ANYTHING BUT BEIGE: Episode 18: Finding Your Authentic Style (and Your Authentic Self!) with Jennifer Mielke

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How do you find your authentic self? 

Do you let your wardrobe or style define you or does your personality define your style? 

Listen to this podcast episode with Conservationista Jennifer Mielke.  

1:55 Jennifer’s story

20:32 talking about authenticity

30:13 when do you think it’s time to seek service of a stylist such as Jennifer

More Jennifer:

Website – https://www.conservationista.com/

IG  @conservationista

Style/Restyle – https://members.stylerestyle.com/

I’m Megan Brame, and this is anything but beige. Let’s go. 

My name is Jennifer and I love helping women feel super confident about the way that they are dressed. 

That was perfect. That was so good. 

Thanks. 

Okay guys, Megan here. Thank you so much for joining me. This is gonna be a really good talk today, so I’m really excited for you to hear it. I’m here with Jennifer Mielke , and Jennifer is a feminist founder and fearless pattern maker. As a personal style coach, she’s seen over and over how women benefit from the boost and confidence that comes with feeling great about the way they’re dressed. The way she’s just Jennifer believes every woman should have access to that feeling. Her one on one work focuses on helping women tap into their authentic style while examining the relationships to what they buy and what they wear and shifting them is needed. Additionally, Jennifer has launched style, slash restyle a community for women that bridges style, inspiration and affordable clothes with a focus on values and sustainability. And she is now accepting founding members. This Oh, that is such a good bio. Thank you for being here. 

I’m so happy to be here. I buy my favorite topic. 

This is such a cool topic. I am so thankful for this. So what? What’s your background? How did this all get started? This is such a cool particle that you’re in. 

Well I’ve had, like, these sort of parallel career paths. I went to New York, in college to be an actress. I like Thought I was gonna be on Broadway and then I started working in fashion as a day job, and I worked for this really amazing designer and I just like the bug of fashion and style in New York really bit me. I ended up in Miami, I opened a boutique at 23 I was carrying all these independent designers and, uh, did that for a few years. And then when I went back to New York, I didn’t wanna work in the normal fashion space and so I started working in holistic health. I became a yoga teacher and a life coach, and when I had my first kid at 33, I found it to be a really ungrounded experience. I had spent, like, 15 years developing who I was as a woman and an individual. And then I became a mom, and it was like all of that stuff I brought with me like That’s the woman who was becoming a mom. But it was like being a mom needing completely different things than I think I had prepared in my life. That’s far And I found it to be, like, really on mooring, and I sort of lost touch with my personal identity for a couple of years and I was coaching that time at that time, and I was like, really trying to dig into this space about identity and women’s role in the world, like right now. But I was feeling really unmoored. And so eventually I kept putting on a style office, something that was frivolous and that I was like, too busy to think about, you know, my body had obviously changed. I had gone through nine months of pregnancy and then nursing and then chasing a toddler around. And it just like the tiny wasted fifties dresses that I used to favor, just did not work for my new life and I didn’t know how this new me dressed even, and I like, sort of. It was like this, like an amplification of not knowing who I was. And so I started to realize. But I kept putting it off because I was like, It’s frivolous. It’s not important and then. I started noticing that I really was showing up more fully in the world when I felt great about the way that I looked in the way that I was dressed. And so I made a really conscious choice around the time that my first son was about a year and a half old to bring style back into my life and just find ways that I could do it more easily so that it fit into this new, crazy life of being a new mom and then I just like once I realized that that was this bridge between identity and confidence in my new self, you know, I was just like, oh, more women should be doing. Like, every woman should experience that feeling of feeling super confident because she feels great about the way that she’s dressed. 

That was something of a question. Like, how did you? clearly, there was a need for this in the marketplace. Right. But how did you realize that I have something that is going to change people? I mean, I know you said you were coaching already, but like, how did you decide to transition to this and just say, like, I have this problem? That is, I have the solution to so many people’s problems that is going to just blow up everything. How did you like, where did the conference come from? And how did you go about, like saying that to the world?

Well, to be honest with you, I really wasn’t confident about it. at all. Like I was confident that it could happen. I had experienced it, and I knew that style is something that’s a really fertile ground to, like, fake it till you make it. You might not have confidence, but if you can dress in a way, it can give you more confidence and then you can, like, build it like, really from the inside. Right, so I believe that very strongly, but I was really nervous about putting it out there. I remember. You know, like when I first I had a friend who really encouraged me to just make the offer and started reaching out to people in, like, one on one. You know, I really I’m not an influencer. I don’t have a big online presence. I really just started reaching out to the women in my world and talking to them about my experience. And you know, I offered a sort of compelling package that was a year long service. So I really got to know their style. We took care of really cleaning out the closet, getting them focused on building a wardrobe that they loved and then figuring out ways to make it easy to get dressed every day, right? Like we all get dressed every damn day, like, you know, we have to do it. So if you’re starting, if the energy that you’re bringing every day, the first thing is like I have to do this thing again and I hate it like who wants to start life that way? So when I started talking to people about it that way, just women were really responsive. You know, everybody wanted a solution to that problem, like How do you make it? So I don’t have to start my day that way. 

That’s brilliant. That’s absolutely brilliant and thanks, commendable. That’s so cool. That’s such a cool life and a cool business. I mean, I’m sure it has its ups and downs, but that’s you get to see the change in people you know, like not just like you know how people change when this once they’re confident. They’re just like everything just kind of moves 

Absolutely and it’s like it really brings a lot of joy. I think, to into life like that’s another thing when you’re when you get to interact with your clothes as a really means of self expression and you know, like how to tap into that joy and confidence Within this context, it’s like, you know, you get to be a painter without having to be a good painter. 

You get all the benefits without the and with, yes, one thing that you’re big champion of this authentic style So how do you recommend people like, How do you find your authentic style? How do you find that? 

Where I usually like to start with clients. , anytime I’m working with someone, like with my sort of concierge service where we work together for a year, we start with a closet clean out where we take everything, every single thing out of the closet. And we put it back in, like we look at each piece one of the time and figure out what their relationship is to that piece. And it’s interesting how many of us are holding things in our wardrobe that are. They don’t suit us. We don’t love it. Like, you know, as people know as soon as they look at it. They’re like, Oh, I hate this shirt like, Okay, great. Get it out of your claws, you know, or they’re like, Oh, I love this shirt. But I was in this horrible meeting where my boss was a big jerk to me and every time I look at it, I think of that right. Like we have our clothes to carry our emotional life, you know, and so the first thing that I really like to do is get all of the things that people know they don’t love out of their closet. And likewise, on the flip side, people usually know when they really love something. They look at it, they know how they wanna wear it. They know they feel great in it. Like it’s a tangible feeling for many people what they love, that’s already in their closet. so I start by getting people focused on that, and then we sort of build out from there, most people will also start to notice patterns like, I feel really great in these certain colors. Or I feel really great in loud, obnoxious prints or, you know, like when you get rid of the clutter, you could become more clear about what? What you love and the similarities between what you love and feel great in. So that’s usually where we start and then, you know, from there it’s just sort of an exploration, which is what’s nice about working with people over a long period of time is because we get to explore what comes up as they are wearing or not wearing things that they thought they loved or part of that service. It’s changed a little bit now with covid, but part of that service was I would put together a collection of secondhand pieces that I bought with specific force. Somebody and it will be 15 to 20 pieces, and I send them off a box like that four times a year. So we would often get into the distance between what you think you love and want to wear and what you actually feel when you put those things on. And sometimes there’s quite a distance. You sort of have this idea of what you think your perfect style is. But then when you actually start looking at the clothes that you wear and feel great in, it’s something completely different. 

That was what I was gonna ask you. How do you handle aspirational pieces or things that this is what these air, my weight loss pants or these are? My, you know, how do you handle that? 

That’s a great question, usually my stance on that is, if they’re truly aspirational in that you see it and you feel like yes, that’s something I can achieve and I’m looking forward, To. Then cool. Keep him around. I think what’s a lot more frequent is we see them and they become triggered for us to beat ourselves up. And so we see those pants and it’s not like, Oh, I can’t wait until when I fit in those pants. It’s like, What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I fit in those pants? Why can’t I lose these 10 pounds? And we, like, turn on the not enough nous and the critic and so If the latter is the relationship that you have with those things, usually I recommend people let them go, because if and when you get there, chances are good. You might feel differently about what you wanna be putting on your body at that point in time. 

Oh, that’s so interesting and so true. You’re so right. 

But for some people, you know, like I have dresses in my closet that don’t fit me anymore. But I have really positive emotional associations with you know, what they were from or where I got them or whatever. And, uh, you know, there’s a couple in there like that, but oftentimes, even I’ll keep or like, I have a ton of my grandma’s fifties dresses that are gorgeous, but just my ribcage changed when I have babies and my willingness to be uncomfortable change after having kids, and I’ll probably never really wear them again, But I still have them all, and they just don’t hang in my primary closet. I have a space for them in an external closet and, you know, I open it up and I love them and, you know, I admire them. And once in a while I put one on and I go, Oh, God, never again on. Then I hang it back up in that closet. Someday I’m and I have two boys, so I don’t know. Someday I’m gonna have to decide what happens to those dresses, but they’re still with me for now.

Let’s worry about now, right? Let’s worry. 

Exactly.  

So, I have two like that has to be an incredibly emotional time that people are going through. and I assume you kind of have to take a role as a therapist then, right? 

Totally, it’s really interesting. First of all, for most people, I’m just There is a mirror when we do closet clean outs and not even a mirror to say, like, does this look good or not? Sometimes we get into that, but there’s a lot of time just holding space for someone to express how they feel about the things in their closet. And there’s also a lot of giving permission. To let things go. You know, we have, I think, a tendency to either overvalue what we have or just hold old attachments or old stories about like, Well, this is perfectly good. Why I shouldn’t let it go. You know what? I should hold on to this because maybe someday I’m gonna wanna wear it. We’ll know if you’ve had it for three years and you haven’t really wanted to wear it. You probably won’t and let it sit. It’s interesting how many parallels there are to life, right? Like letting go of those things opens up space for other things to come that you do love more and that you are going to use more s. Oh, yes it’s funny when I was just coaching, I had a hard time getting women to like to commit time and money to the kind of really important conversations I wanted to have about womanhood and motherhood. And then because style and your closet is so like it’s a pain point you feel every day. People were much more willing to say, yes, let’s do this. And we still get into a lot of those topics that I really wanted to cover just in my coaching practice. So it’s been this funny bridge. 

That’s so interesting. 

How do you personally like it? How do you not take that in? How do you stop that energy from affecting you? Because I can imagine that all of these emotions people are doing, and if you are, they’re a soundboard like you have to take a lot of that. And how do you do it? Self care do you do to kind of get away from that here? Would you like to do it? 

I can answer the first part easily, and I think I have Ah, I feel very comfortable holding space for other people’s discomfort without feeling like I need to take that on myself. That’s I think I would probably credit that to like my yoga, teaching past and a lot of work and, like, non attachment and things like that. So it doesn’t usually bother me. I think sometimes it is hard to, you know when you’re a coach and you see your outside perspective so you can see where people are limiting themselves in a way that’s maybe not productive and so sometimes that can feel a little frustrating. You know, to be witness to that because I want, you know, like I just want women to have this joy in this freedom and expansiveness so when I see them sort of self limiting. Sometimes that’s hard but the reality is everybody is sort of doing the best with what they can and you can, there are ways to practice having more of what you do desire rather than pushing up against that block that’s keeping them from opening up, right? So I don’t think I guessed it. It allows me more space because I don’t feel like pushing up against that frustration is going to help them. 

That makes sense. 

So that’s that and self care. Honestly, I’m not, but I’m not. I’m more of a practitioner of like If you can ground yourself into beautiful experiences and joy in little teeny moments whenever possible, I’m more likely to do that than to do an actual sort of act of self care. You know, I rarely take any time off. I’m like, on all the time, all day long with my kids. And then I’m working half the night on my work, you know? So in a traditional way, like taking a bath, reading a book, getting a massage, sort of self care. I’m not great at that. That’s fun. But the alternative is I’m like, Gosh, I really love this cup of coffee. I’m drinking right now, or wow, The sky is so blue at the moment I started to buy.

That’s awesome.  

I love, and that’s so practical. And I think if I may like, that’s a really good way for your coaching to write. Like just take this confidence and start building on top of it, right? 

Exactly because I think we spend so much time sort of someday may be like when I get to this place. Then I’ll be allowed to experience that where, like, this is it. This second moment is where all we have to experience right now? So how life feels has a lot to do with how this moment feels, and then you’re just stacking up a collection of these moments. 

It’s beautiful. That’s should be exploited on something

Something right, eh? 

So let’s talk about what your recommendations are for people who are. Let’s talk about covid. Let’s talk about like the Covid from Just I feel it, Feel it. We’re all Liza. We’re all trying our best, but I think that fashion or style are just becoming secondary, which kind of makes sense, but also is a huge loss of opportunity for the self, right? 

I mean, it’s a question. I’ve really been struggling with it, especially right now. I’m like, in the midst of trying to launch this thing that’s like a community, all about style and values and sort of the balance of the two when people are not really thinking that much about style right now, so it’s a question. I’ve been asking myself a lot and frankly, my personal experience of it, you know, there’s a lot of people in my sort of in the fashion style world who have taken the stance that, like, you know, I’m going to still get up and get dressed every day, just like I would normally because I do it for me and it makes me feel great. And if that works for you, that’s awesome. Like Cool Do that. Uh, my experience has been more along the lines of, a lot of surrender and like, not actually carrying that much and I I don’t think it’s because I think my style is for me. But it is very directly about me in relation to the world outside of me. And I just don’t I’m not having those. I don’t have that exchange right now. You know, we have. We live with my mother in law who is high risk for a nber of reasons. And so we’ve been like, very much shut down since March. Like we’re really not going out and doing anything. And I’m not seeing anybody. And so, you know, for me, it’s been more about bridging comfort and the reality of my life right now, right? Like there’s this acceptance and a surrender that, uh, that I’m bringing to it. So some days, honestly, there’s like, weeks where were the same stretchy skirt and T shirt like in the Four Days row?  And then there’s some weeks where I feel like wearing dresses this week, and you know, I think it’s important to, like, just be okay with where you are, you know, and what’s happening. And that’s part of this idea of authentic style. Right? Is like I don’t have to be dressed up all the way with all my accessories and all my makeup in all my clothes, in order to be authentically me like No, my authentic experience for the last five months is I’m full time childcare home school warden fight breaker, upper lunch maker, you know, and all right, well, to authentically be in that moment. I need to be wearing things that are comfortable and easy and cool. You know so. So I guess it. It kind of feeds into that idea of authentic style. When I go back out in the world for sure, I’m gonna go back to, like, you know, the things that make me feel great to show up in the world.

That makes total sense and I love that, you know, the authentic style and authentic sell shifts, right? Like it? Absolutely. That’s what I love. I love it. Can you talk more just about that? Just how can people get comfortable with that? 

Sure, I think that probably you find that most when you’re able to surrender attachments and a lot of rules, right? Like there’s a lot of rules we carry about style. Either based on what we learned growing up or what people taught us about how bodies are enclosed or what? How we feel about our bodies that we then project on our perception of what? How close? Look at us. So I think the more that you can surrender these sorts of things when it comes to style, the more that you can, like, get quiet and listen to what it is that you actually want to be doing when it comes to style. And I know there’s sometimes I have clients who are like, You know, I just I don’t know what my I don’t have a signature style, I mean, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because my experience and perspective is like my style swings wildly. Some days. I do want something that’s like a very sort of fifties house mommy dress and Some days I want something that’s like, you know, Claire Underwood Underwood, you know, like there’s like it just depends. It depends on my mood. It depends on what I’m doing in the day. You know, some days I’ll go from like a meeting at my kids school toe like client meetings, and I just feel I can feel completely authentically dressed for either one of those. But when you put them together in the same day, sometimes one outfit feels completely inauthentic in one place or the other, you know? So it’s, I don’t know if I just answered that question or just totally answered it. My experience of it. I think it is like we shift right even how we show up, who I am when I’m a mother versus who I am. If I’m on a date with my husband versus who I am, when I go back to Ohio, where I grew up or who I am in L.A. vs how I show up in New York like we inherently shift, it’s all parts of us, right? But just some parts come to the front and some parts fade to the back. And I think that, you know, letting your style reflect the part that wants to come to the front is a really fun thing that we get to do because style isn’t fixed. 

Hey guys, Megan here, I would love to ask a favor of you. It it’s so helpful to have reviews on new podcasts as it really helps iTunes stitcher Spotify. All of those guys find out that you’re really enjoying it and that they should show it to new people. So if you wouldn’t mind just leaving a quick review about what you think about the podcast. I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much again. I’ll talk to you next week.

And I love that you let me mention Claire Underwood because I was very like That’s me. That’s who I’m going to dress like. And like I did it for, I think fuck like three hours or something. I can’t wear these kinds of girls I can’t like. Comfortable, he started wearing them. I don’t know. 

I started wearing clear topaz studs to be like I’m like, a little bit of a certain means at a certain age like Claire Underwood. But then it’s just like I forget to put them on you.

Right? Isn’t it so funny, though, like how quickly you’re like. But wait, this is actually not like there’s something that seems appealing about that. Like I had, I had a client who did all of the things. So when I have clients will, like, share a Pinterest board so they can send me like either items that they like or outfits that they like, And she would send me all of these things that were like, kind of sweet and quirky and like I’m trying to think of a character nobody’s coming to mind, but like, like like kind of anthropology, feeling stuff like Kimmy Schmidt. And so I would buy her. I would buy her stuff in that space and then she didn’t want to, like she didn’t like any of it. Nothing was working and finally, I just took her to a thrift store one day and we went together because we both live in L.A. and I started pulling things for her and all the stuff she loved was like totally edgy rock and roll. So it was like this company and it looked great on her and she felt so, like, empowered in it. And it was just this total disconnect, just like what you were saying, this idea of something about that character that she wanted to express. But in reality she felt much more powerful in a completely different look. It’s fascinating, I think, like that’s why I think it’s so interesting. So often fashion gets written off. Is this thing that’s really kind of like not worth our time and energy or, like, you know, especially moms are like, Oh, I don’t have time to think about it. It’s not important to think about, but it actually feels really deep to me. For in most people’s experience.

You talk more about that.

I mean, I think it goes back to some of the things that I’ve mentioned already where it’s just like, mhm we we wear our relationships to our body, you know, we wear what we believe about who we can be in the world, you know, or we hide behind our clothes, you know, I work clothes that were, like, three sizes too big all through high school because somewhere along the way I got the idea that I was too skinny and that the size that I actually wore was too small or vice versa. Like, I think this is why you’ll find secondhand Stores are full of things in size, extra small and small because they’re people buy them wanting to be that size, you know, so it’s just like it’s very deeply and personally connected to our identities, And, which is why I think it ended up being such a funny like side door into these really big conversations that I wanted to be having and it’s It can also be like light and playful, right? Like you might hate the shape of your body and have a really tough relationship with that. But through close, you can start to explore different ways of liking it more or different ways of accepting it more or you might, you know, like confidence. I just think it’s such a huge one. You might not be confident that you can really get this job. You might have terrible imposter syndrome about a job that you’re interviewing for. But if you can, if you can put on the cost of that person, you can feel into it in a way that I think is really powerful. And a lot of the coaching work that I did was like neuro linguistic programming kind of coaching work. So a lot of like imagining into the experience that you wanted to be having, and I think close, just offer us a very easy way to do that, you know, because they’re essentially a cost.

Right, that’s very poignant. And I think, uh, I want to say, like, simplistic, but I don’t mean that in a negative way, just more of a like, it doesn’t have to be a thing. 

Exactly and but unfortunately, we have this, like, very noisy, very conser focused industry out there That’s actually turning it into a thing to modify it so that they can sell you a solution or a proposed solution. It’s never really the solution, right, because it’s external. But the whole industry is basically centered around trying to sell you a solution to that thing that you’re trying to solve inside yourself. 

So it is super complicated. 

Exactly so it’s super complicated. 

What kind of work do you recommend people do to get started finding more confidence through style and fashion? And when do you recommend they come and seek you out? 

I mean, I think getting editing down your wardrobe, to something that is full of only things that you love is a really solid first step. Right, because if you go and you look in your closet and you hear Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, that’s a whole different experience. Right then going in your closet and saying like No, that’s too tight. That’s too small. I don’t like that bit. I don’t know what to do with that. That’s all, like nose and negativity. So that is like a baseline. The first thing I would recommend doing is, is just getting rid of the closet clutter and then I like to say, like another kind of quick and easy tool I give people a lot is when you notice that you feel really confident when in something that you’re wearing, just like take a mirror selfie and start a file on your phone so that you have a little alb of outfits you don’t have to remember. I’m a huge proponent of outfit repeating, like, once you find something that you know you feel great in, wear it, wear it, wear it, wear it on. But having a little alb to do that is a really handy little easy tool. It doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to buy anything. It’s literally just a visual cue and then, in terms of working with me, I mean we think it’s really just when people are ready. To, you know, explore this a little deeper and when they want a little support, my sort of traditional service What I was always offering was this big, long like year program that was very high touch, you know, people could text me their style like their outfit on any given day, and I kind of give them feedback and tell them how to adjust it and fix it, so that’s available. And I think, honestly, it’s it’s 9 95. So I think it’s a pretty reasonable price for 12 months worth of support, but I also know that it is. That’s not an easy nber for people. Just to throw out to the community that I’ve started. There’s there’s a sort of in between option where I do some personal styling. It’s more of like open office hours kind of thing where people can pop in and ask for style support. And I do some directing to help with shopping, Right, because we haven’t even talked about shopping.  

Let’s talk about shopping . 

So I stopped shopping retail 11 years ago now, So in 11 years, I’ve bought a very small handful of things firsthand. I buy everything second hand and I started doing that because I was, you know, having worked in the fashion industry and then having my own boutique working with independent designers, I really started to see this disconnect between the dollars and cents that we pay for the clothing that we buy and the cost to make that clothing And, you know, knowing, like, just like take it like what it takes to go from a seed in the ground, to grow cotton to millet, into a yard toe, nip that into fabric to cut. And so that into a shirt and then to ship it halfway around the world for that to show up in a store costing 1999, 1499. Like the disconnect of that for me was really glaring, and I had been shopping second hand for a long time anyway, because I like the vintage aesthetic. So I was always looking for that. But in 2009, I just did this challenge that was like, Don’t buy anything new for six months, and I started looking at what was available in the second hand market and I was blown away because the way that vertical retailing, or like retailers that are basically designing, producing and selling their own products, the way that that market works right now is you know, there’s something like 50 drops a year, 50 inventory drops per year. So almost every week, a store is getting a big shipment of new inventory. They sell it at the high price for a very short period of time. And then they slashed the price down to, you know, whatever the low low sale nbers. And then we conse this stuff because it was on sale and it was cheap like that. And this is how I grew up. Like I was telling someone earlier today, like in my family, growing up with my mom. You didn’t buy something because you loved it. You bought it because it was $60 originally. And you’re getting it for seven. You know so there’s this, like, massive over consption which is really problematic for a nber of reasons. But the end result of it is that the second hand market is flushed with practically unworn, really beautiful clothes. And so when I realized that was the case, then I really started thinking about, like, how can I get this confidence piece is really important to me, but so is the sustainability  and social value piece. How can I get more secondhand into the hands of more women so that they can feel really great about how they look? They can pretty likely access a higher quality of clothes than they might otherwise be able to afford. And, you know, it’s win win for the environment for their finances. And you know, for the women making it are close to hopefully in the long run, so I lost my train of thought. So that’s so so I don’t I don’t do retail. And I don’t even really like to walk into malls because I never feel good. Like it always feels like it triggers this desire to over conse something of being in a store like that. Trigger my not enoughness very powerful and I’m super practiced at it now, so I can, you know, walk into those spaces and not feel like I have to conse. But they’re incredibly effective at triggering you to conse things, whether you need them or not and so I’m trying to help more people opt out of that system. 

It’s so interesting. You mentioned malls because I haven’t thought about until you said it. But whenever I go into a mall, I just have anxiety come over me. 

Exactly. 

If I am going there toe like I don’t know. Last time was in a mall. I was returning stuff that my mom bought me for Christmas and I was just like I wasn’t even there to conse. But I still felt like I have to get the fuck out of here. This is just really too much. 

It’s so it’s like I contam jali sense it so I’d like to get women out of having to do that. So that’s like another piece of the puzzle, right? Because if you want to feel great about your style, if you wanna have a wardrobe that you really love Well, part of that is finding the pieces to buy that you will really love. Mike. The community that I’m building is a lot about how to do that in a way that doesn’t conflict with your values and doesn’t require a lot of cognitive dissidence about where things are coming from and what the true cost of them are.

What are your recommendations? You know, just talking about confidence. And what are your recommendations for people who are transitioning? Not like a transitioning genders or transitioning life. You know, any How do you I’m trying to get to, like, what are the small steps people can take to transition into the person that they feel that they are. But haven’t gotten there yet? 

Well I definitely advocate for things like looking inside to imagine how they think that person would dress and then test it out. You know, tried. That’s another great thing about secondhand. That I love is It’s not high commitment, you know, like you could go into a thrift store and spend 30 bucks, and if none of it works, then you just take it back. My grandma says you never really buy anything from a thrift store, you only rent. I think like there’s a lightness with that sort of attitude. Also, that’s really helpful,but I think it’s I think it’s experimentation and like being willing to try and really like taking some time in space to allow for stillness and quiet so that you can feel from within yourself how either what you want in terms of what you know you wear. What is that vision for you, of who you want to be and how that person dresses and then notice in your day to day life when you feel it and when you feel off of it. So it’s It’s kind of like a mindfulness practice. Really and you know, I guess it’s kind of funny. As someone who calls herself somewhat of a stylist to sort of be saying like, Don’t look for external, don’t look for someone else to tell you how to do it. Look within yourself like I’m more of I don’t I even hesitate to use the word. In fact, I call myself a sustainable style coach because I don’t like the idea of a stylist to me, feels like someone who’s going to come and say, This is what’s trendy and this is what you should buy, and this is what you should wear. And what I really prefer to do is help people develop a mindfulness around what they feel great in and what they want to wear and then figure out how to get more of that in their wardrobe or how to do more of it with the wardrobe that they already have. 

I think this is an excellent transition into a better style, better world. Can we talk about your new? 

Yes soI just launched this community, which I’m really excited about. It’s totally brand new. I’m, like, have only been welcoming people in for a few weeks and we’re going to do Ah, of course, for anybody who’s in either. I have two different paid options. One is a place where people pay a really low fee. It’s a couple dollars a month, and they collect, really great finds from all over the second hand market place online. I collect them there by size and by trend or by use. So, like, if you know you’re really into, like the seventies trend that’s happening right now, you can go and look for things that I found that are in that trend in your size. so it just kind of filters out. Part of the problem with shopping second hand is overwhelmed. It’s there’s just so many options that for a lot of people, especially if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, it can feel like it defeats you before you begin. 

You just shut down. 

Exactly but I have a superpower for treasure hunting, and that’s like one thing that I’m really good at is finding the gems. And so I’ve created this space where I just kind of collect them so people don’t have to go look at 10,000 Search query results on PoshMark They can just come and say, like, Oh, what’s Jen found in this trend that I like recently so That’s one of the paid sections And then the other paid option is a is what I was talking about before where it’s like some personal styling in a in a office hours kind of setting, along with some personal shopping and for everybody who’s in either one of those groups were doing this course. That’s basically about aligning your wardrobe with your social values and finding that tapping into that authentic style and building, building what you have in a way that you can on any given day, like know that you can put together an outfit that you’re gonna love and feel great in. And we’re going to do it and you know it’s over the course of four weeks, So we’ll tackle, you know one facet of that process each week, in a little bit of depth, but it’s it’s light touch, you know, it’s not gonna be like four weeks of grueling work. It’s four weeks of mindfulness and thought provoking production and, you know, closet clutter clearing and some guidance around that, and then some support for building some. I’m a big fan of outfit templates, so, like you can have  when I tapped back into my style is a mom. I needed it to be efficient, and I realized, like, Oh, I love a statement blouse with a pair of high waisted skinny jeans, you know, and so them Now I know anytime I buy a statement blouse, I have, you know, a few pairs of jeans I love. I have an outfit on any day of the week that is easy to put on as a T shirt and jeans, but it looks like I feel better in it. I feel like I’m showing up in the world confident in it. So we’ll talk about figuring out what some outfit templates are for you and how to use what you already have. And then how to use that concept of templates to inform your purchases so that you make sure that once you clear the clutter out of your closet that it’s not coming back in because you don’t know what to buy. 

Makes sense, Where can people find out more about that? 

So The group is members.stylerestyle.com and it will all be available. All the information about the course will be available there. 

Perfect and how can people get in touch with you if they have more questions? 

I’m on instagram. My handle is conservation East stuff. So, like conservation and fashion East put together and so there is a really great way or my website is conservationista.com and that’s where all of the information about my styling services are. So there’s a contact me button there, too. 

I love a good portmanteau.Well done, 

We’re big into those in our family eyes. 

Is There. Anything else you want to cover before we go that we haven’t talked about yet? 

No. I mean, I think we’ve covered a lot of the space. I mean, the biggest thing is just like, have fun, you know, have fun. What? Getting dressed should be a joy. Or it should be like whatever a T shirt and yoga pants. Who cares like it’s not that big of a deal. It’s like this weird duality, right? Like it does. It’s not that big of a deal, but it has the potential to be, like, really fulfilling and really powerful. Let it be. Just let it be. Let it be. 

I love the perfect ending. Thank you, Jennifer. 

Thanks so much. It’s been lovely chatting with you.