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Connect with Dacy

📲 Instagram: @mindfulcloset

📲 Tiktok: @mindfulcloset

Episode Transcript

Ryann

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Food Freedom Lab. I am so excited for today’s episode. I have Dacy here with us and she reached out to me to have a conversation about dressing for your body and I realized, wait a minute, I don’t have anything like this on the podcast. And I was just telling Dacy before this, you know, I feel like as we are healing our relationship with body image, one of the things that we don’t talk about enough is just the power of dress. So Dacy is going to talk to us all about that today. So, Dacy, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us today.

Dacy

I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ryann

Yay! So, for anybody that doesn’t know you yet, will you give us a little background about who you are and what got you interested in this kind of work?

Dacy

Yeah, absolutely. So, my name is Dacy. I live in St. Louis and I’m a personal stylist. The work that I do with women is more around feeling good in their bodies and accepting where they are than it is about trying to conform to any fashion rules or trying to impose any fashion rules on anyone. But yeah, I’ve been doing that since 2013. I really love it. Before that I was a classical musician so I am well used to all the body changes that females go through.

Ryann

Yeah, oh my gosh, okay, so I have to ask, how did you get from classical music to this?

Dacy

Well I always, always loved fashion, I always loved clothes, and my parents were not super into me being into clothes. They kind of felt like it was a superficial thing, and it wasn’t serious enough. It didn’t help people in any specific, direct, concrete way. So honestly, I probably would have gone into fashion right after high school if they hadn’t felt that way. But we are all always trying to please our parents and other people and so I did also enjoy music and was in that career for a long time. Just because you kind of don’t allow yourself to think of the possibilities of what you can do once you’ve kind of set yourself on one track. So it took me a long time to kind of give myself the permission to try something else.

Ryann

I love that. I love that. And I love that you took the risk to just go for it. I feel like it’s so easy to start with one thing and then be like, oh my gosh, but I’ve already invested so much time in this. But I mean look at what you’re doing now.

Dacy

Yeah, I know. I’m super grateful. Yeah, and I’m so glad that I that I did take that risk.

Ryann

Yes, 100%. Okay, so for anybody that is listening, and myself included, because I’m not a big fashion person, this is all learning for me as well. So if we just start with like, let’s say the 101, like the basic information in regards to what to know about just clothing and dress. What are the things that we need to know just for foundation?

Dacy

Well I think the biggest thing to start with is defining your own personal style and a lot of people feel like that’s a really hard task to do but I spend a lot of time on that with my clients because what I really want is I really want everyone to come up with kind of curation of the things that they like the look of, that they want to be able to wear, and I don’t want them to limit themselves based on their body shape or size. So many of my clients come to me with kind of preconceived notions of what they’re allowed to wear or what looks good on them, you know, quote looks good, and I really want to start with people deciding what they like first and then let’s go about making that work for your life and your lifestyle.

Ryann

How do you get someone started with figuring out what they like? Do you happen to like a Pinterest board or look around or what do you recommend?

Dacy

Yeah all of those things. I do a really detailed questionnaire before I start working with anyone and ask a lot of questions about those kind of things and then I also give them specific directions on how to create a Pinterest board again without censoring themselves. So, you know, without thinking like, could I wear this? I don’t have anywhere to wear this to. That wouldn’t look good on me. Kind of with trying to ignore all of those thoughts that always come into our heads, to create a board of items that just inspire them, that they just think look cool. And just kind of noticing where those things show up in the world as well. Like, is there a character on a show that you love how they dress or in a movie or a person that you work with? Just noticing what you’re drawn to, again, I think is something different because we’re usually told, this is what you should wear based on your body or what you do or that kind of thing.

Ryann

Right. So if a client has the narrative, I can’t wear this at this body size, how do you help them break through that narrative so that they can really cultivate their personal style?

Dacy

Well, of course, I have to give the disclaimer that, you know, although fashion has come a pretty good ways in the last few years, of course, the larger your body size, the fewer options you have. And that’s a very concrete reality that we all have to acknowledge. But within that, I think it’s really about kind of recognizing those characteristics of your own style and then figuring out how you can kind of bring it in to your wardrobe. And I think that requires a lot of experimentation. It requires a lot of shopping, not necessarily a lot of buying, but a lot of shopping, a lot of trying on, a lot of just seeing what feels good on your body, seeing how you can bridge that gap between the looks that you like and what you’ve been told you know that you’re able to wear. And it’s really hard, I mean body image is a huge part of it and I mean to be perfectly honest I have plenty of clients who say well I like that look on that body but I don’t like it on my body and it’s hard to separate ourselves from that. We have so much internalized emotion and feeling about our own bodies that it’s really hard to separate from that.

Ryann

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, not to mention the emotional attachment, but I feel like the emotional attachment to clothing as well, right? So like with that body image, not only is it exciting getting new clothing, but it can be tough when you are working with maybe getting larger sizes, but also new clothing being maybe letting go of those old pieces as well.

Dacy

Yeah, I think that’s a really important aspect of all of this. I really think, again, want to acknowledge the reality that sometimes you have to hold on to things if you don’t have anything else, but I also think when you can let go of the stuff that you’ve been mentally trying to get yourself back into from some number of years, I think letting go of those things really does open up space for the new stuff to come in. And it’s an act of acceptance. It’s an act of accepting where you are, an act of kind of accepting that, you know, maybe my body is not going to go back to that size and maybe I can be okay with that and maybe I can buy new things to bring in that express my style and that shows that I am, you know, beginning the process of accepting where I am.

Ryann

Yeah, so when somebody gets to that place where they’re accepting the process, they’ve created a Pinterest board. I mean, I know for me, I get super overwhelmed. I’m like, okay, great, I love all of this, and now the thought of finding that, going out and buying it, figuring out what works best. I mean, it’s so overwhelming. So how do you take them, or how does someone go from creating this Pinterest board to then creating this style in their closet without it being so overwhelming?

Dacy

I don’t know, I think there’s always an aspect of it that is overwhelming and the thing that we always have to do is break it down into small steps, right? So for me, one of those small steps could be as simple as looking at your Pinterest board and analyzing what are the outfits made up of. Like, is it, you know, an oversized top and leggings and boots? Is it, you know, a cropped top and wide-leg pants, what are the combinations of outfits made out of that you’re attracted to, and literally writing that down. And then you can go to your closet and do a little bit of an inventory and look through and see, okay, which of these items do I actually already have? And if not, then you put them on a shopping list and that becomes what you start to look for.

Ryann

And when we are looking for new pieces, let’s say. Do you add in any education in regards to like how clothing fits comfortably or how to wear different things?

Dacy

Yeah, I mean, there’s always going to be that element of making what you love work for you, you know? And if you are short or if you’re petite or if you are in a larger body, there’s always gonna be things that we have to kind of adapt but I think the important thing is really remembering that you get to choose what you want to wear and then you get to do what you need to do to make it work for you. So I mean most of my clients there’s not really a ton of educating that I have to do about how clothes fit. You generally know when something fits you know and when you feel comfortable in it. And it’s just a matter of allowing yourself to listen to yourself. You know, I think so often we try something on and we look to someone externally for approval and say like, does this work? Does this look okay on me? And I really want to shift that focus to like how the clothes feel on our body.

Ryann

Yeah, definitely. I totally agree. And something that I have learned and what really helps me when trying on clothes, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts is that when I would get clothing I would always get them in a few different sizes because I’m like you know everything fits different so I always grab three and then I would go to the dressing room and I would turn my back away from the dressing room mirror put the clothing on and then in that moment I would be like how does this feel so that it can start with feeling and if I’m like okay this okay, this feels comfortable, then I would turn around and see, okay, does my eye meet how this feels right now? Because for me, like trying this on and like feeling the discomfort as I’m looking in the mirror, especially if you’re struggling with body image, I mean, it can make it a very negative experience.

Dacy

Yeah. I mean, shopping can a hundred percent be traumatic, you know, and I think that’s something that we all have to acknowledge as well. Like we kind of feel like, oh, we’re born female or socialized female in this society and we’re supposed to love shopping and we’re supposed to love like buying new clothes and it’s really not the case for a lot of women. And so I think there’s a huge part of that shopping and experimentation process that requires you to take really good care of yourself when you know that’s that’s coming up. So really like, you know, not doing it in a rush, not doing it on a day where maybe you’re not having a great body image day. Maybe making sure you have water, making sure you’re comfortable. Most of my clients, we do all of our shopping online, so we really are kind of making sure that they have everything they need and that they feel comfortable to do that try-on at home.

But like you said, I love all of those ideas. I always have clients buy more than one size because every size, every brand, every item is made with a different measurement. Even if you think you’re matching the size charts on the website, it’s just hit or miss. And then I love what you said about feeling how it feels before you kind of turn around and look. I think that makes a ton of sense and I would take it even a step further because sometimes, again, we’re just so caught up in what we believe we look like and it’s hard to separate that that often I will either do it myself or have clients take photos of themselves in the outfit with their head cut off and I know that sounds kind of strange but basically I want them to see it as if they would see it on someone walking down the street towards them when people see themselves in the clothes there’s just so much like mental angst that goes on that again I really want to try and take as much of that out as I can and just say like forget Forget what you see in the mirror like if you saw someone walking down the street do you like how this outfit looks and Then we can talk about getting used to how it looks on you.

Ryann

Yeah Yeah I really like that idea because you know It is interesting with a lot of the work that I do I’ll ask clients like if you saw somebody else in that and your body size or larger like what thoughts come up? Most common response that I get is, I think they look great, or I wish that I could wear it like they wear it. I think going to your point, when we attach ourselves to these clothes, it automatically creates these expectations and ideals that if we can detach ourselves from, maybe we can see it in a different perspective.

Dacy

I think that’s really important. I always try and remind my clients that, for me, I’m meeting them at a certain point in their life and their body is what it is when I meet them. And I have no concept of the previous history of their body or, you know, what they are used to fitting into or the sizes that they had in mind that that is their size. And so just remembering that when you, when you do come across people, like no one is really cataloging all that past history in their head. It’s really like, it’s here’s the present moment and here’s what you’re presented with and you know and then having said that of course again trying to shift the importance back from that external view to how you feel personally inside I think is so important because we just are so we’re just so trained to kind of worry about what other people think.

Ryann

Gosh, yes.

Dacy

And it’s hard to get away from that.

Ryann

And do you feel like with creating that Pinterest board in the beginning to create your personal style, it’s kind of like, here’s me figuring out what I like without having to worry about those other opinions so I can figure that out first?

Dacy

A hundred percent, yeah. And it’s about like building that confidence and saying like, no, this is, I know what I like, this is what I like. And then if you can match, you know, kind of your clothes and your wardrobe to this standard that you’ve set for yourself, hopefully you can grow the confidence to, you know, kind of stay in that sureness when someone else might question it. But really building that in yourself, I think it’s important to do that first.

Ryann

Yeah. So on TikTok, I’ve been seeing a lot about the time capsule wardrobe, like having the basic pieces that maybe don’t go out of style or just like the fundamentals like build the bones and then building on top of that do you agree with that approach do you have anything to add to that like what are your thoughts?

Dacy

Yes I have so many thoughts so I will say I mean I think we’ve all done this at some point in our life like I definitely had a phase in my life where I was like I’m going to dress like the quintessential French woman I’m gonna have all the timeless classics, and then I will be done forever. Never have to buy any more clothes. I think just this concept is just, it doesn’t allow for growth, and it doesn’t allow for change. Because if I had set that for myself whenever that was 10, 12 years ago, first of all, none of those clothes would fit now. If I had held myself to some standard of saying, well, this is it, this has to be timeless, this has to fit me forever, I would have so much torment about not fitting into those clothes.

I think there are definitely things that are more classic, and I think those are great things to add to your wardrobe, but I personally, I don’t think clothing is ever an investment. I don’t think it’s ever something that’s going to last forever. Not only is your body going to change, but your style is going to change, your taste is going to change, your lifestyle might change. If you go from working in an office to having two kids and working from home, your wardrobe is going to be very different. I’m not such a fan of trying to hold ourselves to one thing for a lifetime.

Ryann

Yeah, I really, really like how you just put that because I think that, yes, when we hear the word time capsule it automatically creates this idea that this should last forever. Then, if I have this thing that lasts forever, what if my body changes? What if my style changes? What if my preference changed? What if I have a baby? Or what if, you know, yes. So allowing flexibility in those pieces. What about having, maybe not necessarily like time capsule where it’s like I’m buying these pair of jeans and they’re gonna last me forever, but having staples in our closet that maybe we can just like shift, but having staples where it’s like, let’s say food for example. Like I always have, let’s say, a protein in my fridge. Now that might change based on how I feel. I might like have jeans and maybe they’re darker or maybe they’re white or maybe they’re ripped or maybe they’re just more classic, but always having a pair of jeans. Do you recommend having just some kind of staple pieces?

Dacy

I do, but I think even more than, say, perhaps food, we have to allow ourselves to figure out what our staples are. So because jeans are a great example that you just mentioned. Personally, jeans are a staple in my wardrobe, but I have plenty of clients who are like, I will never wear jeans again, thank you very much.

Ryann

Okay.

Dacy

You know, I’m not going to wear anything with a zipper, I’m not going to wear anything with like a tight waistband. And so again, I think if you decide, okay, my staples are cropped shirts and elastic waist pants and sneakers, you know, or whatever the thing is, and then you can have variations on that theme. I think that’s a great idea to kind of, you know, focus in on what your kind of uniform could be and then have variations of it. But I’ve always had problems with those kind of like 10 items every woman should have in her closet because again, I don’t necessarily want to have a starched white button-down in my closet. You know, I have boys, I work from home, I don’t go to a corporate office. That’s just not me. And so for a long time, to be upfront and honest, like for a long time I did buy that shirt and I had that shirt hanging in my closet and I never wore it. And eventually I kind of figured out, oh, that’s not my wardrobe staple. You know what I mean? My wardrobe staple is an oversized linen tunic. I have 17 of them or how many? So I guess it’s kind of figuring out what those are for you is really important.

Ryann

And would you say figuring those out comes from maybe looking at the pieces that you grab for most often?

Dacy

Yeah, I think that’s really important. I think a lot of people beat themselves up because they’re like, oh I’m just I just wear the same thing every day and I just want to say like great let’s just do more of that you know like what’s the problem with you know whatever you’re grabbing every day I think we’ve been made to feel again like we have to have new and different stuff all the time and we have to keep up with the latest trends and yeah I I really think it’s important to pay attention to what you do grab because that’s going to tell you a lot about what you actually want to be wearing or what actually works for your life. You know, perhaps you have a lot of like, you know, structured dresses, but in your life you’re down on the floor a lot, you know, then obviously that’s not going to be something that makes sense for your life. You’re going to grab the comfy, stretchy clothes because that’s what your life actually consists of.

So yeah, I love that idea and I even go a step further and I do believe in capsule wardrobes. I do think it’s a great idea to have kind of a limited wardrobe with a lot of stuff that can mix and match. I think you can start from looking at the stuff that you wear every day. Be like, okay this is the focus of my capsule. This is the beginning of my capsule. Then look at what’s missing and add in a few more pieces. I’m so glad you asked that. I think it’s really important to just be honest and be okay with like yeah this is the stuff I actually want to wear every day. I don’t need to like I don’t need to like have an Instagram worthy outfit every day if this is what works for me.

Ryann

Right! What about how do undergarments come into the mix?

Dacy

Hmm that’s tough and I will say there are people who are absolutely experts on undergarments and I am not one. But for me again it just comes down to comfort and it also comes down to personal experimentation. I mean, I think this is true for a lot of things on Instagram and TikTok where people are making recommendations. And I think we all have to remember that just like with a food plan or just with a recipe or something like that, it’s like that’s what works for them. And it’s not necessarily going to work for me.

So you can see someone saying this is the best bra ever and you know take it with a grain of salt try it for yourself but I think it really it comes down to you trying things and feeling comfortable and deciding what’s important to you you know is it important to have like some feminine details or is it important to have the most comfort possible so for me at this point it’s comfort and so I just kind of go out looking for that and I also think like with bras and things like I know that traditional wardrobe stylists would tell you like you’ve got to have the right bra and you’ve got to have all these you know different undergarments but again I want to value my clients comfort over how they appear to other people so if someone is uncomfortable wearing a really structured bra just so that they can kind of look decent to someone else or that’s what they’re imagining they need, I’m gonna say like let’s prioritize you. Let’s prioritize like you being comfortable and let’s let’s put that above the opinion of someone else.

Ryann

Yeah, I agree. You know and I think that just like what you said before, your staples might not be my staples. I have never been like a major bra person. Like I go for like one just like classic bra and I wear it until it falls apart. Sports bras are a different thing but I don’t know it’s just never felt like something super important to me but I know for other people that’s something super important. To your point, I mean it’s just preference.

Dacy

Yeah I will say like during actually after both of my children were born you kind of have these soft bras that you wear for nursing and things. And I was like, and then after that I kind of graduated to wearing sports bras. But you know, sports bras have kind of racer backs or they have different things that you can see under clothes, but I didn’t like how it looked. I don’t care if other people don’t mind, that’s fine. But I didn’t like how it looked. And so I was like, okay, essentially what I want is a sports bra, but like in a color that, a color and a shape that’s not going to show under my clothes. And that’s pretty much what I wear now because I really was like yeah what works for me is that softness and that like comfiness and then also it not appearing under my clothes.

Ryann

Totally. Do you have any recommendations when someone is starting this journey for you say like a lot of the stuff that you do is online shopping do you have like a go-to list of like places to go to or how do you have someone kind of figure out where to even go to online shops.

Dacy

Yeah, I mean, it’s super hard. I do have a go-to list. I mean, I have a list in my notes that is probably 200 retailers long. But because everyone has, and I have that for myself categorized by a few different things. Like size categories are helpful to know like which brands have extended sizing. And then it’s also helpful for me to know like which brands have more ethical manufacturing practices. But it really all depends again on your personal style. So, like, one person that I might send to J.Crew is not going to be the same person that I send to, like, you know, Curator SF, which is, like, a, you know, kind of more handmade, locally produced kind of place.

So, yeah, I think as much as I would like to, like, give, like, oh, yeah, these are, I mean, I will say Nordstrom is a go-to retailer and they have such a good range of extended sizing, well a fair range up to 3x usually, but that’s always a go-to, you know, your universal standard is always a go-to for their extended sizing. But yeah, it really depends so much on your style and what you kind of want out of your clothes as well. But yeah, I have a really long list that I just go to when I’m like, okay, this person has this style and this size range and where do I start?

Ryann

Right, right. I know it is difficult and I feel like online shopping for me I feel like it’s almost less overwhelming once you have those places picked out because you can go in and filter versus when I go into a store I’m like oh my god, where do you even start?

Dacy

Yeah, I mean I think the really important thing with this is to have some intention and some focus when you start shopping. I think it’s really hard to just go all on and be like, I need new clothes. I need new clothes that fit this body. But if you’ve done the work of defining your style, going through your Pinterest board, kind of analyzing the outfits, seeing what you have in your closet, seeing what you’re missing, what you should come up with after that process is a specific shopping list. And it should have things on it like wide leg elastic waist pants or, you cardigan in a specific color. If you can be the more specific and clear about what you want you can be, the easier it will be to find. Because like you said, you can search, you can filter. I mean I use Google Shopping all the time. If you’re just looking for a random example that just came into my head, it’s like a seersucker dress or just something that’s very specific.

Ryann

So what is Google Shopping?

Dacy

So if you just Google an item like seersucker dress or something and you hit return and you do the search, there’ll be a bunch of little tabs across the top. And the second tab after just the main web search, you know it’s like there’s images and videos and different things, there’s one tab that’s shopping. And so you can click on that tab and the great thing about it is that it has a bazillion filters. And so again if you’re looking for wide leg cropped pants, you can put that in a Google search and go to the shopping tab and then you can filter by your size You can filter by the color you want and it will show a lot of results from a lot of different retailers So that’s why

Ryann

I didn’t even know you could do that

Dacy

So that’s one way that you can really again if you know what you want specifically Then you don’t have to go to the specific stores. You already know you can kind of be like this is the thing I want Who on the internet is selling this thing that I want.

Ryann

Oh, that’s really smart. How often do you recommend going through your closet?

Dacy

I think doing a really in-depth kind of edit is good probably once a year. And then I would say doing a few little seasonal ones throughout the year is good as well. I mean, that’s what I personally do. So pretty much whenever I switch out any of, I live in St. Louis, so we do have four seasons. And so whenever I switch out summer, you know like recently I switched out summer to fall and I was like there’s a couple things I didn’t wear this summer, I don’t really like them, they’re not my style, why did I buy them? And I’m going to let those go. So I think if you can gear yourself up to do that big overhaul, which I know can be super overwhelming, if you can gear yourself up to do that then you can kind of maintain it with like these little kind of edits every season.

Ryann

Yeah I really like that. I live in Wyoming so I have four seasons as well and I feel like it’s almost easier when you have four seasons versus when I lived in San Diego and it was like the same clothes all the time I never even thought to do it but now it’s almost like intentional because I’m pulling out my clothes and I’m like oh well yeah I don’t really want this anymore.

Dacy

Yeah exactly I actually recommend that people who live in seasonless places still kind of rotate clothes in and out, like still like put some of the clothes away for the summer, even if the summer weather is the same as your winter weather, put some of the clothes away just to give your eye a rest from them, to give yourself a break from them, and then to give yourself something new to look forward to. So then when you go to another season you can pull back out some of those things and you’re like, oh yeah, I forgot I had this. This is fun. And then it also, again, gives you that kind of built-in little editing process along the way.

Ryann

Yeah, I really like that idea. Dacy, for anyone that is beginning this process or just wanting to know more about creating their own personal style, what are some things you wish everybody knew about just clothing, dress, and getting to a place where you have clothes that work for you, your style, and your body.

Dacy

I mean, I think the thing that I want everyone to know is that you get to choose what you want to wear. That your personal style is not decided by the shape of your body, which you, 99% of the time, have no control over. So, you know, I really feel like it does a disservice to women to say, well, you are shaped this way, therefore this is the style of clothing that you must wear. And so I just really want to give everybody the permission that you get to decide that, you get to choose, and then later on you can make modifications as needed to make it work for yourself, you know, in your life.

Ryann

Thank you so much for all of that knowledge. I feel like I want to go to my closet right now and go through everything and create that Pinterest board. But, Dacy, if people want to learn more from you and learn more about the work that you do. Where can we find you?

Dacy

Sure, my website is mindfulcloset.com and I’m on Instagram and TikTok at mindfulcloset. So any of those places I’ll be happy to say hi.

Ryann

Yay, amazing. Thank you so much again for taking the time. This was super helpful and I feel like just such a great beginning of the conversation to get excited about clothing because I feel like it can be something that feels daunting or kind of just, I don’t know what the word I’m looking for is, but you know, when you’re not in that mode of like getting to a place where you feel comfortable in clothing, it can feel just like a drag versus something to look good in.

Dacy

Yeah, I agree. I feel like it can be really heavy and you know, we have to allow for that and we’re gonna grieve kind of like our old size and our old clothes, but you’re right, like having a chance to look at it as like, this is me curating my look. This is like me getting to decide you know what my style is I think can be a really fun project.

Ryann

And it doesn’t have to be forever like

Dacy

Yeah exactly that changes

Ryann

This is me now and it might not be me in a year and that’s just what it is.

Dacy

Yep it is a hundred percent.

Ryann

Yay! Thank you so much again I super appreciate it.

Dacy

No thanks for having me this is super fun.

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