✦bidazzling

Case study — Personal

Konichiwa, a year of getting dressed

Personal project, fashion styling. A wardrobe treated like a design system. Ghibli men for the mood, Zara and local brands for the cart, one spreadsheet to make sure the cart closes.

Client
Personal
Year
2024
Role
Styling & wardrobe brief
Discipline
Styling, Editorial, Personal
Read
9 min read

Fashion Style & Guidline is a personal wardrobe brief I wrote for myself in 2024. It is a guideline in the truest sense: a document I open before I open a tab on the Zara app, so I stop buying the same black shirt for the fourth time and start buying the piece the wardrobe actually wants next.

Fashion Style and Guidline cover plate. An olive-khaki field with the words FASHION STYLE and GUIDLINE set in a tall, confident sans-serif, with KONICHIWA lettered small in the top right corner and CREATE BY BIANCA 2024 running along the left edge.

Fashion Style & Guidline · cover · 2024

“

I kept getting dressed in a rush and shopping in the same rush. The guide was the hand brake.

”
— Bianca Masrsha, Author of the brief, wearer of the outfits

The reference

The reference folder is not a mood board of menswear editorials. It is a folder of Ghibli men. The brief opens on this page because it is the honest answer to the question of where the wardrobe is aiming.

References page. A tall black headline reads References on the left. A paragraph underneath reads: Ghibli's male characters are a dream for women. In terms of appearance and character, they are men who are loving, brave, gentle, smart and responsible. Two numbered notes follow: 01, formal outfits are made as simple as possible for comfort while working all day and do not interfere with another people's views haha. 02, Casual outfits are made as casual as possible by always wearing basic t-shirts and outwear. To the right, a circular collage of eight Ghibli male characters in earthy colours.

References · Ghibli's male characters · brief authored 2024

The bet is that picking one reference family and sticking to it is worth more than a wider net. Ghibli men are loving, brave, gentle, smart, and responsible. Whether the wardrobe reaches that in person is a different question. At the very least the clothes stop disagreeing with the brief.

Two wardrobes, one person

The guide splits everything into two categories. The split is written on the edge of the divider pages, in vertical type, so the category is never ambiguous mid-scroll.

  • Formal covers work, fancy dinner, and meetings with clients. The rule: as simple as possible for all-day comfort, and never loud enough to interfere with someone else's view.
  • Casual covers nongkrong, traveling, and the casual date. The rule: basic tees and outwear, nothing that has to be dry-cleaned after sitting on the floor at a warung.

  1. 01/Silhouette

    Boxy top, straight bottom

    Every outfit repeats the same silhouette: a boxy shoulder on top, a straight leg underneath. The silhouette does not change between formal and casual. Only the weight and colour of the fabric changes.

  2. 02/Palette

    Earth, not brand

    Sage, olive, khaki, cream, chocolate, black, and one off-white. No logos. No house colours. If a piece comes in brand-coded colour, the item is skipped in favour of the plain one.

  3. 03/Layer logic

    Outwear does the talking

    The tee is almost always a plain crew. The shirt is almost always a plain button-up or a knit polo. The cardigan, the shacket, or the suede blouson is the one piece that is allowed to have a personality.

  4. 04/Shoe rules

    Two pairs, three jobs

    One pair of black Nappa Milano derbies covers formal and most of casual. One pair of Puma sneakers covers the days the derbies would be a lie. One pair of black buckle sandals covers traveling and the flat. Three pairs, every outfit in the guide accounted for.

  5. 05/Repeat

    Outfits, not items

    The guide is organised by outfits, not by pieces. Each plate is a complete fit, so the brief tells me what to wear, not what to own. The overlap between plates is intentional: the same trouser appears three times, because a trouser that only works once is not in the brief.

Formal

Formal is the wardrobe at work, at a fancy dinner, and in any meeting where someone else is paying for the coffee. The opener of this section is deliberately unglamorous: a crop of two men in olive and khaki suiting, with three small Ghibli stills pinned to the edge as a running reminder of the mood.

Formal outfits opener. Two cropped figures photographed from shoulder to thigh wearing olive and khaki suiting over plain tees, with the category label Formal outfits set in a large black sans-serif on the bottom left, and the subtitle WORK FANCY DINNER MEETINGS W CLIENTS running vertically along the left edge. Three small Ghibli stills are pinned to the bottom right as reference.

Formal outfits · work · fancy dinner · meetings with clients

The formal plates all share the same recipe: a relaxed trouser, a clean shirt or knit, and a single jacket or overshirt that carries the fit. The jackets are cropped boxy, not broken-shoulder tailoring, because the brief is a day, not a boardroom.

One of the formal plates. A wide sage-green relaxed trouser on the left, a plain chocolate-brown button-up shirt in the centre, a black and camel striped cardigan on the right, and a pair of black Nappa Milano derbies in the bottom right corner. Items are photographed flat on white.

Formal plate · sage trouser · chocolate shirt · striped cardigan · Nappa Milano derby

Casual

Casual is the wardrobe at nongkrong, on a trip, and on the kind of date where the restaurant does not own a reservation system. The opener is a chocolate suede blouson over a plain black tee, which is the whole brief for this category in one photograph.

Casual outfits opener. A cropped figure wearing a chocolate suede blouson over a plain black tee, with the category label Casual outfits set in a large black sans-serif on the bottom left, and the subtitle NONGKRONG TRAVELING CASUAL DATE running vertically along the left edge. Three small Ghibli stills pinned to the bottom right, a boy at a diner, a child eating, a figure holding a rose.

Casual outfits · nongkrong · traveling · casual date

The casual plates drop the button-up for the plain tee and trade the derby for the sneaker. Everything else holds. The overshirt stays. The boxy jacket stays. The proportions stay. Only the volume on the top half comes down a notch.

One of the casual plates. A cream corduroy overshirt on the left with two chest pockets, a plain black oversized tee in the middle, and a pair of black tailored shorts on the right. A black and cream Puma CA Pro sneaker sits in the bottom right corner. Items photographed flat on white.

Casual plate · cream corduroy overshirt · black tee · tailored short · Puma CA Pro

The budget, written down

The guide is not just outfits. It is also a spreadsheet. Every piece was linked to a shop, given a price, and added up before anything was bought. The hand-annotations on the budget page are the actual notes I wrote on the cart: brand names, store locations, colour choices.

Budget page for outfits. Screenshots of seven product listings on Shopee and Zara, each annotated by hand in blue marker with brand name, colour choice, and store location, for example BRODIS WHITE, VENGOZ KOREAN BLACK, LONG SLEEVE POLO, GREY AND BLACK, COSMIC, LINEL. Bottom right carries the handwritten total, sub total outfits seven million seven hundred thirty thousand one hundred thirty rupiah.

Budget · outfits sub-total · annotated from the cart

Rp 0.00m

Outfits sub-total

nine complete fits across two categories

Rp 0.00m

Footwear sub-total

Nappa Milano derby, buckle sandal, Puma CA Pro

Rp 0.00m

Total budget

the whole year, written down before the first cart

0

Pairs of shoes

that cover every outfit in the guide

Writing the budget before opening the cart was the point of the whole document. The nine-million figure is not small, but it is finite, and it is the reason the wardrobe did not quietly grow a tenth black shirt in the middle of the year.

Konichiwa, arigatou

The guide opens with Konichiwa on page one and closes with Arigatougazaimasu on page twenty-one. Both pages are the same olive-khaki field, same vertical byline, same arrow. The bookends are part of the brief: a wardrobe is a conversation with the year, and it is polite to start and end it.

Closer plate. The same olive-khaki field from the cover, with the single word ARIGATOUGAZAIMASU set in a tall white sans-serif across the lower half. The year 2024 and the byline CREATE BY BIANCA run along the left edge, matching the cover exactly.

Closer · arigatougazaimasu · the guide closes on the same field it opened on

Finish

The guide shipped as a twenty-one-page PDF. It was written for one person and used by one person, which is the only distribution number that matters for a document like this. The wardrobe it produced is still in rotation. The next edition is already half-written in a note on my phone.

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