Mandy Lee's 75 Hard Style Challenge
So many people use the start of the new year to reinvent themselves, or at least to improve upon who they were the year prior. Some people go to the gym, commit to a diet, dedicate their free time to reading, others go on shopping sprees to find clothes that reflect the “new them” while spending lots of money on throw away pieces that don’t match their identity. To help with this dilemma, Mandy Lee (@oldloserinbrooklyn) created the 75 Hard Style Challenge. The name is a play on the 75 Hard Fitness Challenge, except the two-and-a-half-month-long assignment has nothing to do with working out, and everything to do with understanding your personal style.
Mandy Lee is a trend analyst and fashion writer, whose goal with creating content on TikTok and Instagram is to encourage sustainability and critical thought in the fashion sphere. Having launched the 75 Hard Style Challenge on January 2nd, the purpose of the challenge is “to help people get creative within their own wardrobe and experiment and just learn to appreciate what they already have,” says Lee in a recent interview.
The rules are simple: put together an outfit every day for 75 days, document it, and don’t buy anything new. Additionally, set intentions for how you would like to dress, rely on your own creativity rather than social media, and organize your wardrobe. There are optional prompts for those looking to push their imagination, but the initial rules are meant to help anyone stuck in a style rut.
Though she launched the style challenge at the beginning of 2024, Lee has used this method numerous times before to reset how she looks at her wardrobe. As someone who works in fashion, she finds herself impulse-buying garments that she doesn’t always need, overflowing the minimal storage in her 600 square foot New York apartment. She views this process as a form of self-care, saving her money and allowing her to learn about her clothes to improve how she views herself and her style.
“Personal style is not something you can pin on Pinterest. It’s not something you can buy, it’s something that you have to practice,” says Lee. That is why one of the rules of the challenge is to not use social media as outfit inspiration, it’s important to strengthen your natural creativity to come up with clothing combinations that best represent you as an individual. It’s okay to take inspiration from online if you truly feel stuck in the beginning, but creating outfits based on what you perceive as trendy versus what your brain comes up with in the moment takes away from the value in learning what you actually like to wear. Lee also mentions that outfits on social media are often created with search engine optimization in mind, which diminishes the originality of the look with the goal of the content being views and not intrigue.
Caption: One of Mandy Lee’s personal intentions with this challenge is to play with texture, which is what she did in her day two look.
More important than any other rule of the challenge is not to buy any new clothes during the 75 days. This won’t be easy for fashion lovers, but using only the clothes you already own will show you what styles you gravitate toward on a consistent basis. Lee has a couple of suggestions to help fill the void when you want to buy new clothes, that is to ask friends to borrow from their closets and to practice a “touch and feel” approach to shopping.
The first suggestion is rather obvious, if you need a specific piece to execute an outfit that you don’t own, ask a friend if you can borrow from them. This tactic allows you to try out the style without creating waste or spending money on something you may not use in the future. Second is practicing what Lee refers to as a “touch and feel” approach to shopping, which is like window shopping but letting yourself try things on to see how you like the look. Just because you see something you like doesn’t mean you have to own it right away.
By working with what you already own, this narrows the number of variables you have to sort through when you begin analyzing the data. In this instance data doesn’t refer to numbers and charts, but the images collected of every outfit put together over the course of the challenge. Each day you should take a photo of your completed outfit, a simple mirror picture will do, and create an album you can look back on to see what in your closet you wear most and how you like to style it. Re-wearing outfits is okay, casual outfits are also okay, just try to create outfits you feel good about regardless of current trends or other people’s opinions.
On the days you don’t feel like wearing anything but your pajamas, Lee urges that “even if it’s for 10 minutes, put together an outfit and go through that little creative process.” As the name of the challenge implies, it’s not going to be easy consistently to flexi your creative muscles, but if you embrace the work it will pay off in the end. You will be able to look back through the outfits you’ve put together and understand what you gravitate towards no matter what your mood is.
Caption: Mandy Lee’s day one outfit for her 75 Hard Style Challenge, consisting of a Sandy Liang dress she would normally save for special occasions that she made casual by layering simpler pieces over it.
If you’re looking to push yourself to dress more outside of the box, Lee included a list of optional prompts to help generate creativity. Some of the prompts include taking something formal and styling it for everyday use, dressing in the likeness of your favorite fictional character, and, Lee’s favorite, wearing something “out of style.” Since her job keeps her up- to-date on the latest fashion trends, Lee finds joy in dressing out of the ordinary, so the day she follows this prompt she will wear something to the effect of “mint green colored skinny jeans, peplum tops and galaxy print,” a clothing combination many of us would like to leave in 2013.
The end result of this challenge will look different for everybody, but after two-and- a-half month’s participants will have a better idea of their personal style, discover the gaps in their wardrobe, and have saved money on spur of the moment clothing purchases. This aligns with Lee’s goal as an influencer. She has no desire to encourage over-consumption and make commission off of her followers, instead she hopes “to influence ideas and critical thought and [make] people think about fashion in a different way.”
With nearly two million views on TikTok and more than 1,500 posts under #75hardstylechallenge on Instagram at the time of writing this, the challenge has reached people far beyond Lee’s primary followers. As the challenge is meant to be a helpful resource and not a stressful fashion show, anyone who is interested in diving deeper into their personal style is encouraged to give it a shot. Lee says, “I’ve seen young girls, working professionals, seniors, I’ve seen everyone tag me in their stuff. So, it has reached a crazy diverse demographic which I’m really excited about.”
For more information on how to execute the 75 Hard Style Challenge, follow Mandy Lee on TikTok and Instagram at @oldloserinbrooklyn. There she has posted a slideshow of the challenge rules and prompts to help you on your personal style journey, as well as her recent outfits with #75hardstylechallenge in the caption that leads to other participants outfit creations.
Mandy Lee’s day seven outfit where she pulled inspiration from her past self instead of social media.
Article by Danielle Tranter, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine
Tearsheets by Chenglin Qu, Graphic Design Intern, PhotoBook Magazine
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