Jennifer Macchi (0:01)

You know what drives me crazy? Experts who know it all and never struggle. I understand. We listen to them because in most cases, they have more experience and more knowledge in their areas of expertise than the average person. But do you really mean to tell me that makeup artists never have days when their eyeliner just looks awful? Or a chef never burns dinner? Or that a wardrobe stylist never struggles with what to wear? While I can't speak for the first two, I know a thing or two about wardrobe struggles. Today, I thought I'd share a couple of my recent challenges with you. You know, just to let you know that you're not alone. Let's get started. Hello, gorgeous. Welcome back to the Everyday Style School, the podcast that gives real life style advice to real life women. Jennifer. I'm your host, Jennifer Macchi. Mary. I'm a wardrobe stylist who's been dressing everyday Women for over 20 years, and I'm the founder of Everyday Style, where we're on a mission to inspire women to love the way they look and give you the tools to make getting dressed easy, my friend. Over the summer, I was on a little bit of a struggle bus, wardrobe wise, and I'll be honest with you, I was a little bit hesitant to share it on the podcast. There's a show that I listen to, it's a business podcast, and I admire and respect the host so much, but she talks about not sharing your struggles with your audience until those struggles are scars and not scabs, meaning when it's still kind of fresh and it's not fully healed, you're not in a position to tell anybody anything. Instead, you should wait until that challenge has fully healed, has fully resolved itself, and it's now a scarlet, meaning that you're looking back on it. In part, I agree with this. I think if you listen to this show every couple of weeks, and I was just like, yeah, wow. I don't know what to tell you. I can't dress myself either. This is hard. First of all, I don't think it'd be a very good show, and I don't think we would have quite as many listeners as we do, because this isn't a space for us just to commiserate with each other about how difficult it is to get dressed. It's a place where you come to learn and to get ideas, and one of us has to be the person sharing actual knowledge and experience. Experience. And 99% of the time, I am happy to be that person. So I do agree with that. But on the other hand. I would love to hear a chef tell the story of the important dinner that was a flop or a recipe that could just never get right, or a makeup artist who really struggles to find a lipstick that she loves. I think there's a ton of value in knowing that everybody struggles sometimes. I often think that people or experts are afraid to share their struggles out of fear that their audience will think less of them. Like, if they show any chink in the armor, they must not really be an expert. Right. Like, they're just a fraud on that one. I have to say that I completely disagree. I think it takes confidence and experience and knowledge to admit that you don't have all the answers and you don't always get it right. The other reason that I feel comfortable sharing my current challenges with you is that what I want you to take away from this episode is isn't that I don't know what I'm doing, because I do most of the time, but what I want you to take away instead is what I'm doing to solve those challenges. This is the exact advice that I would give a client who came to me with these same struggles. I'm just applying it to myself. So I guess what I'm saying is, yes, I'm going to share some scabs with you, some challenges that aren't fully resolved. But I want you to focus on the scars, which are the solutions. And let's start with the one that's been my biggest, biggest struggle lately, and that is my body has changed and it is harder to dress now. Let me back up a bit. Last year, it felt like every time I was out with my friends, whether we were on a walk or out to dinner, they were talking about perimenopause, how they weren't sleeping, their hair was falling out, they were getting hot flashes, they were gaining weight, and I'd commiserate. But inside I was like, oof. Wow, that sounds terrible. Good thing I'm going to be young forever. Yeah, so about that. Fast forward a year to not sleeping, hair loss, hot flashes, and what feels like a significant body change. And just as a side note, apologies to all my real life friends listening who I didn't have enough empathy for. Please forgive me. This is terrible. I agree. Drinks are on me. Anyway, back to the body change. My weight hasn't changed at all, but everything just seems like it's in a slightly different place, right? As an apple, I've always been bigger on the top than on the bottom. And the weight that I carry tends to gather in my midsection, that hasn't changed. What has changed is that the midsection weight has kind of morphed into the proverbial spare tire. There's no evenly distributed fluff happening here anymore. I feel like I'm walking around with one of those, like, swim floaty ring things on underneath my clothes all the time. And it has changed how a lot of things look and fit and frankly, not for the better. A lot of my go tos don't look like they did before and I haven't been feeling great in some of my favorites. Dresses especially have been tough. I don't know what's going on there. I know a lot of you can relate to the body changes that come with age, but let's not dwell on that. Let's talk about what I'm doing to solve that challenge. The first thing I did after struggling and lamenting and feeling bad about myself was to give myself a little grace. I am always preaching that our bodies fluctuate naturally and that you shouldn't beat yourself up over it. So I had to take my own advice there. And once the mental part was out of the way, at least a little bit, the next thing I did was switch up my foundations. Yep, I bought better underwear. The style that had been working for me for literally 20 years just wasn't cutting it anymore, needed a higher rise. I wanted more smoothing. If you are a Style Circle member, you have heard me talk about my quest for the right undies, but here's what I really want you to take away from this. I put in the work. I watched YouTube videos of women with my shape talking about the styles and brands that were working for them. I tried different cuts and fabrics and sizes and price points to find the ones that made me look and more importantly, feel really good. I spent a lot of time and a lot of money finding a solution. Often I think something changes, like maybe your size, your shape, your lifestyle, whatever, and we just sit in the struggle doing the same thing over and over and over again, getting more and more frustrated by the results. That is a losing strategy. When things change, you have to change. You've got to put in the work to find things that work with your current reality. You've got to try new things and if they don't work, instead of saying, well, well, I tried. Oh well, and feeling defeated, you got to keep going and try something else. I can't tell you how many five packs of underwear I bought on Amazon just to wear one and be like, nope, that's not it. Upgrading to better underwear. Sounds like a little thing that shouldn't require a ton of effort, but it made a huge difference in how I feel in my clothes and how I look in my clothes. So it was worth every bit of effort, every bit of work and money that I put into it. The other thing I did was go back to basics. For a long time, like decades, I have known how to dress my body shape best. I mean, I have a whole business based on it, right? I've known for so long, in fact, that I kind of do it on autopilot. I don't have to think about what necklines look good anymore or if that style of dress is best. I can just kind of grab things off of a rack and just know. But one day I was standing in my closet and I was struggling, and nothing was looking right. And I thought, okay, Jen, if a woman with this exact body shape came to you, what would you tell her to do? What would you put her in? And it took me out of my own head, off of autopilot enough to realize that there were things I could change up, things that I would tell my client to do that I wasn't doing. And I'll be honest with you, it felt a little awkward to think so much about my clothes. I'm sure that's maybe something that you can relate to, but it's something I haven't had to do for a long time. But what I had been doing was no longer serving me. So I had to stop and think about what my body shape goals are now and how I could use my clothes to achieve those goals. I'm always talking about needing to be thoughtful about getting dressed, but for me, this was being thoughtful in a different way. I had to stop and think and take a different, more mindful approach. Now, luckily, I know how to use clothes to reach my body shape goals. And if you need that knowledge, take our body shape class Inside the Style Circle membership. That class teaches you the unchanging principles and strategies of lines, volume, color, prints, and more, so that if and when your shape shifts, you don't have to struggle to put a whole new label on your body and learn a whole new set of where this, not that, rules. Learning how to dress your body instead of just learning what to buy will make these natural fluctuations a whole lot easier to deal with. My second style struggle is that I often feel as though I'm getting dressed for work no matter where I go. Over the last few months, every time I went out with my husband or with friends, I always Felt a little business casual. And I do think that this is more of a summer issue for me. My fall and winter wardrobe has plenty of sparkle and shine and special things, but my summer wardrobe definitely does not, as I discovered. I think there are a couple reasons for this. Number one, all of the parts of my life are pretty similar in terms of formality. I'm not going to an office. I'm not going clubbing. In general, I can pretty much wear everything I own to all the places I go. Like what I wear to work, I can wear out to dinner or to church or the grocery store or while traveling normally. I consider this a really big benefit of my wardrobe. I don't have a lot of clothes that don't get used. My wardrobe usage percentage wise is really high, which I think is a very, very good thing. But what that means is that when I want to feel special, nothing in my summer wardrobe really does. I believe in having a wardrobe that is both fabulous and functional, and I realized that my summer wardrobe is missing a little bit of the fab. The other reason, though, is that I struggle with summer shoes. We've talked about my foot challenges ad nauseam, so I'm not going into it. But one thing I've been seeing for 20 years is that your shoes define your style. In the colder months, I've got plenty of shoes I can put my inserts into, including dressier options. But in the summer, it's a whole lot trickier. When your footwear is sneakers only, it really limits your clothing options. And I know the kids today are wearing their cons with their prom dresses, and I am so glad that sneakers with dresses is a thing. But it definitely changes the look and makes everything look just a little bit more casual. So how did I fix this challenge? First of all, I asked myself why. This is something everyone can and should do. When you're struggling with literally anything, when you're standing in your closet struggling to get dressed for work or struggling to get dressed for date night, ask yourself why? And really dig in to find the answer. Is it because you don't have clothes that fit? Is it because you have a lot of stuff but nothing goes together? Is it because you buy cardigans and jackets but don't buy anything to go under them? When you take the time to find out why, you can fix it. So I ask myself why. Why do I feel like I'm going to a meeting no matter what I wear, even though I have a wardrobe that I love? And I narrowed it down to the fact that Number one, I can wear everything I own to a meeting. And number two, I don't have shoes that elevate my summer clothes out of the everyday look. So now I can fix those things. Now that I have clearly identified it, I can fix it. I didn't buy any special summer things because summer's over and I would rather focus on things that I can wear now. But I will be aware of it next summer when I see a pretty dress or a cute top. That might not be super practical for 90% of my life, but I think it's important to have those fabulous things in there. An awareness of what you need in your closet to look the way you want is so helpful, rather than just buying what you naturally gravitate toward, which will most likely just add to your struggle. If I just go shopping, I add to my everyday wardrobe, right? And then when I want to look special, I don't have anything. So you just have to be aware of of the holes in your wardrobe. The other thing I did is I fixed my shoe situation. I found one, one, just one pair of neutral, orthotic, friendly, podiatrist approved sandals. And it has made a huge difference in getting dressed again. I spent hours finding that solution, but this is something I wish I would have done years ago. I would have had a whole lot more fun getting dressed all summer long. My final style struggle, which admittedly is not a recent struggle, is an ongoing one that I am just tired of. And that is the current trends are not best for me. Originally, my notes for this episode were that the current trends are not made for me. But one question I've heard a million times over the last two decades is who are these dresses made for? Who are these trends made for? Who are these clothes made for? It's kind of a trick question because I don't think clothes are really made for any one person or shape. They're just made and whoever wants to wear them can I actually think it's an important mindset shift to say the current trends are not best for me, or even I don't feel my best in some of the current trends, rather than saying this wasn't made for me. This matters because when you feel like clothes are made for you or not made for you, it can lead to feeling like there's nothing you can do about it, or that there's something wrong with you, that brands aren't making clothes for you or for your shape. It's not personal, it's just a trend that you can choose to wear or not Remember words. Even the ones you say to yourself, especially ones you say to yourself matter. But let's go back to my issue. There are some trends and some styles that have been hanging around for a really long time that I would personally love to see move on. Like high neck tops and drop shoulder sleeves. Enough already. Can we be done? Over the last few years, the current styles have been very shoulder and waist focused. And if there are two areas I'd like not to put focus on, on my personal body, it'd probably be my shoulders and my waist. So when I go into stores or I look online, it can feel like there's nothing for me. And it would be really, really easy to get defeatist about it. But one thing I've had to remind myself over and over is that the best thing I say this all the time. The best thing about fashion right now is that anything you want and anything you need is out there. You just have to find it. When I go shopping, I can't look at a store, a collection, or a season as a whole. I have to narrow my focus and just focus on finding individual pieces that work. And I've got to be open to trying stores that might not be my usual go tos. When I find pieces that work, I don't hesitate to buy them or spend a little bit more for them. I also shop online using keywords for things I'm looking for or for styles that are best for me rather than just going to a specific website and browsing through what they have. For example, instead of going to Banana Republic's website and scrolling through dozens and dozens of dresses that aren't best for me just to find two that maybe could work, I'll do a Google shopping search for shift dresses and instead of being bummed out by all the belted waist midi dresses, I'm excited by all the best for me. Choices that come right up. Doing this has exposed me to brands that I hadn't thought of, and it saves me a ton of time. But really, it's just also affirming to see so many great options instead of a steady stream of no, no, no, not that one. No. Looks cute. I can't wear that. No. I know that eventually styles I feel best in will come back around and be the latest and greatest thing. And when they do, I will be grateful. But until then, I've got strategies I can use to have a wardrobe that makes me look and feel fantastic. All right, there you have it. Three of my recent style struggles and what I'm doing to overcome them. And here's what I want you to take away from the episode. Everything in Style is figureoutable, but first you have to identify why it is you're struggling and you've got to be willing to put in the work to fix it. The solutions are out there. I promise you they are. And having a wardrobe that helps you get dressed easily every day and love the results is 100% worth the effort. Hey, before we go, will you do me a favor? If you're enjoying the Everyday Style School podcast, be sure to subscribe or follow the show on whatever platform you like best. That way you will never miss an episode. I'll see you next time. And until then, remember that your everyday matters. So get dressed for it and that's it. A wrap. Thank you for listening today. If you're loving the Everyday Style School Podcast, I'd like to invite you to become a member of the Style Circle. It's our monthly all access membership that gives you everything we create to make style easy so you can save time and money, have easier mornings and more confidence all day long. You get our seasonal capsule wardrobe guides, all of the master classes we offer, and our exclusive members only podcast the Everyday Style School. Extra credit. Plus you're invited to the Facebook community where you can get even more style support and inspiration. I would love to get to know you and support your style journey. It's just $19 a month less than the cost of a clearance shirt you're never going to wear. Come join me and make your Everyday style easier. Sa.