Picture this: LaGuardia security, 5:47 AM. I'm standing there barefoot like an idiot, boots in one hand, trying not to drop my phone with the other. My hair's doing... something. And yet I'm still desperately attempting to channel some kind of "I fly private" energy. This ridiculous contradiction—being simultaneously at your most vulnerable and trying to look sophisticated—pretty much sums up what airport style actually means.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: You can Marie Kondo your closet into submission, install a custom California Closets system, and color-code everything by season, and still find yourself wearing the same five things on repeat while the rest of your wardrobe gathers dust. After working with clients to organize their wardrobes (and wrestling with my own), I've seen this pattern play out again and again—perfectly organized closets that look Pinterest-worthy but leave their owners uninspired and overwhelmed. The problem isn't organization. It's that most organizing systems optimize for storage when they should optimize for wearing. This disconnect led me to develop what I call the Visibility-First Method—a system that treats your closet less like a storage unit and more like a...
It's 8 PM, you're in a fitting room surrounded by a graveyard of "almost right" options, and your college roommate's garden wedding is tomorrow morning. Every dress feels either too formal or too red-carpet-y, and you're starting to wonder if you should just fake the flu. I see this scenario play out with my clients constantly. After years of styling people for weddings, I've started to think that getting dressed for a wedding isn't just about picking an outfit—it's about solving a complex equation with multiple variables. Or like solving one of those word problems from high school math, except instead of trains leaving stations, you're calculating heel height versus grass density. Once you figure out the formula though? Everything...
So here we are again. August. The stores are confused: wool coats hanging next to sundresses, boots cozying up to sandals like some kind of seasonal identity crisis. And honestly? We're all standing there wondering if buying a cashmere sweater when it's 90 degrees outside makes us prepared or just delusional about our closet space. Look, I've been watching this retail dance for years now, trying to decode pre-fall shopping. You know, that weird time when stores pretend it's October while we're still sweating through our t-shirts. I think I've finally figured it out.
You know that moment in every initial consultation? When someone's face just... shifts. Like they've suddenly realized their style struggle isn't about being bad at fashion. It's about growing faster than their closet can keep up with. They've changed, evolved, done the work—meanwhile their wardrobe's still trying to dress the person they were in 2019.
I've started calling it the "visual vocabulary gap." Here's the thing: imagine you're fluent in French, right? But you're stuck trying to explain quantum physics with phrases from a tourist guidebook. You've got all these complex ideas, this whole evolved sense of self—and your clothes are over here like "Où est la bibliothèque?" and "Un café, s'il vous plaît."
