Style, Shamans & Sex

A dispatch on the aesthetics, energy, and ethos of culture for the soul-led and style-obsessed.

A few things have been on my mind lately: style, shamans & sex. Here’s why:

What influences guides us in life? Or business? Or style? I’d like to argue that it's all in one the same; you need something that guides you towards you. At the root, the path to fulfillment is found in the truest embodiment of ourselves, whether that be through starting a beauty brand that upholds your values of wellness, chasing a trend that others deem as over but transforms you into your most radiant self, or accepting that even though you’re a “city girl,” you do your best work in a jungle by the sea.

The most beautiful moments in life come from unexpected plot twists. We’ve all experienced the bittersweet realization that our plan has gone astray, but the universe (or whoever is writing our story) has chosen a path that’s even better than we may have imagined––leading to a pivotal lesson that could only be stumbled upon outside of your linear set of self-written directions. “Amor Fati”––we “succeed” in the way that we are meant to through a love and appreciation for fate. While that all may be true, why is it that when our vision for the future vanishes, we still find ourselves walking on anything but solid ground?

If you would’ve asked me a few years back what the key to success is, I would have said it’s to make a solid plan––I am a Virgo moon after all. Have a five year, one year, and six month plan and set your days up to follow suit. A colored-coded Google calendar scheduled out by the hour, weeks in advance? That was the epitome of having your shit together. We’ve all seen the videos of CEOs waking up at 4am, accomplishing more on their to-do list by the time the sun rises than you normally would in your entire day. It sold the dream of guaranteed success––and in turn, happiness––with a seemingly simple cheat code. If you live life by your calendar, to-do list, and year-ahead plans, nothing could ever slip through the cracks, right?

I lived like this for a long time––it defined my personality and outlook on life. Here’s the thing: it worked until it didn’t. I attended a top-ranked fashion school where I was the editor in chief of our award-winning fashion magazine, interned at numerous magazines and public relations firms across the country, ran a fashion blog (old school, I know), graduated early with three minors across media and business, and accepted a job offer from a prestigious fashion magazine and moved to New York City within two weeks after graduation.

In my early editorial career, I attended fashion weeks, wrote runway reviews, profiled designers––plus, any task that you’d seen in The Devil Wears Prada, from delivering “the book” to trying to charter a flight to Paris in a storm––until a retailer recruited me to translate luxury trends for the everyday consumer. I advised a team of buyers and designers twice my age on which trends––the coolest “it” items, colors, prints, hemlines––to purchase from brands to then sell in store that season. At the age of 24, I decided to be self-employed; I wrote for nearly every magazine that you could name, styled shoots for major brands and guided them on creative strategy during the critical days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and worked with trend forecasting agencies around the world to forecast what trends brands and retailers should design or purchase to navigate the years ahead in Womenswear, Menswear, and Beauty.

Eventually, trend forecasting grew into my signature. I came to understand that trends go much deeper than just selecting the coolest skirt or identifying if pink versus red would be more important for fall. Selecting which trends would work for what price-point, timeframe and at what magnitude (would it be an understated leopard trim or floor-length printed faux fur coat?) had everything to do with a brand’s unique vision for their customer and goals for the season. This meant identifying and reflecting on their brand or retailer DNA, tracking inspiration moving from the runways to social media, as well as decoding the cultural zeitgeist and transforming it into something that we could use to express ourselves. Is life causing chaos? We probably need comfort in clothing. Are we feeling suppressed? Perhaps it’s time to show up boldly through bright colors. The way I began to envision it, trend forecasting was a holistic take on style, proving there’s no “one size fits all” approach to creativity. In other words, the point wasn’t to mimic what’s popular; it’s to offer refuge in the right way. When we dig beneath the surface of our consumption habits, we find desires that are far more existential. Tapping into the emotional element of style at-large and pairing it with a deep understanding of your client, that’s where the magic happens. Yet, while I excelled at curating this lens for others, I couldn’t see how much I needed to apply this sort of work to myself.

I had a narrow view on the key to happiness––to me, the only answer was career success: glamorous, busy, and ahead-of-the-curve. Although, behind the scenes, things weren’t so pretty. My relationship of four years was falling apart, I was suffering from a slew of mystery health issues from being in a constant state of “fight or flight”, most of my Friday nights were spent on a plethora of side businesses, and money was tight to the point where I’d live off of a bag of frozen Trader Joe’s stir-fry chicken and vegetables for days. I was too busy excelling in one area of my life that I ignored every other facet of my being. I chased surface-level trends that, in the world of fashion, would only perform well in a fleeting, viral moment and surely, wouldn’t be significant enough to qualify as a best-seller.

Even given my success and the stark control I had over my life, I was miserable––my subconscious knew it, my health knew it, and even my ex knew it. The formula I had lived by for so long seemed to not actually work, but I didn’t see it like that. I thought I had to push harder, do more, get strict with myself, and surely happiness wouldn’t be far away. I mean, that’s what every “girl boss” podcast had said––and the conscious mind is apparently more likely to believe anyone with a microphone over its own intuition. Meanwhile, I was daydreaming of traveling to Bali, feeling curious about esoterics, romanticizing a life of freedom and creativity, and wanting to be a better version of myself in my relationships. I ignored it all––not realizing that these thoughts were a sign in themselves and if applied to fashion, a pattern that I would’ve considered a trend worthy to be actioned on. And, for a long time, they stayed just as that: daydreams.

But, this moment in time wasn’t all a waste; in fact, I may have never seen the other side without this foundation. I became savvy enough to curate a seemingly impossible marketing plan for a luxury straw beach bag brand in the midst of a travel ban, land coveted roles that many fashion students only dream about, and find commonality with designers, bosses, and teammates from different walks of life. I knew how to predict which trends would endure the ever-changing fashion cycle and stay true to the values of a brand. Without realizing, I was becoming resilient and a creative problem-solver, opening myself up to the importance of connection, and learning how to quiet the noise in search of what really matters.

So, when my world came crumbling down around me, I tapped into the skillset that I knew best and put everything I learned within the fashion industry to the test. Whether I knew it or not, there was a shift away from chasing the flashy “it” item and instead, opting into curating life trends that stemmed from my core brand values.

With every path that cleared (a breakup, a loss of clients, a change of scenery), it became unbearably obvious that the only way out to the other side was “through.” The idea of trust––in myself and in the universe––began to carry me through moments that seemed menial while living them yet turned out to be part of something much greater: fate. This is what happens when you ditch the need for control and trust all that you’ve learned to take you exactly where you’re supposed to be. It’s the assurance that every challenge, plot twist, and burden you experienced in your past happened for a reason and made you into the person you were always destined to be. Fate lands you on the path you were meant to take––even if at first glance it may seem that living out a Devil Wears Prada reality wasn’t the best use of your younger years. The past is what gave me the opportunity to, well, curate with intention, and rather than unlocking the code to the next best-selling trend, it opened the door to the rest of my life; one that takes a holistic approach, savoring every facet of yourself and every moment of your life as one that matters––regardless, if a CEO would deem it productive or not.

Fate hands you lessons that come from places other than the runway; for me, they came from the time I crossed the border into Nicaragua with nothing but $20 and “un poquito Espanol,” flew to Guatemala to see a handsome British guy with eyes as blue as the ocean and a sharp sense of humor, scored that job I wasn’t even going to apply for in the first place, tried that “woo woo” ritual in the mountains of Bali, spent the summer laughing at the beach with a friend who turned into the sister I never had, and knowing I said exactly how I felt to that certain someone risking the pain of rejection but, ultimately, stayed true to myself. Yet, the power of trend forecasting empowered me to know just what to do with those moments––curating them into a life that felt true to the woman I wanted to be.

And, just like with forecasting fashion trends, you’ll never get it right if you ignore all of the factors––if you only paid attention to the runway, you’d miss all of the marvelous fresh ideas from social media. Or, if you neglected every other Fashion Week aside from New York, you’ll never understand how Milanese designers expertly transform tradition into a modern lens or London supports arguably the world’s most talented emerging designers. You have the power to set the trends within your own life if you open your mind to the idea that inspiration is everywhere. Every turn and every moment, no matter how trivial, lends itself as a lesson worth paying attention to.

Change isn’t made up of one big “aha” moment or a journey large enough to be deemed an Eat, Pray, Love; it’s a series of perfect, little instances that have been expertly aligned by the universe, “big man upstairs”, or whatever you want to believe, to paint the beautiful picture that is your life if you’re open to seeking out the evidence and putting your curation skills to work. And I’ll be frank, does every moment seem picture perfect while you’re living it? Hell no––but, that’s the fun of it all. While, eventually, I did travel to Bali, fall in love again, and succeed in business, it’s all thanks to the lessons learned from style, shamans, and sex.

In this newsletter, be ready to explore: trends that elevate your business, guides to places that will take you on a journey towards yourself and others, and practices that lead towards alignment in whatever form that may look like for you. Consider this a dispatch on the aesthetics, energy, and ethos of culture for the soul-led and style-obsessed––and, hopefully, this helps you find your own “style, shamans, and sex,” too.