Hello & Welcome back to “Where Feng Shui Meets Fashion”! Podcast Episode 6. A place for Home & Wardrobe Inspiration. My name is Laura and I’m a certified Feng Shui Practitioner, Curator and Stylist for you and your Space. If this was a TV show it would be a cross between the Zen of Marie Kondo and the Chic of Rachel Zoe. This hybrid Podcast & Newsletter originates on Substack where you can follow and subscribe for all the visuals, text and Video. My stories are told in part through pictures and visuals in the body of my newsletters here on Substack. So if you’re listening on Spotify or ITunes, subscribe for free on Substack. For all my other content and services check out my Link-tree.
Who are you? The answers could be in your closet! Is Your Wardrobe Giving Main Character Energy? Today we are talking about Closet Feng Shui as a meditation on who we have been and who we are becoming. Are you showing up as a leading lady or background player? Clothes can help us be seen or they can help us hide and blend in.
From a Feng Shui perspective, Feng Shuing one’s closet is as important as any other room! One of the areas folks seem to struggle with most is decluttering their closets. Part of this can stem from an energetic attachment to who they have been even when that part of themselves is no longer serving them. Our clothes and closets depict how we present ourselves to the world. All of our armor is there, like protective gear. Also our personality and the “characters” we’re playing live inside our closets via our costumes and wardrobe. I want to help people learn about themselves in a deeper way through their clothes and uncover new aspects of themselves that are ready to be revealed and experienced. This can be a freeing and cathartic experience! I can definitely attest to that through my own fashion journey. Let’s make dressing a therapeutic and empowering practice. These sentiments are why I became fixated on the niche of Feng Shui that applies to dressing and embarked on my Fashion Feng Shui ®️ training & Apprenticeship. My Apprenticeship is now nearing its completion in August and I’m gearing up for a Fall Launch in September of my Closet Feng Shui Services! It’s the perfect timing for Closet Clearing and preparing for the new season.
I want to give as much importance to dressing as I do decorating and translate in energetic terms how it’s all connected! I have this theory that you can take a woman who feels plain and transform her into a great beauty through impeccable style and grooming. Some call it glamour magic. By the same token you can take an objectively beautiful woman and minimize her looks with poor grooming and drab ill fitting clothes. Think Hollywood…. They do this all the time! They take great beauties and have them play a character who is supposed to be unattractive and they dull hear beauty with drab unflattering costuming, hair and makeup for the role. We let the clothes inform us of a characters role. Is she a leading lady or an extra? It’s all done through the illusion of makeup and wardrobe. What if you were the one inadvertently painting yourself into a plain Jane because you didn’t feel good inside? You couldn’t see the best version of yourself. Sometimes we need a fresh set of eyes to help us see our potential. That’s the role I will be playing, where I see your highest potential through my Feng Shui eyes.
The analogy I just made about wardrobe can also be true of physical spaces! You could be living in the most expensive zip-code and in a mansion filled with clutter, filth and chaos. Folks could enter such a home and feel disgust and discomfort. You might as well live on the streets in a tent if this is how you’re going to treat your sacred space. By the same token, you could have a modest home that is so beautifully arranged, maintained and nurtured, that people are instantly inspired and welcomed. Between these two options I would hands down choose the latter. In this case, it truly is what’s inside and how well it’s expressed that matters. When it comes to dressing, it’s about revealing what’s inside through our clothes. Using it as a means to communicate a visual story.
People can express how they feel about themselves through their wardrobe and even how they feel about you. Did, your date go to the trouble of properly grooming? Or do they look like they just rolled out of bed? We are forever communicating with nonverbal cues.
CLOSET AUDITS
What’s in your closet? Could it use a pruning? For me personally closet auditing is a continuous process of editing and purging. I’m in a rapid state of change so my wardrobe has been in a state of going from caterpillar to butterfly! I have a new rule that before I add anything new to my wardrobe, I must first subtract something.
Mari Kondo
I love recommending the Konmari Method originated by Mari Kondo and spelled out in her bestselling book called THE LIFE CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP. Her organizational shows on Netflix really captured people’s attention and popularized decluttering as a practice. She provided a system for home and wardrobe organization.
The Home Edit
Then came Clea Shearer & Joanna Teplin’s Netflix series THE HOME EDIT and their corresponding bestselling book of the same name.
Where all these organizational systems and tools leave off, is truly where I come in. Yes, of course I can help with the tedium of closet editing, but where I really shine due to my Feng Shui background styling Apprenticeship, is in the curation and reinvention of your current and evolving wardrobe from an Energetic and Archetypal perspective. Applying a system that accounts for your personality, goals, lifestyle, color and body type to create a fashion formula and portfolio for you.
As we enter new chapters and seasons in our lives and start playing new roles, our clothes have to change along with us. Our old costumes may no longer suit us and we need to make room for the new. We may have changed size or simply aged out of certain clothes. Or our tastes have gone through a metamorphosis. More often than not, it’s lifestyle and career pivots that create the necessity for a costume change!
The Purge
To make the most of your closet edits, you can donate, trade or sell your purged clothes! You can go to your local thrift stores or donate to a charity like Goodwill. One man’s garbage is another man’s gold. If you want to sell for profit, Poshmark is a great option along with Etsy, ThredUp, Mercari, Wish and TheRealReal to name a few. Whether it’s higher or lower end clothing, there’s a convenient option in the App Store for these transactions. You can take your profits and invest them back into your new wardrobe if you like. Buying and selling repurposed clothes is also a more “green” and budget friendly way for shopping and sourcing for wardrobe items. You might even find it more effective and convenient for finding very specific items. You could spend all day at a mall and never find the exact thing you’re looking for. Or you could spend a half hour online using specific color, style, size, and brand prompts to find exactly what you need from the comfort of your couch.
The Feng Shui Lady ®️
As I embrace channeling my inner artist and curator, I embark on a journey of helping others channel their favorite style archetypes. Styling is elevated with Feng Shui and takes on a therapeutic quality that empowers you. I’m excited to help guide my clients on how to apply the aforementioned tools like Poshmark to manage their clothing edits and find new additions. Even though these options simplify the process, a wardrobe audit, and wardrobe planning require a certain amount of detailed work and I can help you manage that. It’s truly a collaborative and therapeutic process. I love dressing people and helping them look and feel their best.
In addition to working with individual clients to reveal their most authentic and empowered selves, I will be incorporating Group presentations and Workshops on Dressing With Feng Shui Eyes as your guide! If you have a Los Angeles based woman’s group that might be interested, feel free to message me! Oh and while I’m helping you reveal your main character energy, you might also decide to hire me to create a setting where your new leading character can thrive. Starting this September, Dressing & Decorating will be the 2 wings of the same bird and business I call Narrative Space Feng Shui. Cheers my friends and Ciao for now!
Closet Feng Shui ~ Uncover Your Main Character Energy!