Why Styling Found Me: A 30-Year Journey Through Fashion, Friendship, and Finding Your Fit
I remember the first time a friend invited me to be their wingman while shopping. It was 1992. A close friend had just received a nice chunk of bat mitzvah money and wanted to head to our local mall: the Westside Pavilion.
Thinking back, I realize place has always been a frame for me. The Westside Pavilion—both as a location and a moment in time—takes up a lot of space in my memory, and surely in the memories of many others. My mom worked at a makeup counter in Nordstrom when I was in high school.
I worked there. My sister worked there. This was the mall they filmed Clueless in—the very one Cher calls her “place of sanctuary,” where she goes to clear her head.
Places like the Westside Pavilion weren’t just where we shopped—they were where we became. What I now call commerce as culture. These semi-public spaces held a charge: a mix of freedom, indulgence, spectacle, and possibility. You could try on a new identity, get lost in fantasy, or come out feeling somehow transformed. They weren’t sacred exactly—but something close. A little messy. A little magic.
But back to shopping. I’m not sure I thought much about why I’d been invited on that particular outing, but even at the pre-blossom age of 12, someone saw me as the right person to bring along—to make sure what they bought matched their intention.
And we rocked it. Striped, ribbed, button-down short-sleeve cardigans. Jorts. Some kind of Blossom-esque darling hat—I think I still have a photo of her in it, tucked in a box somewhere. An outfit that, honestly, could walk down the street in West Philly or Brooklyn tomorrow and not catch a second glance. Not even be read as vintage or throwback. Because what’s good has always been good—and the pieces that resurface, whether mass-reissued or hunted down in boutiques like mine, are proof of that.
I’ll be 45 in November. And 1992 was a long time ago. Since then—while styling was never something I pursued professionally—it found me. Over the years, I’ve been invited on countless prom dress hunts, wedding attire missions, funeral outfit assessments. I’ve helped plan travel wardrobes and done what I now call “closet edits.”
Five years into doing it with real intention, I can finally say it: I’m a stylist.
One of the joys of being in my 40s (and there are many) is no longer feeling like an imposter. If you’re honest about what you know and what you don’t, you can’t really be one. There’s plenty I still don’t know about styling—but there’s a lifetime of what I do know: how to bring people together with garments that were made for them, or made their way to them. It’s kind of magical when you think about it—the journey from fabric to production to you. The hands that made what you now wear. And in the case of vintage, the life lived in the garment before you.
Right now, I’m styling clients in the store, in their homes, and out in the world—helping them with everything from undergarments to hairstyles. I have a knack for it. That’s just a fact, like my gray hairs. Over the years, I’ve styled for red carpets and I’ve styled in what urbanists call “third places”—those everyday gathering spots where something bigger starts to take shape. It’s part of what drives my passion for storefronts, and what I’ve built at Manzanita: a boutique that’s also a living room for the neighborhood, where style and story meet in real time.
When I used to read about people stumbling into making their private passion part of their professional life, I’d roll my eyes. It felt like poppycock. Balderdash. But here I am. Living proof. So somebody pinch me—and when I wake up, let’s go shopping.
