What is dopamine dressing?
Dopamine is also known as the “feel good hormone”. It’s called the feel-good hormone because it is released in the body when we do something pleasurable, and it also gives us a feeling of pleasure. Research shows that meditating, petting your dog, listening to your favourite song releases dopamine in your body.
Dopamine dressing was developed to improve your mood. We activate the release of dopamine by wearing our favourite clothes, wearing a colour, a texture or a style. The term dopamine dressing was coined by Dawnn Karen, a fashion psychologist.
She was dubbed “The Dress Doctor” by The New York Times for her book Dress Your Best Life, about optimising our mood through dress. Initially, she used the term mood-enhancing clothing, then replaced it with the word dopamine boost. This term quickly caught on.
What should be noted about dopamine dressing is that happiness is a very subjective thing. There are meanings of colours that are universal. For example, blue can evoke a sense of calm, red a sense of excitement. However, they are not as embedded as one might think at first hearing.
Happiness is much more complex and intricate to be reduced to colours. The cultural interpretation of colours affects the feelings that arise when wearing them. In Western cultures white is associated with purity, in Eastern cultures with death and mourning.
What does dopamine dressing mean?
The trends for 2022 include dopamine dressing. By the term dopamine dressing, we mean that when we choose our clothes, we expect what we wear to improve our mood. Colour, style and texture can all be a cause of mood enhancement.
However, most of the time they are associated with memories and those psychological associations trigger our mood enhancement. In relation to dressing, the release of dopamine can also be facilitated by stepping out of our comfort zone.
The link between our clothes and our state of mind is a prominent focus of attention these days. In 2022 and the years to come, dopamine dressing is a popular trend, by which we mean a way of dressing that brings pleasure and improves our mood.
How can you use dopamine dressing for good effects?
According to researchers, the way we dress can affect our mood and performance. The method is complex. It’s all about being able to wear clothes that make you feel good.
If we can make it a reality to dress in clothes that make us feel positive emotions when we look at ourselves, we are much less likely to think negatively throughout the day and feel less need to compare ourselves to others.
Dopamine dressing is all about self-perception. If we can choose clothes that we feel good in, that we look forward to wearing, it can be a boost to feeling better about ourselves. And affirmation from the outside world, our friends or colleagues, can reinforce the process.
Choosing the elements
There are many of us who have fallen into the mistake of impulse buying, and then that piece ends up in a wardrobe full items we don’t really like. We now need to go through each item one by one and keep a diary in order to pinpoint our wardrobe.
Let’s think about how we felt when we wore it, what experiences and memories do we have that piece, how does it make us feel when we put it on? What feedback did we get when we wore it? Our diary will be a very important source of knowledge if it is done properly and thoroughly.
The use of colour
Everyone has a favourite colour. Year after year there are colours that dominate fashion, but this is not about the fashion industry, it’s about you. It’s possible that colour psychology defines pink as relaxing, but it’s also possible that you find it repulsive. Now let’s find your own colour. What is it that attracts you? What are the colours that make you feel good? When you have it, compare it with your diary above and see how dominant it is in your wardrobe?
Texture
The feel of a garment has a special feeling. Silk or suede tracksuit bottoms feel good on their own. Everyone has their own experiences and expectations of the texture of a garment. You probably have memories of wearing a dress you liked, because of the material or the fit.
Now you need to analyse this. You need to note in your diary, alongside the colours, the texture and also compare it with the percentage of your existing wardrobe that meets your needs, now just in this respect.
Fashion accessories
Our look is not just about clothes. Fashion accessories such as a bag, a hat or a cap or a scarf or different jewellery can also make a difference. There are two forces within each of us that are important to identify.
The desire to fit into society and the desire to be recognised by society as an individual. These two can be in conflict and in balance. The key is to be aware of both.
Let’s analyse it in our diary and also determine how, with what accessories, we can express these desires and bring them into balance.
Our own style
Dressing should be fun and joyful. It’s best if you love the pieces you wear. It’s perfectly natural to look for joy and happiness in your dressing.
You now have quite the arsenal of weapons to achieve dopamine dressing! In the steps above, you’ve explored how different colours and textures would affect your mood. You’ve analysed how well your current wardrobe matches your true expectations.
The time has come to put the knowledge you have gained into practice, but to make sure you succeed, there are two important things to consider.
What do you associate with confidence?
Confidence is also a concept that you won’t find on magazine covers. Obviously, confidence is quite different from a lawyer’s wife than for a young girl who wants to be more confident during a weekend party.
You need to find out what confidence means to you. Once you’ve articulated it, the next step is to define what you personally associate with confidence and joy in wearing it.
Again, this will come from an infinite range of possibilities, according to your own individual vision. You could imagine a huge coat, but you could also imagine a fitted dress or even the colour purple? You have to answer these questions for yourself.
If you’re looking to improve your own mood through your own wardrobe, then there’s nothing left to do but find the images that wearing them yourself will bring you the results you want. After following the steps above, you may have already had images of some of the garments and accessories that you want to own in the future.
Be sure to also take a look at what clothes and fashion accessories you associate with confidence and joy! Get them and wear them.
Step out of your comfort zone
It’s no coincidence at all that dopamine dressing has become a trend this year. Freedom has become an extremely important value in recent years, when a pandemic has brought our previously familiar everyday life to a standstill. Wearing the pieces we really love when we dress can be a good mood booster in itself.
The above steps will really benefit you if you can identify the processes and elements that are driven by nothing more than habit. We all have things in life that we dressed it only out of habit.
Stepping out of your familiar outfit can in itself improve our mood, reduce stress and help us see the world in a different light. If you found it valuable and don’t want to miss the next article, subscribe to our Google News channel and Like our Facebook page.