Nicole Garfunkel shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Nicole, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
I am very lucky to live near the beach, so my days always start with a walk on the boardwalk. I like to call this my “morning commute” since I work from home. I usually make a coffee to take with me, which is essential. I’m obsessed with coffee! When I get back I make a yummy breakfast, which is my favorite meal to cook and eat. The most important part of my morning ritual is getting dressed! It’s a time to be creative and prepare my energy for the day ahead, which is crucial for my productivity throughout the day.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m a personal stylist for people in eating disorder recovery. I’ve always had a love for fashion and dreamed of working in the fashion industry since I was little. When I was a teen, I was diagnosed with PCOS, which significantly changed my body size. Doctors “prescribed” dieting as the fix, which led to disordered eating patterns and ultimately, a complete lack of confidence. I felt no joy in getting dressed at that time because I was so ashamed of my body. All I wanted to do was hide my body.
After college, a friend introduced me to Intuitive Eating, which completely changed my life. I stopped chronic dieting and focused on treating my body with kindness. The more I treated my body with care and compassion, the more comfortable and even confident I began to feel. And this was only improved by reclaiming fashion as joyful and integral part of my life. Letting go of the need to control what my body looked like allowed me to dress in a way that was authentic to me.
Along the way I did end up studying fashion in college and worked in fashion e-commerce in the beginning of my professional career. I didn’t love corporate life and I found myself going shopping with friends every weekend. Pretty much all of my friends had gone through an eating disorder or some sort of disordered eating pattern and struggled to find clothes that they liked AND felt confident in. It was an overwhelming process for them to shop and get dressed once they were in their recovered bodies. Plus, recovery changed them mentally. Their values had shifted. But they didn’t have the knowledge or tools to incorporate fashion into their daily lives in a way that felt effortless.
Using fashion as a tool for confidence and connection with myself inspired me to help people in eating disorder recovery do the same. When you look good (by your own standards, not society’s), you feel good! The empowerment you feel by intentionally getting dressed every day changes the way you move through life. And I’m so passionate about helping people do this, on a 1:1 basis and through workshops at eating disorder treatment centers.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
I felt most powerful as a kid when I was playing dress up. We had a big box of old costumes and I would raid my mom’s closet all the time. I loved to be silly and playful by putting together the wackiest outfit combinations. Dress up allowed me to be creative and transport me to different versions of myself. And it was clearly foreshadowing to my future career!
If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
I wish I could tell my younger self that trying new things is courageous and such a strength in life. I used to try all different types of sports and hobbies, but not all of them stuck. People around me viewed this as “quitting,” but they were so wrong.
Trying new things is bold and risky. It takes a ton of strength to try something AND say it’s not aligned. I like to think of this more like experimenting. In my mind, this is what life is all about. It’s about seeing what sticks and leaving the rest behind. You have no way of knowing if you’re going to like something until you try it.
I love how this also applies to fashion. You can’t know if a style or silhouette is right for you until you try it on. And you don’t have to stick with one style your whole life. We change and evolve, so naturally our style, preferences, careers, and hobbies will evolve with us.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
The biggest lie of the fashion industry is that you have to be thin to be valued, loved, and fashionable. We are in a time when thinness has once again skyrocketed as a trend, which is perpetuating poor mental and physical health.
The industry is moving away from the body positive movement by casting with less body diversity, models know for being empowering people in the plus-size space are shrinking with the help of GLP-1s, and brands are not inclusive with their sizing. The lack of inclusion makes consumers feel like they can’t be included and that something is wrong with them. Which is utterly false!!
Personally, I was the most depressed I’d ever been when I weighed the least. When we force our bodies to be a size that they are not meant to be, our health declines and we lack confidence. Now, I am the healthiest and most confident I’ve ever been because I don’t try to control my body shape or size.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. Have you ever gotten what you wanted, and found it did not satisfy you?
I was obsessed with watching Sex & The City when I was a kid. All I wanted was to be like Carrie – to work in fashion and live in New York City. I’m proud to say I did that! I worked in fashion for almost 10 years while living in NYC. But it didn’t live up to the glamorous expectations I had in my head.
Although I was proud to achieve this goal, I felt like my work lacked meaning and NYC made me feel uneasy. I don’t regret this chapter of my life, because it taught me so much and shaped me into the person I am today. What I do regret is wishing the journey of reaching this goal away. I spent so much time feeling miserable while I was working toward building my career and moving to NYC, because I didn’t achieve it yet. I think a lot of people can relate to this. We don’t enjoy the journey and reaching the peak can feel like a let down.
This experience has taught me that we cannot control all aspects of our lives. Sure, we can have goals that we are working towards, but if we don’t allow ourselves to be happy in pursuit of goals, we miss out on our lives.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://stylingconfidential.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/styling_confidential/
Image Credits
Natalie Occhino
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