SUMMARY: This article explores how your signature style naturally evolves throughout your life as you grow, mature, and integrate different aspects of your personality. Learn five legitimate reasons your authentic style should change, from personality development to visual culture shifts to lifestyle transitions, plus when your style doesn’t need to evolve.
Your signature style should grow with you, not stay frozen in time.
You finally figure out what feels authentic to you. What colors work, what silhouettes feel right. Then a few years later, something shifts. Not because you’re chasing trends, but because what looks current to your eye has changed. Or because you’ve grown internally and your external expression needs to catch up.
Most people think you find your signature style once and keep it forever, but actually style evolution is a sign of becoming more fully yourself.
The key is understanding when your style should evolve and when it shouldn’t.
In this article, I’m walking you through five legitimate reasons your signature style naturally changes throughout your life, plus the reasons you don’t need to change your style. Not every shift is authentic growth. Knowing the difference matters.
Understanding Natural Personality Development
Your personality develops in predictable patterns throughout your life, and these shifts affect your style preferences.
Your dominant function shows up in childhood. Your auxiliary function develops in your teens and twenties. Your tertiary function typically develops during your late twenties through forties. Your inferior function often becomes more prominent beginning in midlife.
These aren’t random changes. This is natural psychological development.
When I married my husband at 24, I had zero interest in gardening, canning, or hands-on grounded work. But after we had kids and I stayed home, I became fascinated with growing echinacea and making tinctures. Meal prepping. All the crunchy, grounded activities.
People around me misunderstood who I was. One friend told me I was very grounded. When I worked with color analyst Carla years later, she warned me about darker browns, saying they gave the impression of being more grounded than she perceived me to be. She was right.
I’m an ENFJ. My tertiary function is Extraverted Sensing, which allows you to be fully present and notice sensory details in real time. During that season, I was developing this part of myself through those grounded activities.
Then that intense focus shifted. I still appreciate sensory experiences, but I’m no longer driven to ground myself through those activities. I integrated what I needed and moved on.
Your style reflects where you are in your development. When you integrate a new aspect of your personality, your authentic style expression shifts to match.
If you want to understand which cognitive functions are in your stack and how they develop over your lifetime, I’ve created a free video masterclass called The Myers-Briggs Key to Signature Style. It explains the connection between your personality wiring and your authentic style expression.
Five Legitimate Reasons Your Signature Style Should Evolve
Not every style change is authentic, but these five reasons signal genuine evolution worth honoring.
When you grow and mature as a person
As you integrate different aspects of yourself and become more individuated, your style shifts to reflect who you’re becoming.
This is the foundation of all authentic style evolution.
You develop more confidence and want bolder colors. You integrate your analytical side and find yourself drawn to structured pieces. You become comfortable with your playful nature and want that reflected visually.
These shifts aren’t about trends or other people’s opinions. They’re about internal development showing up externally.
Recently in my small group, we were discussing spiritual growth. I realized something I’ve always known but never said out loud. I’ve felt invisible for most of my life. At the time, I was wearing orange pants. I wondered whether when I fully heal this feeling of invisibility, I might not feel as compelled to wear bright colors most of the time.
That’s a legitimate reason for style to evolve. Not because bright colors are wrong for me, but because my relationship to them might shift when my internal landscape changes. Right now, they serve a purpose. Later, they might not need to work so hard.
Pay attention to what’s changing inside you. Your style should evolve to match.
When you gain clarity about how you want to be seen
Sometimes you realize the way you’re presenting yourself doesn’t match who you actually are or how you want to show up.
This is about alignment. When you recognize that how you’re being perceived doesn’t match your authentic self, your signature style should evolve to close that gap.
This isn’t about fixing yourself to meet someone else’s standard. It’s about adjusting your external expression to accurately reflect your internal reality.
When what looks current changes
What appears fresh and current to your eye evolves over time. If your style never shifts with this broader visual culture, you start looking dated.
This isn’t about chasing trends. It’s about acknowledging that visual literacy evolves. A silhouette that looked contemporary ten years ago might read as costume now. Colors that felt modern shift. Proportions change.
Your signature style can remain rooted in your personality while adapting to what looks current. The core elements stay authentic to you. The expression updates so you don’t look stuck in a time capsule.
This is one reason to revisit your style every few years, not to reinvent yourself but to ensure your authentic expression still reads as intentional rather than outdated.
When you change your hair color
Anytime you significantly change your hair color, you need to revisit your palette and evolve your style accordingly.
Your hair color is part of your overall coloring. When it shifts, the colors that harmonize with you shift too. A blonde who goes brunette finds that some wardrobe colors no longer work as well. A woman who goes gray discovers that colors that were too harsh before now look sophisticated.
This isn’t about trends or reinventing yourself. It’s about maintaining harmony between your hair and your wardrobe.
Worth noting: revisit your color palette every five to ten years even without dramatic hair changes. Subtle shifts in coloring happen over time. (Did you know The Congruence Code comes with a digital seasonal energy color palette? I will help you identify your seasonal energy and then choose the palette for you that works best with your current coloring!)
When your lifestyle shifts significantly
Major life transitions create natural opportunities for your signature style to evolve.
Career changes where you’re stepping into more of your authentic self often require style evolution. Moving from corporate to entrepreneurship means you can finally dress like yourself. Stepping into leadership means your style should reflect that authority.
Empty nest is another transition. When your kids leave home, you might care less about others’ opinions because you’re not worried about embarrassing them. That freedom allows your authentic style to emerge more fully.
Retirement, relocation, health changes that affect mobility or practical needs. These are legitimate reasons for signature style to evolve. Not because you need a makeover, but because your actual life has changed.
These transitions are invitations to reconsider what authentic expression looks like in this chapter.
When Your Signature Style Doesn’t Need to Change
Knowing when not to evolve your style is just as important as knowing when you should.
Not because of trends
Fashion cycles and trend reports are not reasons to change your signature style. Your authentic style exists outside of what’s currently popular. If something trendy aligns with your signature style, fine. But chasing trends pulls you away from authentic expression.
Not because of body changes
If something is truly your authentic, personality-driven style, body changes shouldn’t prevent you from wearing it. They might change how you wear it, but not whether you can wear it.
Your signature style is rooted in your personality, your energy, your aesthetic sensibility. Those don’t change because your body does. Your authentic style adapts to your current body. It doesn’t disappear.
Not because of other people’s opinions
Other people’s preferences, judgments, or confusion about your style are not reasons to change it. Your signature style is about authentic self-expression, not people-pleasing.
Early in our marriage, someone made a comment that my husband and I didn’t look like we went together. It bothered me enough that I tried dressing more outdoorsy to match his ISTJ aesthetic. But that was never authentic to me. If I’d understood my personality and my signature style then, I could have shrugged off that comment instead of trying to change myself to fit someone else’s perception.
If someone thinks your style is too bold, too quirky, too anything, that’s information about them, not about you. Your signature style should evolve based on your internal development, not external pressure.
How to Know If a Style Shift Is Authentic
The difference between authentic evolution and random change comes down to internal alignment.
Does this shift feel like relief or like effort? Authentic evolution feels like coming home to yourself. Random changes driven by trends or insecurity feel like trying on someone else’s identity.
Is this change connected to something happening inside you? Real style evolution is tied to personal growth, life transitions, or increased self-knowledge. If you can’t identify an internal shift driving the external change, be cautious.
Does this align with your personality and energy? Your signature style should always be rooted in who you actually are. If a style shift feels dissonant with your natural way of being, it’s probably not authentic evolution.
Most people think you find your signature style once and keep it forever, but actually style evolution is a sign of becoming more fully yourself. The key is evolving in response to genuine internal development, not external pressure or arbitrary trends.
If you want to understand the connection between your personality and your authentic style expression, The Congruence Code is designed exactly for that. We start with personality profiling to discover how your mind is wired, then create your Seasonal Energy Palette based on that personality foundation. You’ll walk away with your Personality Style Blueprint and a palette that reflects your authentic energy.
If you just want the Personality Style Blueprint for your type, you can purchase that separately.