Episode 143: In Pursuit of Wardrobe Ease with Elyse

Welcome to Clotheshorse, the podcast that refuses to wear pants, no matter how much you pressure me.

I’m your host Amanda, and no, I am not wearing pants.

This is episode 143. My special guest today is Elyse Holladay, a personal style coach and creator of The Unfolding, a personal style development program designed to help you define your authentic personal style, learn to shop strategically, and find wardrobe ease. Elyse wants you to learn how to BE stylish, not BUY stylish. And today we are going to talk all about that. Elyse will break down some of the obstacles that give a lot of people (myself included) major anxiety when it comes to clothing. And how these obstacles often lead us down the path of buying a lot of clothes that don’t make us happy! Shopping and clothing are so emotional for us, so tied up in all of the ways we feel about ourselves and our place in the world…it makes me so angry when clothing and style are dismissed as shallow, unimportant things. Don’t worry, Elyse and I are going to explain WHY caring about what you wear is neither shallow nor unimportant!

But before that…it’s November. And as promised, for the rest of the year, I’ll be sharing audio essays from small businesses in each episode. I believe that small business is the future (and the future depends on the wealth redistribution of small businesses), so I am always looking for ways to use my platform to highlight all of the rad, creative people in our community. In addition to the audio essays, I am also sharing carousels of my favorite small businesses on instagram each week. I’m hoping to host some IG live panel conversations with small businesses in our community, but so far the interest has been…hmmm..anemic at best. We’ll see if that works out! The deadline has passed for submitting audio essays, but I couldn’t be happier with the quality, quantity, and variety of essays I received.

Today we are going to get this rolling with two different small businesses: Megan of Hard Times Collective and Lydia (who all of you longtime listeners know from her infamous bloody sweatpants stain removal miracle) of Country Feedback Vintage and Vinyl.

All right, let’s take a listen:

Hello Clotheshorse podcast listeners. I’m Megan and my small business is Hard Times Collective. I co manage this business with my business partner Kayla. We are a women and queer owned business. It’s really important for me to identify this way to represent really all humans or anyone that feels like they’re part of a minority. Regardless of gender, sexuality and race hard times was built in the last year to cater to our community here in Louisville, Kentucky. We serve over 50, vintage and secondhand resellers, as well as local artists and makers. We truly welcome all humans to come shop our pop up markets. We cater and provide a safe space for everyone to be themselves and find friends and a like minded community we promote buying secondhand first. And this mentality is incredibly important to us and is woven throughout all of our small business values. I personally spent the last 11 years of my life trying to climb the retail corporate ladder. Honestly, at this point, over the last couple of years, I found myself stressed, exhausted, and have literally felt the joy being sucked out of me. So after experiencing and going through that, I decided it was time, it was really time to take a new path in my life. When I realized my job was no longer life giving or aligned at all with my current values. Kayla came to me we one we first met each other September 2021. At a local waterfront market, we were both set up next to each other. We’re both neighbors and just became fast friends. And we really just saw eye to eye on business and second hand values and sustainability and we just became fast friends. And earlier this year and 2022 May, April, it was April, Kayleigh and I had coffee and we caught up and we’re like, Okay, it’s time let’s do this thing. And hard times collective was born. And it’s just been fast running ever since and our markets have been successful. We’ve received so much positive response from our vendors and our customers in the community. And because of that, we are able to launch a brick and mortar space. Yay, we’re so excited. This brick and mortar space is going to be opening in butcher town. A new up and coming area and Louisville. We’re going to be able to cater to 20 to 40 vendors possibly more. That we will be able to showcase secondhand and vintage resell items as well as local artists in made goods. And we are so so excited to be able to bring that to our community. Louisville has been craving more second hand shopping experiences. And it’s really important for Kayla and I to be able to create this permanent space for our customers. We will be able to provide a beautiful and bright shopping experience. And we’ll be able to provide a welcoming and safe space for our customers while promoting an inclusive and sustainable lifestyle. We would love for you to follow and support us. You can find us on Instagram at hard times dot collective. And I appreciate all of your support for this small woman known queer business. Thank you

Hi, this is Lydia of Country Feedback Vintage and Vinyl, which is a record shop that also sells vintage based out of Tarboro, North Carolina. I am the co owner along with my partner John. And yes, we broke the cardinal rule of not going into business with a significant other. It definitely makes life interesting. So we moved to Tarboro in 2017 When our son was an infant because of a house in my family. We’d been living in Seattle prior to moving here and when the movers got everything packed up and ready, they looked at us dead serious and said, you know, you’re just paying to have a record collection shipped across the country, your personal belongings are negligible. And such is the life of an audiophile first order of business in the new house, of course, was getting custom record shelves in all the closets. And as we slowly build up our new life with a baby in a small town, I quickly realized a few things. Number one, there’s a severe lack of things to do in small towns. It’s the Bible Belt, and almost everything is closed on Sundays. I know how much clotheshorse hates brunch and all that it stands for. But around here, we don’t even have brunch. And number two, John was still working remotely for a record label and boxes and boxes of records would arrive almost weekly, I would see the records coming in. But I wasn’t seeing anything going out and we were really running out of space. Which leads me to the actual reason we opened a small business, I freaked out about the amount of records and lack of space in our house. I knew John had always had a pipe dream of owning a record shop. So I pushed him to just do it here. We weighed the pros and cons and we realized it was pretty low risk to rent a retail space here. And there were plenty vacant spots available. So in April of 2018, we signed a lease on a pretty decent sized space on Main Street. When we opened we knew we wanted to sell records, but we also wanted to sell some vintage clothing and housewares. Our first few years in business, I would host a free sing along for kids and their families on Saturday mornings. And this was born out of sheer boredom and a desire to seek and create some sort of community with other families in town. In addition to that, we knew we had to spell things out loud and clear from the get go that we were an inclusive family friendly, safe space for all. It might sound strange that we felt compelled to sort of advertise that with a sign in the window. But I wanted to make it clear what we were about. We’re not your average rural southern business. And we’ve always been very vocal about our ethics and beliefs Much to the chagrin of some folks in town. They don’t always take kindly to progressive liberals around here. Some of them do, but a lot don’t. So we had a nice few first years in business. And then of course, 2020 happened thanks to the internet pandemic unemployment and SBA Disaster Relief Loans, we managed to stay afloat, we pivoted to doing lots of posting and selling online. And that was basically how we survived. We were pretty cautious throughout the whole pandemic since we had a young child at home. But now we’re finally back to regular hours, open five days a week in the shop. The shop itself has really evolved from bare bones nothing into something we’re really proud of. But it’s taken a long time to get here. We’ve started having live music in the shop again, like we did pre pandemic. And this summer, we’ve hosted three art shows by local artists with live music or a DJ. We’ve hosted photo shoots yoga, and coming up soon here, we’re actually expanding and opening a little bar in the back of our space. So, um, you know, I don’t think I ever could have envisioned where we are now. And while we’re super proud of what we’ve accomplished, I will say it hasn’t been an easy road. I’ve learned as a small business owner that you won’t know if something works until you try it and that you can’t please everyone. As a recovering people pleaser and an impasse. I’m constantly redrawing my boundaries with what I share on our business social media. The whole pandemic mentality of sell, sell, sell via social media did a number on me, I think, and I’m trying to get back to a more casual place with it mentally. Our whole public persona is that we are a mom and pop record shop just making it work one day at a time. But I have definitely reeled in the content that I share and have become a little more protective of my private life. It took me five years to learn that I needed to start blocking some people on our business page. Previously, I was of the mindset that I should let anyone follow us since we’re a public business and a safe space. Alas, I have no regrets about blocking people who threaten our digital safe space. But I did have to learn that the hard way. owning a small business has taught me that I don’t need to be a lesser version of myself. We’ve always put our whole hearts into everything we do. I mean records and vintage are our lifelong passions and it’s impossible to filter yourself when you’re truly passionate about your business, nor should you have to. I guess I’ve learned I’m just not for everyone and that’s okay. These days business is steady knock on wood. And I know that comes from persistence and momentum and not giving up even when it feels like a lot So to the people who follow us and have stuck around, we are so grateful for you all. You’ve supported us through a challenging five years and hopefully for many more to come. Being a small business owner is not for the faint of heart. And we appreciate folks like you Amanda for shining a light on small businesses. I’d also like to give a shout out to Amanda’s husband dusty. I wrote this on October 7, which is me and John’s nine year anniversary, but it’s also the same day I met dusty back in 2013. So thank you, Amanda and dusty for being awesome and for playing Nintendo with our son so this Mom and Pop could go on a date. You can find us online at www dot Shoppe country feedback.com Or follow us on Instagram and Facebook at country feedback vintage and vinyl. We’d love to see you IRL if you’re ever in eastern North Carolina at 420 North Main Street in downtown Tarboro Thanks y’all.

Thank you so much to Megan and Lydia for starting off this year’s audio essay series in the best way possible! I am so excited to see the new space for Hard Times Collective play out (this is a really big deal)! And I really just can’t wait to eventually visit Lydia and have a drink in her new bar!

Lydia brought up something in her essay that I have to speak to more (and no, it’s not how her son made us play Super Mario World for one million hours–btw we loved it), but instead it’s this idea of boundaries on social media. You know when I started Clotheshorse, my experience with social media was pretty limited to you know, just sharing photos and inside jokes with my friends. Rarely did someone I didn’t know show up in my comments or DMs. And so I started with this (in retrospect) naive idea that blocking someone or deleting their comments was only squashing the spirit of community, of dialogue, of conversation. And for the first year or so, I took some major troll-y abuse that really messed up my mental health…in fact, I was SHOCKED by how much this so-called “virtual” space was messing up my brain in my very real life. But as we all know, social media IS real life, no matter what anyone else tries to tell you.

Don’t believe me? Here are two examples that might sway you over to our side:

1. Has someone ever commented on one of your posts and it made you feel a strong way (good or bad)? Did you think about this later? Have interactions you have had via social media affected your mood? Ruined your day or made it better? You are a real person, who lives in real life, and yes, social media is a part of that “real” life.

When one of you leaves a super nice or encouraging comment or sends me a DM about something you learned from me…it makes my day so much better. And it lights that fire to keep working!

Conversely, when someone sends me a cruel or disparaging message, it really messes with me. A few months ago, someone who had been kinda hanging around the online community for a while, sent me a really –for lack of better adjective–fucked up message that really triggered my issues with food and my body. I ended up essentially starving myself for days, all while hating myself because of this message from someone I’ve literally never met in real life.

Okay, so that’s one aspect of social media’s influence on us. But what about this…

2. Have you ever read or learned something on social media that changed the way you thought about something? Inspired you to do something differently? Made friends, built a community, or even just made a purchase from a business you saw on social media? Yep, that all happened in “real” life, right?

I was inspired to start Clotheshorse for two major reasons, and both related to social media: First off, I had been following the account “Future Dust” on instagram for a few years and it really inspired me to think more and more about my career and its impact on the world. During that time period, I found the podcast You’re Wrong About via a social media recommendation…and I became instantly obsessed. It made me want to start a podcast that debunked fashion as a whole. There’s no way I would be working on Clotheshorse if it hadn’t been for the inspiration and motivation I received on social media.

I once thought of social media as some sort of “fake” place, even though I felt the emotional impacts of it. As I began to build this account, I realized that social media WAS a tool for building community and spreading information. And you know what else? I’ve felt the high of seeing people embrace the information I share and use it in their own lives, and I’ve felt the pain of trolls and hate follows. It’s all real life to me. Ultimately, I have changed my approach to the Clotheshorse instagram…this is MY SPACE, (not the social media app started by Tom), but my personal space, my internet living room, and if someone shows up to be a jerk to me or someone else, they are immediately shown the door. I wouldn’t let some asshole into my physical house to berate me, and the same goes for my virtual house.

And you know what? Adopting that policy has…been the best thing for me. The bad aspects of being a person on the internet were depleting my emotional energy, my intellectual energy, my drive to keep working for a better world. Closing the door on cruel people, individuals who were just lashing out a stranger because they had a bad day…it saved me, it gave me more strength to do more work. And I can’t recommend that enough to all of you! It’s your space and no one who makes you feel bad is allowed to be there.

Okay, now that we’ve covered all of that…let’s jump right into my conversation with Elyse!

Coming Soon

Thanks again to Elyse for taking the time to talk to me. You can find out more about The Unfolding and everything else Elyse does by starting with her instagram profile, @elyseholladay . I’ll share all of her other links in the show notes.

I want to end everything by saying this: for most of my life, I found myself buying and wearing things that were less about what I wanted or who I was, and more about fitting or changing others’ perspective of me:

As a teenager, it was about being cool and pretty, and definitely not as poor as I was.

As a young adult, it was about being sexy in a way that had nothing to do with what I felt was sexy, and more this male gaze-focused version of “sexy.” For me that often meant uncomfortable.

As a professional in the fashion industry, it was all about proving that I was worthy of being there. That my body was okay enough, that I was stylish and cool enough, that I didn’t come from a lower class background.

Starting Clotheshorse was my first move toward being who I truly am. And don’t think that I didn’t have a ton of imposter syndrome around that…all of the people on social media discussing sustainability and fashion had that uniform, that look…and it wasn’t my aesthetic. I love color and floofy ridiculous clothes. I am a fashion peacock through and through. A true clotheshorse. Fun fact: the title Clotheshorse came from my friend Gem (who has been a guest on the show many times) who used to introduce me to people as “Amanda, a bon vivant and certified clotheshorse.” In the early days of Clotheshorse, I second guessed my love of pink and vintage children’s illustrations because it didn’t fit with the neutral toned world of sustainable fashion online.

Somewhere along the line, it all clicked and my imposter syndrome seemed to move into the background. But even as a nonbinary person, I have found it difficult to get others to recognize and respect that I am nonbinary because of how I dress. I know that’s more of a societal issue than something that I’m doing wrong…but wow, it’s something I have to remind myself of every day!

Here’s the thing: there is no uniform for “sustainability.” There is no uniform for “activist.” There is no uniform for “nonbinary” or “mom” or “environmentalist” or any of the other words that make up your identity. You get to decide what you wear. And when you feel good about what you’re wearing, when you feel that emotional comfort that comes with the right clothes, your wardrobe WILL be more ethical and sustainable because you won’t need more stuff! You’ll end the cycle of buy-wear once or not at all–donate–buy again.

It’s amazing how knowing yourself and loving yourself intersects with slow fashion, with sustainability and ethics…but when you figure it out, it is life changing. I would urge all of you who are really struggling with this to reach out to Elyse! Or at the very least, take a step back and take a look at your closet. What is for you? And what is for others? Answering these questions will reveal a lot about the patterns you are living over and over. I know it did for me. It turns out that working on yourself is an important part of working on the world. Let’s support one another as we do this!