We recently had the chance to connect with Julie Vogel and have shared our conversation below.
Julie, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What are you being called to do now, that you may have been afraid of before?
For 25 years I have been a fashion stylist and image consultant working with women in the entertainment industry and their everyday lives. While so much of my career has been focused on aesthetic and appearance, I have had the privilege of getting to know these women personally BEHIND THE MIRROR and my work has taught me there is a collective experience women face as it relates to self worth and their value in the world. I have not known a single client who hasn’t struggled with one or more of the following: body dysmorphia, chronic comparison, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, perfectionism, ageism, silencing intuition, perfectionism, self worth being tied to appearance, burnout, imposter syndrome and the list goes on and on. We live in a visual world that places a disproportionate value on how things look and less on how we feel. Social media has not helped us in this regard with the bombardment of
‘highlight reels’ that can skew reality and make us feel we do not fit in or measure up. I have been guilty of this myself by posting perfectly coiffed and curated photos thinking somehow my natural, less enhanced self, would not be acceptable. It became clear that if I was to be of service, I would need to start peeling back the layers of my own masks and start showing up more authentically both on screen and in my everyday life. I started to feel less connected to false images and facades, especially how it appears in the media. I felt as though I wasn’t fully aligned with my clients and the community I had been building. I was starving for a truer version and realized other women were too. I want to break through the isolation and loneliness that comes with acting like we have it all together. Life is messy and complex, not tied up in a perfect and aesthetically pleasing bow. I am here to help women heal, grow and understand themselves. My goal is to support them towards becoming the most integrated and expansive versions of themselves. I have learned that transparency is key and authenticity is the greatest form of influence I possess. I recently started sharing my life, my foibles, trials and truths, especially the ones that I have been ashamed of. Walking through this fear I discovered this actually has opened the doors to a wider audience. We all need to feel connected and I firmly believe if it is a personal struggle, it is usually universal as well.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
As a native New Yorker I began my career as an image consultant for business and personal lifestyle. I have been fortunate to have worked in all areas of the fashion industry, styling A-list clients for the red carpet along with powerful Female CEO’s, Entrepreneurs and most importantly you, the midlife woman, who has a sense that something has shifted, that she has shifted and she’s no longer willing to dim her power and light. My work as a Fashion Journalist and Broadcaster has been featured on the CW Television Network, Inside Edition and a contributing style editor for Santa Barbara and FREQ Magazines. My latest project BEHIND THE MIRROR Podcast will launch in 2026 sharing intimate talks with featured guests around the globe where we get real about relationships, reinvention, resilience and rising from the ashes. I help women transform not just how they look, but how they live. It is my greatest privilege to teach women how to express their truest self and make an impact through wardrobe.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
I grew up in a home riddled with dysfunction as so many of us do…there was all kinds of abuse and neglect including domestic violence when the police would regularly show up in the middle of the night to stop my parents from beating the crap out of each other. Despite being one of four kids I spent most of my time alone, isolating in my room. I learned early on that people were not safe and the only way I could protect myself was to be on my own. It was in those early years that I immersed myself in creative hobbies; I loved to paint, draw, write, sew, knit, crochet and I even made my own clothes. Imaginative art projects kept my mind engaged just enough so as not to feel the overwhelming pain I was dealing with as a child. I would illustrate Winnie the Pooh and other cartoon characters with indelible markers on T-Shirts. I was a scrappy kid born and raised in New York City and by the age of 14 already obsessed with fashion. I spent hours perusing Vogue, Glamour and Mademoiselle magazines and spent every dime I saved from babysitting money on clothes and accessories. I loved to shop in Greenwich Village and there was a trendy overpriced kids clothing store called ‘Gee the Kids Need Clothes’ I went in and happened to be wearing one of my hand painted shirts. The owner really liked it and kept asking where I had purchased it…when I told her I had made it myself she commissioned me to design two dozen to sell at her store. I was given an advance of $100 which was a helluva lot more money than I had been making as a babysitter. I started a little business and sold to several boutiques all throughout Manhattan. I guess you could say the Entrepreneur in me was formed from a very young age.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
I love this question because I can honestly say that the majority of my life has been me making a conscious decision NOT to give up. I have wanted to give up more times than I can count… I once had a therapist tell me “I had a very strong will to live” and this was at a time when I was in the depths of anorexia, depression and PTSD. I remember asking her “doesn’t everyone have this same will to live?” Her response surprised me and also shed light on my resilience.. she said “most people having been through the kinds of trauma you have from such an early age would have likely given up or not even have survived at all”. It was actually the first time I was able to acknowledge that my greatest accomplishment was that I actually had survived. All of my professional success whether it be in the fashion industry, television broadcasting or entrepreneurship, none of those achievements carry the same importance as the work I have done to heal and overcome childhood trauma. I am a survivor and make a daily decision to create a beautiful life in this world for myself and hopefully others. I believe it is our deepest pain and greatest struggles that truly form us, allowing us to be of service. I would not have the depths of compassion or be able to understand and care for my clients the way I do if I had not experienced the pain. I am very familiar with insecurity and visibility wounds and all the ways we can sabotage success. Changing the false narratives and subconscious tapes that run our lives takes consistent work. I understand what it feels like to be broken inside and want to give up on an intrinsic level. Supporting women as an image consultant along with building their personal style identity is the most natural thing for me to do.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
The beauty and fashion industries have relentlessly sent a message that the fountain of youth is the holy grail and if a woman is of a certain age she is no longer considered viable. I think this is why so many women in midlife give up and stop taking care of themselves. We see ‘influencers’ on social media and most of them are under the age of thirty. The irony is that women in their 40’s 50’s 60’s or above have lived lives with a wider breadth of experience, wisdom, strength and hope. I am not an influencer that simply feeds the machine, rather I influence people to change their lives. I am less interested in making commission on whatever items you buy and more invested in helping women embrace their power. I would love to see more midlife role models and female entrepreneurs in the forefront of the media. Also, we have recently seen a rise in emaciated actresses, models and women who are in the spotlight. Whether it is the GLP-1 movement or a return to the ‘Kate Moss’ strung out on heroin look of 90’s I am not sure. And God help a woman who is over the age of 50 and still shows her skin or dresses in a way that accentuates her femininity and sexuality. The amount of online hate and vitriol I read on this subject is disturbing. Lastly I want to mention botox, fillers and plastic surgery because it is definitely a controversial topic. Women deserve to have agency over how they choose to age. I am all for tweaks, nips and tucks if it enhances one’s self esteem. Unfortunately, because our society has literally made it so women are either feeling invisible or constantly scrutinized, the dysmorphia has caused a lack of balance in this regard, many women go to insane extremes and lose sight of reality and what they actually look like.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What do you think people will most misunderstand about your legacy?
I think people may only see a one dimensional side to me when there are actually many layers to my work and who I am in the world. While I have created a brand that helps women put themselves together on the outside, there is a deep spirit led calling for me to be a safe space for my clients where they can heal every aspect of their lives. It is easy to view fashion as superfluous or trivial but the truth is my work has taken me into the deepest levels of a woman’s heart, mind and soul. I am blessed to have the ability to lift another up while she is walking through a trial or to hold space emotionally when she has no one else to confide in. I have been honored to see the spark return to her soul when we work together and I help her discover a new confidence with a Signature Style. What many may misunderstand about my legacy is that styling is simply about clothes. It’s not. For me, style has always been a doorway and a mirror into a woman’s inner world. I dress women from the inside out. The wardrobe is surface, but the healing, the reclamation, the re-writing her story- that’s the real work. I let God lead me as I truly believe each soul that crosses my path is a divine assignment. I see women moving through an internal revolution. A reckoning. A rebirth. We are confronting things our mothers didn’t have language for. The universal struggles that don’t always make it into glossy magazine pages. The things we whisper about in bathrooms, therapy rooms, group chats, and 3 am thoughts. My legacy isn’t about making women look good. It’s about helping them see themselves again.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Julieelizastyling.com
- Instagram: Julievogelstyling
- Facebook: Julie Vogel
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