn't really evolve."
Credit: Stewart Cohen/Courtesy Carla Rockmore
Rockmore equates finding personal style to letting a good soup simmer.
"I would tell you first not to rush it, not to feel like you have to define it today, because it will evolve as everything else in your life," she shares. "I would probably say listen to your gut first and foremost and build those little foundational pieces that will always serve you."
"If you have a little bit of leeway to play around in your day and your weekends, I would suggest purchasing the items that make your heart sing first and then building the basics around those," Rockmore adds.
Rockmore loves to show off her own closet, full of vibrant colors, interesting pieces, and lots of accessories, to her combined 2 million online followers.
Credit: Cullen Blanchfield
For those looking to define their personal style, she says to start by going back to the basics and figuring out what "feels good when you put it on."
"That's a cornerstone of one of your building blocks," she says. "We should have our building blocks, and everybody has different ones, but certain silhouettes and certain styles, I permit you to buy in the same fabrication, color, and permutation in a million different colors and styles. That's going to start to develop your sense of your foundational wardrobe."
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As someone who works in the industry, fashion can feel like an "all-encompassing thing," but she knows that's not the reality for most women — especially as they get older.
"But for somebody who has a different career or different interests, it's not always going to be top of mind. In that respect, if you feel you've lost your way, go back to basics first," Rockmore shares. "The stuff that you know looks right on you, start with that as your canvas. So, the pair of pants that you've always loved, put them back on. The little T-shirt you've always loved, put it back on, but then play with accessories 'cause accessories are like the paint, they're the color to your canvas, which is the clothing."
Credit: Courtesy Carla Rockmore
What has been the most surprising and most uplifting aspect of her content is that she feels she is speaking to and teaching multiple generations within the same "family."
"I have different generations that enjoy the work for different reasons, but they're sitting down to watch it together," she shares. "I have so many DMs where someone says, 'I just turned my mom onto you, and now we watch you together,' or, 'I sent this to my daughter, and we talk about it, and we learn something from this piece.' "
"I'm bolstered by that," she adds. "It gives me more energy to do more because I'm speaking to my own age group as a compadre, but speaking to younger people who also have more angst and anxiety in the world today. If I could just help a little bit with some levity and education, or a tool or a trick they might take into their own world, I'm good. That's good for me."
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