Hi it’s Andrea, pronounced On-Dree-Ah. I am the founder of Fashion Your Life.

This is My Story.

As a child of the 80s and a teen of the 90s, I always knew something was inherently wrong with the world of fashion.

I watched my girlfriends compare themselves to the models in the magazines. I didn’t know what to say, so I froze instead. I wanted to tell them they were beautiful and perfect just the way they were, but I couldn’t find the words and I knew they wouldn’t be able to hear this truth… the external pressures to look a certain way were too big.

The Decision.

At 15 I made the decision to go into fashion instead of psychology. It made sense because I had been sewing from a young age, up-cycling and altering thrift finds to make them my own. Studying psychology meant more intense classes, a longer study time and way more debt. I won’t say it was the wrong decision, I have learned so much and wouldn’t be who I am today without it. I know now that I made that decision from my core wound of ‘not enough’, I let fear be the driver.

The Industry.

Once I graduated college, my dream was to start my own business but I wasn’t clear what it was and again I let fear stop me. So instead I did what any sensible 21 year old would do and got a job in the thing I was trained in, the Fashion Industry.

You can find me and a list of my industry experiences over on LinkedIn.

Fast forward 2 decades and I have worked in nearly every type of company, in many different positions and on pretty much any type of product you can conjure up. There is no denying that my knowledge of fashion, clothing and style is vast. Through it all I allowed my chameleon saboteur to shape shift and adjust who I was and how I showed up to try and fit in. I was unaware at the time that I was doing this. While I enjoyed clothing, I was constantly rotating my wardrobe to look like whatever brand I was working for at the time, all in an attempt to be liked and accepted. I was allowing external factors dictate what I looked like and how I showed up.

The Cycle.

The kicker! It wasn’t until I left the industry that I saw what it was doing to me and so many others. I couldn’t see because I was caught up in the perpetuating cycle it relies on. The industry wants you to buy more and buy frequently and it’s counting on you to feel bad about yourself. Truth be told most industries are designed to work this way. It’s called consumerism.

The fashion industry is one of the biggest perpetuators of the consumeristic cycle. Constantly feeding us new items every season, week, day, hour, minute, to buy more, more, more. It’s not only killing our self esteem and our wallets, it’s killing the planet. The industry can actually do something about this, but it requires change on a massive scale.

The Choice.

Transform the fashion industry from mass production to local customization. That’s my original intent with Fashion Your Life and every single offer has that embedded in it. The choice is always yours to make, choose to see the bigger picture and get yourself outta the cycle…

…or stay caught up in the vicious cycle of it all getting tumbled about and wondering what the heck is wrong with you! There is nothing wrong with you and it is not your fault! The fashion (and beauty) industry has been designed to make you feel small and insignificant, so you will buy more and buy often. Buying more and often may provide instant satisfaction but it doesn’t last.

Getting in touch with, fully realizing and honouring your most authentic self does last. ‘They’ do not want you to be in touch with your most authentic sense of self, because if you were you would feel good about yourself and buy less. If you knew your own signature style, big brands and companies would lose out big time.

To get there, you need to Give Yourself Permission. You need to sloooooooow down. That’s what I did.

Then I started Fashion Your Life.

Intuitive Success.

I always knew I wanted to have an online business but the leaders with the business advisory program I was in at the time told me if I didn’t have experience in the online world that I shouldn’t go there. At this point I was a business management graduate (with distinction) but I heeded their advice.

I discovered later that I already knew way more about the online world of business than most people did. I wasn’t fully listening to my intuition but I did have intuitive success with how I rolled out my business. I started my business focusing on in-person styling, I created a process based on intuition and had a handful of clients pretty quickly who were a dream to work with. To this day they are some of my favourite people, you never forget your first 😉

My Dark Night of the Soul.

Maybe you have had yours and maybe you have never heard of the saying. For me, being diagnosed with Breast Cancer at the age of 39 took me out of my business for 2 years and into my dark night of the soul. You wouldn’t have known it though, I was in survival mode. It was what I knew best after all.

Surgery, chemo, radiation… I considered giving my business up but something about it persisted, so I kept it on the side burner. My friends know me as determined, there is truth to that.

It was during my treatment that I first found anti-racism work with Layla Saad’s #MeAndWhiteSupremacy challenge on Instagram. I dove in, it was a welcome distraction, but more importantly an opportunity to learn and be a better human.

As humans, we have to go through adversity to effect change and create the life we truly want for ourselves. It doesn’t have to be that way, it just often is that way because we don’t want to get out of our comfort zones. We are creatures of comfort and habit, and change disrupts the status quo. Therefor change is not safe and we are hardwired to maintain safety at all costs as a survival mechanism.

I get it, I’m a human too.

The Second Coming.

Then the Pandemic of 2020 hit the world and every single human on the face of the earth could relate in a way like never before.

At this point, I was already looking to revive my business and bring it online, back to that original intent. At the same time, bigger more systemic issues came to the forefront. We were spending so much time online that problematic structures could no longer be denied. Swarms of new people started waking up to the realities other people faced just by being alive. Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, the Residential School graves, LGBTQIA2S+ and trans rights in particular, ableism and our use of words in everyday language… the list goes on.

So much has been uprooted, we will never be the same. People are still unlearning to relearn, we will always be learning. I believe the purpose in life is to learn. Especially to learn how to be a better ancestor.

The Leap of Faith.

While the world was on fire and the economy was being dramatically shifted I took a massive leap of faith. I stepped outta my comfort zone before I felt ready, before I wanted to and before I felt any kind of certainty. Why? Because I didn’t want to live the rest of my life repeating the same mistakes I had already made. I knew I was put here to make an impact in the world so I said yes to developing my own self worth and I started healing.

For the first time in my life I felt like I was worth it.

I finally said yes to myself first because I knew it was much bigger than me. I’ll never say it was easy. Those fears and limiting beliefs that kept popping up… while I knew I could work through them along the way, I found the help I needed because even if I thought I could, I didn’t want to do it alone.

The Deep Work.

I am what is commonly referred to as a ‘self development junkie’. While I love self development work, I eventually saw how I was looking outside of myself to solve what was wrong with me, afraid to face myself for fear of what I might find if I looked inward. Sound familiar? It’s the same pattern I was caught up in with regards to clothing and style while working in the industry. Always looking to the brand I was working with at the time to dictate my personal style, instead of looking within. After all, how we do one thing is how we do everything. I have a feeling that you may relate…

Then I jumped into the deep end, and everything changed. I knew that if I was going to get anywhere new, I needed to address the root issue head on. For the first time in my life I said yes to myself in a way that took me fully outside of my comfort zone. I committed to a year long healing journey with The Thriving Circle by Dr. Valerie, the author of Patriarchy Stress Disorder.

Saying yes to myself forced me to look at all areas of my life, specifically who I was being and how I showed up. It was the biggest, scariest, most confronting choice I have ever made for myself, and it was a full circle moment for me. Remember my decision to study fashion instead of psychology?

Going through this healing journey has allowed me to own just how much knowledge I have gathered in regards to fashion, psychology, what people wear and how people express themselves. The combination of working in the industry for 20+ years, intensive self development work and business management studies have uniquely positioned me to help others get aligned with their style, find their unique expression of self and truly stand out for all the ‘right’ reasons.

Permission to Self Express.

I’ve always had a desire to share my personal story in a way that might inspire others, but I let external pressures dictate how I represented myself and I let fears stop me from doing it anyways.

Give Yourself Permission!

This is the tagline I printed on my very first business cards those years ago.

If there is one thing that has stayed true for me through my meandering journey of life thus far, it is the belief that how you show up and express yourself matters. It needs to be in alignment with your truest sense of self, because it will get expressed in multiple ways whether you are conscious of it or not. You are the only one who needs to give yourself permission, no-one else can do that for you.

Yes it’s messy, we f*ck up, we make mistakes, we fall down. That’s all part of being a human. We just need to keep getting up, learn from the experience and do better. We only get one chance, at least in the life form we have been granted, and in the grand scheme of things, one life is not a very long time. So why hide, why pretend, why allow shame and embarrassment to stop us?

As humans we make snap judgments and unfortunately most of us are so caught up in our own worlds that we are not interested in giving many (if any) people second chances to show us who they really are. How you express yourself matters because it creates that first impression and what better way to make a first impression than by being your most authentic self in every way possible.

The reality is that most people are hiding behind some form of facade. You know… the good enough, the comfort zone or the status quo. If we stay small and insignificant we are easier to control, manipulate and sell to. It’s when we stand up, stand out and speak up that we get noticed and our work can make the impact it was meant to.

Self expression and creativity are inherently messy, awkward and flawed. It is vulnerability at it’s finest. It is an essential piece of the pie, a necessary part of being human. Our clothing speaks volumes for us and dressing in a way that compliments who we are not only feels great, it does wonders for our self esteem, our performance and our credibility. Showing up for ourselves isn’t always easy and when we know our purpose and believe in ourselves, we show up authentically and it becomes fun, sustainable, and even effortless.

Us change makers of the world are full of expression and creativity because we have no other choice, and we will take all the help we can get because it is an uphill battle and we are here to heal the world.

Fashion Your Life.

The industry is shifting, slowly. The pandemic helped accelerate the change but it still has loads of problematic behaviours. Like any massive system the fashion industry has been around for a long time and therefor has been birthed off the backs of capitalism, racism, sexism… all the isms. Don’t even get me started on what the waste it creates is doing to nature and planet earth, I’ll let you go down your own rabbit hole on that one.

Fashion Your Life is my answer to help with healing an industry. An industry so infatuated with image that it forgets about the human its serving. The very human that has their own sense of innate style when given a chance to express it. You!

I am sure many people working in the industry will avoid from ever fully admitting just how bad it really is. Why would they when their livelihoods depend on maintaining the facade? I’m creating a different livelihood for myself, one I can feel good about. There are many companies, brands and designers doing some really innovative things with the supply chain and production of fashion but we are still making and buying way too many clothes. The industry as a whole needs to change in a big way. Fashion Your Life is an important part of that change.

consume less, express more, fashion your life 💃🏼