My Fashion Birth Chart
The Sun, Moon, and Rising of my personal style.
If we are talking actual birth charts, I’m an Aries sun, Gemini moon, and Sagittarius rising. I’ve been going through a phase where I keep spending $30+ dollars on random tarot readings and psychic consultations. If I’m being honest, I mostly see these as fun exercises in self reflection and tools to help me feel a bit more agency regarding the world around me. I’m not so sure that the position of Venus on the night I was born has the ultimate say on my role in my relationships. But I think the more you buy into this idea the truer it becomes.
All of this is to say, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my zodiac lately, and I had this idea that if you can taxonomize a person’s personality in terms of their birth chart, why can’t you think about other elements of their self expression in this way.
Enter, my fashion birth chart. A Sun, Moon, and Rising of my personal style.
Many people on the internet will tell you to boil down your personal style into three words. Or to build a capsule wardrobe where everything in your closet can be styled with everything else. And if these methods work for you that’s great, but I personally find them incredibly boring.
I would be lucky if I could boil my personal style down into 300 words, not that I even want to do that. And though I can certainly be daring with my mixing of colors and prints, I still own pieces that I would never put together, even on my most experimental day.
In the same way a person’s birth chart pulls from the constellations, the planets, the individual stars, moons, asteroids, and everything else out there in the void, I view my personal style as a grab bag of all the things I like and find fun. Long story short, here are three women in the most prominent positions of my grab bag that I view as my Sun, Moon, and Rising of style inspirations. My Big Three as the astrologers say.
Sun in Emili Sindlev
The Sun sign is the first thought of and often conceived as the most important position on a person’s chart. When people know one thing about their zodiac this is the part they know. With that logic in mind, Emili Sindlev is definitely my sun sign when it comes to style inspiration. Whenever I’m asked to share my style icon for some Q&A or fun fact purpose, she is the answer I give.
Emili Sindlev is a Danish stylist and creative who I have kept track of on Instagram for years. Her style is bright, fun, and colorful. Neon orange pairs well with kelly green, and zebra print shoes look best with hot pink. Emili also isnt a stranger to mixing prints or textures, something I love to do in my outfits as well. She always has huge, beachy blond hair and a perfect effortless glam. Most notable to me, Emili smiles in most of her pictures, which I just honestly find a lot more exciting than chronic selfie face or deadpan stares.
Emili’s fashion persona also aligns well with my actual sun sign: Aries. The first sign in the Zodiac, Aries are known to be bold, forceful, and a bit polarizing. Mixing prints and bright colors, wearing unexpected flip flops, and cheesing in all your pictures are very Aries things to do.
Mostly, I think Emili Sindlev’s style really resonates with me because of how playful it is in the truest sense of the word. Her outfits channel an energetic spirit in a way that is really fun to look at. When I get dressed each day, being fun to look at is my baseline goal.
Moon in Elle Fanning
“The sign position of the Moon reveals much about our habits, reactions, and instincts. It shows how we express, and deal with, our emotions.”
The moon sign is a more internal expression, and my moon sign (Gemini) in particular is one that is known for being a bit inconsistent in mood. Elle Fanning is my favorite girl-who-can-do-both who occupies two ends of a spectrum I often find myself on. Elle can sometimes be a frilly, girly, fairy princess, and other times she is in tailored classics with a grunge twist.
One day, Elle may be doing press in a lacey baby blue set with soft waves and glowy makeup. The next day she will be taking a mirror selfie in a black blazer, dress pants, a messy bun, and smudged eye makeup. Elle is my style moon sign because she represents my inner desire to occupy a bunch of different aesthetics while still remaining consistently myself.
Though on the surface this spectrum may seem extremely dichotomous, you still see a consistent image of who Elle is through the clothes. No matter what she is wearing, it looks like she was born to wear it. Elle is also notoriously fair skinned and this is a trait many people would choose to mask or fake tan away. Instead, Elle breaks literally all the rules for pale-person-fashion. It’s like she looked at a list of colors that will “wash her out” and made it her personal color palette. This only adds to her fairy princess mystique, and operates as a through line from gowns to suits.
Ascendant in Chloë Sevigny
“Your Rising Sign represents the microcosm of your entire life experience, including the themes, cycles, and patterns that will show up in your life over and over again.”
A person’s rising sign (also called the ascendant) is often watered down to the idea of the way they express themselves socially and on the surface. And though your ascendant holds weight in this area, that does a bit of a disservice to how important this sign is internally. Your ascendant is like a compass by which you navigate your experiences, a sort of core identity if you will.
The Queen of New York City Summer, Chloë Sevigny is my style rising. Growing up in New Jersey, and now living in Chloë’s neighborhood (no really I saw her on the street last week), the New York fashion scene has been my most constant inspiration my whole life. Being a Gossip Girl fanatic in middle school, watching my mom record Sex and the City every week, and putting on my best outfit to shop in lower Manhattan when I was in high school were all foundational elements of my upbringing.
Chloë’s mixing and matching of genres within a singular outfit is the quintessential New York look, making her my fashion compass as well. Making athletic shorts work with ballet flats, and blouses work with sweatpants is not a feat just anyone can accomplish.
I could probably build a full birth chart of fashion icons given more time, but I think giving an outline of my “Big Three” does plenty to describe my personal style. And besides, I don’t really know what having my Pluto in Sagittarius in my 12th House really means. Let me know if you do though. And check out my Pinterest board for this article for more inspiration.