Mother's Day Special Offer

In honor of Mother's Day, I'm offering a special on my Closet Cleanse service. We will identify your wants, needs and style goals during a phone Style Consultation. The Closet Cleanse maximizes the style potential in your current wardrobe. During this hour and a half appointment at your home, we will determine what to keep or toss, and I will put together outfits with clothing you already have. We will create a shopping list of key pieces your wardrobe may be missing. Read more about it here.

All this for $100! ($50 savings off the regular rate)

This service also makes a great gift for the other mothers in yours life who deserve to treat themselves! Or drop a not so subtle hint to your  husband by emailing him a link to this page! Gift certificates are available!

Now you can book online, by email or phone! Don't wait! Treat yourself now, Moms! You deserve it!

I Love NY

I am not going to lie. I miss living in NYC. But if absence makes the heart grow fonder, I feel the fondest about New York. This visit was long overdue and I enjoyed every minute of it. The universe conspired to make it a great weekend with good weather and my itinerary was filled with my favorite things: food, family and shopping!

I stayed with my cousin which is super fun because I feel like a real New Yorker coming and going from her Chelsea apartment. While she worked I walked to Chelsea Market, a food hall, shopping mall, office building and television production facility, and enjoyed a delicious raisin scone from Sarabeth's. The next day I took the subway down to Tribeca to visit my friend, mentor and former employer, and we spent hours reminiscing about our time working together. From there I walked up to Soho and grabbed myself a fresh, delicious yogurt from Chobani. How funny that they manufacture their products in upstate near my town, but I alway make sure a stop at their store in Soho is part of  my visit to the city.

 I met up with my cousin just in time to see Bernie Sanders supporters march down Broadway with a large #feelthebern banner flying. We spent the rest of the afternoon wakling and shopping and walking and shopping.

I couldn’t leave NYC without dinner at my favorite burger place, Lucky Strike in Soho, with my cousins and brother. Nothing like walking around the city to make a girl hungry for a delicious burger and fries. Thankfully my cousin’s apartment is around the corner from a Starbucks, and ordering on their app made grabbing a coffee and hitting the road easy, heading up to Westchester for brunch with my best friends.

Never enough time to catch up with my college roommates- our lives have changed over the years but when we are together it’s like no time has passed. On my ride down and back I listened to Lena Dunham read her book Not That Kind of Girl- can’t wait for season 5 of  Girls to start next week. My boys surprised me when I got home with my favorite Chinese food dinner, chocolate cupcakes from Mrs. Kelders, and a dozen red roses. Now that’s what I call a weekend getaway! See you soon, NYC!

What do you like to do when you visit NYC? I’d love to hear from you so comment below or email me at thesmalltownstylist@gmail.com.

Denim Dilemma

I’ve been extremely frustrated this year looking for the perfect pair of jeans. Bootcut denim is back (as I posted on The Small Town Stylist and talked about in my Spring Trends segment on Bridge Street in 2015). They are featured in fashion spreads and on the most stylish Instagrammers. Bootcut, flares and wide leg styles are much more flattering than the skinny jeans we’ve been seeing everywhere the past few years. Much to my dismay, finding these styes has been an impossible task in my small town. Sometimes it takes several seasons for the trends to make it here. I live in denim. I know what I want and what works best for me. I like to wear a dark wash, so my jeans wear out pretty quickly and I need to replace them every few years. Finding the perfect denim is difficult, and since trends come and go it’s usually not possible to find the exact same style I’ve come to love. I embraced the skinny jean trend but I NEVER gave up on my bootcut jeans and have been wearing the same pair by J.Crew until they are now frayed at the bottom and worn thin at the knees. So the search has been on for a year to find a replacement. The key with denim is to TRY IT ON, which also can be hard to do in a small town because boutiques have limited sizes and styles. Here is a good denim style guide by goop.com. I often have to try the larger department stores or order from online shops that have a good return policy and offer free shipping and returns.

I’ve been super frustrated about this, but I didn’t give up. After almost a year of looking for my perfect flare jean, I finally found two pairs I really like at Lord & Taylor. There were like 5 pairs of flare jeans among about 500 pairs of skinnies. The stars must have aligned for me to find two pairs in a dark wash with a mid-rise and in my size! Of course they need to be hemmed- they are about a foot too long- but my search is over. Actually, is the search ever over? In a year they will get faded and I’ll be looking for a replacement. But in the meantime I am feeling some relief.

What is your favorite style of denim and why? Where do you like to shop for jeans and why?  I’d love to hear from you at thesmalltownstylist@gmail.com or comment on my Facebook page.

Happy New Year From TSTS

What a difference a year makes! Twelve months ago I wrote my first post about how long I had been dreaming about starting The Small Town Stylist- it's been in the making (in some shape or form) for over 20 years! Now I am meeting amazing women every day and helping them become the best versions of themselves. Who could ask for more? So many exciting things happened in 2015 and there is more to come in the next year. I’ll be back on with my friends on Bridge Street, talking fashion- everything from the latest trends, how to go shopping in your own closet, and even recapping the red carpet fashion from this season’s award shows! Look for me in the March/April issue of Central New York Magazine, with tips and tricks on how to organize your closet and make the most of your existing wardrobe!

Right now the big thing on my clients’ minds (and mine too) is renewal and reorganizing for the new year! It’s a great time to get in those closets and refresh your look, so in the next few weeks I’ll be posting a tips and tricks to help you get started. Or book a Closet Cleanse appointment with me for the new year and we will go shopping in your own closet, find some new outfits and looks, purge what isn’t working, and figure out what pieces you need to take your wardrobe to the next level. I still have a few appointments available at the end of January so call me to schedule yours today. Mention that you saw this post and you will get the 2016 New Year Special Rate of $100 for 1.5 hours.*

More fun fashion projects are in the works for early in the year that I’m really pumped about! Keep coming back, following me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and keep your comments coming too! I want to know what you’re doing to be stylish despite the winter weather, what are your favorite trends this season, and what are your fashion and beauty tricks?! I hope you are learning from me but I love to learn from you too!

What do you want to see on The Small Town Stylist in 2016? I’d love to hear from you at thesmalltownstylist@gmail.com or comment on my Facebook page.

*Special rate good only for appointments booked before January 31, 2016 for dates in January or February 2016.

Change is Inevitable

They say the only constant in life is change. This is true in so many aspects of our lives, including our wardrobe. Trends come in and out of fashion, and it can be hard to keep up. By the time you are an adult, you should know what your personal style is but it also has to be evolving because we are always evolving too. What worked for you when you were 15 is not only out of fashion by now (although if you are my age it might be coming back into fashion- ha!) but not appropriate for your lifestyle now.

That’s why we need to take inventory of our closets and our lives a few times a year. You may have lived in ripped jeans in college, but they won’t work in the corporate world. That doesn’t mean you can’t keep your personality and whimsy in your clothes- you just need to adjust it a bit. As a person you are learning, growing and hopefully getting to know yourself better all the time, and so it makes sense that your taste and style will grow with that.

I am a 90’s girl- I love the decade including the fashion, which is coming back. Plaid shirts, floral baby doll dresses with leather jackets, and Doc Marten boots- I can’t get enough. But obviously I can’t wear them the same way I did then. Instead of an oversized flannel over ripped jeans and bodysuit (I loved those things), today I’ll wear a more fitted version of the plaid shirt, front tucked into a pair of dark wash skinny jeans and a pair of polished motorcycle style boots. A few adjustments that are age appropriate but still fun and on trend.

And don’t get me started on how our bodies change! I do not know a woman out there who has the same figure she had when she was 20- or who has the same figure she did 3 years ago for that matter. The freshman 15, pregnancy, stress, hormones and age all continuously change our bodies and so it’s no surprise that our clothing will have to change with it. If you have your third baby, even if you lose all your “baby weight”, your body shape is different. Maybe your hips are a bit wider than they used to be, or your feet are a half size larger. These things happen. For women who have had major weight loss, it’s like starting over as a new person that you are shopping for.

Don’t live in the past, or live for the future. In your wardrobe as in life you must dress for the person you are today and be the best version of that person. You may have different tastes next year, or you may lose a few pounds, or you may have a new job, or you may move to a warmer climate- the truth is you can’t predict how life will change, so let’s just take it day by day. Apply this theory to your clothes.

If I look back on how my life has changed over the past decade, it’s interesting to see how the changes in my lifestyle have affected the changes in my wardrobe. I was a young childless woman working a full time job in marketing, so my attire reflected that. Once I had my son and stayed home, my wardrobe was mostly jeans and athleisure wear. When I went back to work part time, my closet had to become more well rounded with both work appropriate pieces and casual pieces. Today as I am running my own business out of my home, my clothes are back to being more athleisure but with some evening and dressier options for client meetings and events. And all the while I keep my personal style in mind so that there’s a cohesive look to what I wear and a good representation of who I am as a person not just what I do for a living.

Lately I’ve been looking at my clothes and thinking about age appropriateness too. There are really no hard rules anymore as far as what is too old to wear certain things. As a twenty-five year old in business, I’d choose separates that were sophisticated and classy so I would put forth a professional and serious image. Today those outfits might come across as stodgy and actual age me, so I’m thinking about working in some newer trends to freshen up my look. You will never see me in a crop top or see through shirt, but a dress with strategically placed cutouts or a sheer blouse with a tank underneath would be a more appropriate but still new take on the trends. My closet is always a work in progress- and yours should be too.

So objectively look at yourself and your wardrobe. Do the items in your closet fit your body now? Do they make you feel confident when you put them on? Do they reflect who you are and your personality? Are they appropriate for your lifestyle and job? If you answered no to any of these questions, you need to make some changes to your closet now. Change is inevitable so embrace it.

If you need some help, email me at thesmalltownstylist@gmail.com and book a consultation today. Together we can turn change into a positive and help you to put forth the best version of yourself.

Boston: My Future Home

As we get deeper into the fall and crisper cooler weather, I find myself nostalgic for this summer. Here’s a post I wrote in July but never published. My dream is to someday get a sweet brownstone near Newbury Street in the fun, fashionable and cool city of Boston. We try to make a trip once a year and it’s just as enjoyable with kids as it is as a romantic getaway. I spent the Fourth of July there with my boys this year. We walked the Freedom Trail together, a 2.5-mile-long path through downtown Boston. Marked largely with brick, it winds between Boston Common to the USS Constitution in Charlestown, and passes by 16 locations significant to the history of the United States. There’s so much history and beauty in Boston, but also some awesome shopping. As you walk through the city, there are great little shops I would duck into whenever possible, and Faneuil Hall has been a marketplace and a meeting hall since 1743. After walking the trail, the boys went back to the hotel to rest but I hit the stores on Newbury Street. Being in a big city means I have an opportunity to try on in the shops that I can only buy from online when I’m home in my small town. So I hit up Lululemon, Athleta, Burberry and Madewell. I didn’t get a chance this trip but usually I make an appointment at the Bobbi Brown counter at Neiman Marcus in Copley Square because over the years I’ve found that the staff there is the best around!! Even though I have a local Bobbi counter, the ladies at the Bobbi Boston always give me extra special attention and time, really know their products and make great recommendations based on my skin, coloring and lifestyle, and overall just pamper me. Just thinking about it makes me sad I didn’t get there. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the food in Boston too! Mikey’s Bakery in Little Italy with their whoopee pies the size of my head! Ernesto’s Pizza in the North End where one slice is actually two giant slices! The Capital Grille’s fare is consistently delicious but it’s the service that keeps us coming back again and again and again! And Stephanie’s on Newbury is chic and family friendly place to refuel when power-shopping!

Being a holiday weekend, the streets were busy so there was prime people-watching! I find Boston to be more relaxed fashion-wise than let’s say NYC but that just gives me more ideas for my small town. I saw a lot of cute jumpsuits and rompers- mostly in prints but some denim. Lots of gladiator sandals and flats- like the ones I showed on Bridge Street a couple of weeks ago from Steve Madden. “Comfortable but stylish” or “College girl chic” is how I’d describe what I saw. Also everyone had a cross body bag in tan leather or a print. I picked up a few new items from Lulu and Athlete that will take me from workout to errands in style. (Which will be part of my segment next week on Bridge Street so be sure to tune in!) Boston never disappoints great food, great people, great shopping and great style! What is your favorite stylish city and why? Comment below or on my Facebook page.