Why Moms Like Us Don’t Recognize Ourselves in Our Own Closets (with Amy Salinger)

 Hey, beautiful BossMom. Pull up a chair.

I have a confession. I wear stiletto heels to the grocery store. Jeans, a simple top, one of my seventeen pairs of patent leather heels (neon blue, bright red, pink, purple, pick a color), earbuds in, music up. And I strut. Those long aisles are basically a runway, and there are not many places in a mom’s life where you get to walk down a runway and back again.

Have you ever opened your closet and not recognized the woman who bought any of it? Celebrity stylist Amy Salinger and I got into why that happens to so many of us, and how to find your style after kids. Because when you lose your style, you usually lose a little bit of yourself with it. And getting dressed might be the fastest way back.

About the Guest: Amy Salinger

Amy Salinger is a celebrity stylist, the founder of StyleMethod®, and the host of The StyleMethod® Podcast. With 20+ years of experience, she helps people use personal style to build confidence, strengthen their personal brand, and authentically show up as the person they want to become.

Start with her free Style Adjective Quiz (you’ll see why below), and if you want Amy in your closet with you, check out her virtual styling services. You can find everything at stylemethodco.com and follow her on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest.

The Stylist Who Lost Her “Style Soul”

Here’s the part I love most about Amy. She’s a stylist, and she’ll be the first to tell you she lost her style too.

About four and a half years ago, a lot changed for her at once. She became a mom. She moved her business from in-person styling in New York City to virtual. And she moved from New York to Providence, Rhode Island, which (her words) is hardly the fashion capital of the world.

Her whole wardrobe was built for a life that no longer existed. Leather pencil skirts. Fabulous blouses. Pieces made for Bergdorf’s and high-end clients’ homes. Now the biggest outing of her day was school drop-off and pickup.

“I kind of lost my style soul. Which, by the way, I should just call my soul, because all of these things are the same thing.” — Amy

And it lasted about two years. So what did she do? She shopped. A lot. $500 army boots she had nowhere to wear.

“Shopping incessantly is a Band-Aid. It’s a symptom of a bigger problem. I was trying to feed my soul without actually feeding the right part of my soul.” — Amy

If you’ve ever bought something just to feel like yourself again, then never wore it, that’s what was happening. You weren’t bad with money. You were hungry for a version of you that you couldn’t find.

Amy found her way back through her own method (more on that in a minute): a laid-back, athleisure-meets-edgy version of herself. Think leather stretch joggers. The leather stayed. The life changed.

What My 11-Year-Old Taught Me About Style

This whole conversation started for me because of my daughter.

She’s 11, and she has an aesthetic. Her room, her clothes, her hoop earrings, the half bun. She honestly looks like Jennifer Aniston on Friends, and it cracks me up. But what struck me is the freedom she has. She’ll look at something and say, “Oh, I don’t care about that. I care about this.” No hesitation.

Watching her, I realized I didn’t have that freedom. For a while, I’d look in my closet and not like anything, or not know what I even wanted to look like.

Amy’s take: my daughter hasn’t been bombarded yet. Nobody’s told her “you’re a boss now, you have to wear this” or “you’re on stage, you have to look like that.” She’s still listening to her own inner voice.

“You know more than you think you do. You’re just not listening to yourself. My joke with clients is: you hired me to repeat what you’re saying back to yourself.” — Amy

The Shoulders-Back Test

This might be the most useful thing you take from this episode, so I’m giving it its own section.

When Amy’s clients try something on, they’ll often say, “I don’t know… I spent a lot of money on it, but I don’t know.” Shoulders down. Focused on the price tag.

That’s your answer. You don’t like it.

If an outfit isn’t pushing your shoulders back and putting your hands on your hips, take it off. Your clothes are supposed to change your energy, your vibe, and how you present yourself to the world.

And for the bad days, Amy has a rule I love:

“If you wake up feeling like garbage and you want to put on a garbage bag and hide from the world, my biggest advice is do the opposite. Go for the dress that makes you feel like a million bucks. Grab the earrings that make you go, ‘Ooh, girl.'” — Amy

Why I Wear Heels to the Grocery Store

So back to my stilettos.

When my kids got old enough to stop caring about coming to the grocery store with me, I realized it had become me time. I tried getting groceries delivered like some of my friends, and I felt something missing. So I went back.

It’s 15 or 20 minutes. It takes two seconds to put those shoes on. And I walk those aisles feeling playful and alive.

Here’s what I figured out: I need a daily 20 minutes of feeling like a woman, not just a mom. With kids at home, I’m not out at dinner in heels very often. So I made my own runway.

Amy calls this the model walk: the moment the right outfit goes on, the shoulders go back and the walk changes.

“The heels take you instantly into sexy, powerful, feminine. That’s your authentic place of power. And if the grocery store is your runway, that’s where you get your model walk.” — Amy

Everyone should have that place. For a friend of mine, it’s meditating on the grass by the water. For me, it’s heels. For you, it might be a lipstick or the earrings you only wear “for special.” What matters is that it’s yours, and it doesn’t come from somebody else.

How to Find Your Style After Kids (When You’re Five Different Women)

It took me a long time to recognize that I’m about five different versions of myself.

There’s shorts-and-a-tank-top me hanging with the kids. There’s grocery-store-heels me. There’s sexy-dress me (the one people would call “too much for your age,” and I say go take a hike). And there’s everyday me: black leggings, cute sneakers, a tucked-in tank, a little jean jacket.

The mistake so many of us make is trying to pick one of those and call it our identity. It’s like trying to find your ideal client and deciding she’s one 33-year-old named Mary. She’s not. She’s 18 people. So are you.

A fully expressed woman is like a village. We are our own village.

Amy was a 100% yes on this, starting with the age thing:

“There’s no such thing as dressing for your age. I literally cannot stand hearing people say that.” — Amy

Amy is 47 and doesn’t dress like most 47-year-olds. Where you live, what you do every day, and who your audience is all matter more than the number.

The trick is you don’t need 85 different wardrobes for your five (or 18) versions. You need your authentic self at the center, so that whether you’re at a cocktail event, running errands, or strutting the grocery store, someone would look at you and go, “Oh, that’s Dana’s style.”

That’s where Amy’s style adjectives come in. She has you take a quick quiz: four questions, you pick your favorite picture out of ten each time, and it gives you your adjectives. Amy’s are casual, glam, and edgy (double glam, because she loves being glam).

Then you use those words as a filter for everything:

• Cleaning out your closet. Not wearing something? Check it against your adjectives. If it doesn’t match, that’s probably why.
• Shopping. Does this fit any of my adjectives? No? Put it back.
• Getting dressed. Lean into one adjective for one place, another for somewhere else. You’re still you, just a different version under the same umbrella.

I’ve never taken the quiz, but I already knew mine: playful, elegant, and simple. Elegant is me sitting tall at a bar with a glass of wine and great heels, not a lot going on, but it speaks for itself. Playful is me doing ridiculous voices. I love a world where both of those can live together.

Build Your Closet Like a House

Amy’s other big teaching: build your wardrobe like a house, so every version of you has something to wear without your closet falling out on you.

1. The foundation. Cost-per-wear pieces you restyle over and over. Your favorite jeans. You could wear them five days a week and nobody would know the difference.
2. The next level. Subtle prints and solid colors. People notice them a little, but you can restyle them without anyone saying, “Girl, you wore that three times this week.”
3. The top level. The statement. Fabulous jewelry, the plaid blazer, the fringe. The loud stuff that’s meant to be noticed, with the foundation acting as the glue so it can stand out.

Get the foundation right and you can step into any version of yourself.

“There Still Needed to Be an Amy”

I asked Amy to share her story of becoming a solo mom by choice, and it’s one of the most honest things I’ve heard on this show.

She tried to find a partner. She dated (her words) every man in the Northeast and occasionally Europe. When a coach asked if she’d ever consider having a baby on her own, she was living in a New York studio. Where exactly was a baby going to go?

So she changed everything. She went virtual, bought her home, found a fertility doctor, and bought a car for the first time at 41, all within about four months. She doesn’t recommend doing it all at once, but everything she’d been waiting for piled up at the same time.

She’s also clear that being a single mom and being a single mom by choice are two very different things. She went in extremely prepared, emotionally, logistically, and financially. And a childhood friend who has two kids on her own gave her advice that changed how she thinks about taking care of herself:

“You have to go into this knowing you have to pay to play. If I have to pay $100 to be able to go out and spend $200 on dinner, then that’s what I’m gonna do. So instead of ‘tonight’s gonna be so expensive,’ it’s ‘I’m so lucky I get to go out tonight.'” — Amy

Going into motherhood, she knew there still needed to be an Amy. Stylist Amy, business-owner Amy, and mom-mode Amy each get their time, and she sets boundaries so she can go all in on whichever one she’s in. (If going all in on one version of you at a time sounds like exactly what you need, pair this with I’m Doing More Than Ever and I Feel Less Overwhelmed.)

The Confident Mom Your Kids Get to See

Here’s where we landed, and I want you to really hear it.

I don’t think we moms recognize how important it is to re-find ourselves, all the versions of ourselves, and that one thing (the heels, the earrings, the lipstick) that brings us back. When we forget, we get unfulfilled, and honestly, we yell at everybody. (If that’s where you are, this is worth pairing with managing your emotions through motherhood and business growth.)

Clothing is such a good entry point back to your own identity. I want our kids to look at us and think, “Man, I have a confident, amazing mom.”

“The best mom possible is someone who knows she’s worthy, takes care of herself emotionally and physically, and presents that badass side of herself. And wardrobe truly is the fastest way to make an instant change in your mental health on the day to day.” — Amy

When getting dressed is the hardest part of your day, something’s off. Amy wants you to wake up thinking, “Ooh, what am I gonna wear today?” without adding one more thing to your mental load.

Your Next Step

If this one hit you, start here:

• Take Amy’s free Style Adjective Quiz. Four questions. Your three words become your filter for your closet, your shopping, and your mornings.
• Want Amy’s eyes on your closet? Look at her virtual styling services, and listen to The StyleMethod® Podcast for more of this.
• Come into the free BossMom community. This is where moms get real help figuring out who they are now and what they want next, including how to run a business with limited time and constant interruptions. You get free networking events, mindset workshops, daily mindset audios, and real connection with other members, all in its own app, completely off social media. Come tell us your “one thing.” I want to know.
• When you’re ready to level up, BossMom+ is where we build the right marketing plan for your business and give you the ongoing support to actually implement it and hit your financial goals.

Now go find your runway, mama. Even if it’s the cereal aisle.

I’ll see you next week.

xo, Dana