Dress Code: On Personal Style, Embodiment & Healing Your Spirit

Your style is important to your spiritual health. Here's why.

Before we dive in: Everything on my website is 25% off through the rest of September, with code FALLSOL. Happy healing.

It is my firm belief that personal style is a key part of one’s spiritual health. The clothes we wear represent our relationship with our own bodies and how we move through the world in them. Embodiment is a cornerstone of my spiritual practice—and I think it should be for all women. To be in one’s body is to be grounded, present, and connected to all of the magic and wisdom of the Creator within. To be comfortable in one’s body, and to celebrate her with dress, adornment, and beauty, is divine. 

Fashion has always been at the center of my life. I remember how in love I was with these dangly hot-pink and blue earrings my mom let me wear for my third grade school picture. When I was 15 years old, I loved pairing my bright red cropped shirt that read “Bootylicious” in graffiti spray paint with my red Chucks and a red grommeted belt. In high school, I always wore cropped tops or shirts that hit just below the navel, and I was known for it. But I didn’t do it for boys’ attention (I was a late dating bloomer, anyway); I did it off of instinct, some intuitive (spiritual) part of me that, for reasons I can’t explain, has never liked my waist to feel forgotten about while getting dressed. 

Solar return 2022. Letting my hand-knit sweater lead the way in opening my heart chakra.

Now, as an adult, my waistline has expanded. In 2019, I lost over 20 pounds after doing my first extended juice cleanse; and, five years later, as my new healthy eating became my lifestyle, the coconuts, avocados, purple yams, and other nutrient-rich plant foods that I eat daily have added back all that weight—plus some.

Those extra inches around my waist became a foe to me, a style problem I didn’t know how to solve. Yes, I still wear my cropped tops, allowing my chubby tummy to freely absorb all of Mother Earth’s wind, sun, and water. But my relationship with my body has changed over all these years—a reflection of my spiritual growth. While I used to find satisfaction wearing cheaply-made body-con dresses that accentuated my waist, or splurging on designer items that validated my place as a fashion writer, I now desire to be more intentional with what I wear and why. I am more than a waistline.

After five years of heavy internal work, I had to ask myself, how do I want to engage with the world in this beautiful vessel of mine?

---

True style leaves an energetic imprint in the spaces and times that you are in. Your “aura” can linger in spaces you just visited, or even jump ahead in time, paving the way for your presence in the future. As David Wilcock writes, in his book The Source Field Investigations: “Every living organism stores and releases photons [light] inside its DNA, but you can remove the DNA, and the photons mysteriously still keep spiraling in that same area for up to thirty days.” As your body leaves its light throughout the world, the clothes you wear, the way you combine them, and the way they complement your body all leave a light image in the cosmos as well. Are you conscious of what you’re communicating? 

I know a couple of women who shape-shift: some days they look really intriguing in their masculine clothes, like a vest or some ball shorts, and then another day they’ll look just as captivating in a skin-tight dress or crochet bikini. They seem to be in tune with the many faces of the goddess. I know another woman who is as beautiful as a flower, and her defined color palette of reds, browns, and oranges complements her bronze skin tone; her spirituality is as entrancing as her looks. A friend of mine engages with her clothes like she engages with the world: adventurously, but with an undercurrent of elegance; her spiritual practice, like her style, is active, curious, and respectful. And there are still many others whose tattoos, jewelry, and creativity seem to perfectly fit their personalities and what I can see spiritually of them.

Solar return 2024. I intentionally chose this blue, rippled cover-up because of the way it mimics the ocean’s ripples.

For me, the clothes I wear are an active manifestation of my faith, by way of three principles: comfort, color, and sustainability. 

Comfort gives me permission to take up space—both literally, with my body, and spiritually, with my expression. When I’m wearing clothes that make me feel at ease, it encourages me to be confident, by grounding in my body and surrendering to my authentic self.

Wearing color is like medicine to my spirit. My old New York City fashion writer self wore (too much) black, gray, and navy blue; and I was, unsurprisingly, battling depression while wearing it. Black has its place, but my internal world is now so full of color and life. The colors I wear reflect the frequencies that I strive to carry within me every day, and the beauty and vibrancy of the universe as I engage with it.

My third style choice is an evolving reflection: How can I do less damage to the earth, its animals, my body, and other people with my fashion choices? I’m way more conscious now of what materials are on my body, interacting with my cells and my essence. I’m not interested in cheap, synthetic materials that can leak toxins into my skin and prevent my body from exhaling. Right now, my favorite item of clothing to wear are organic-cotton plant-dyed bike shorts. I need materials I can breathe in, that promote the free movement of chi life force energy within my womb and body. If I’m not recycling clothes by shopping vintage or thrifted, then I like to find items that are handmade or created by women and indigenous artisans, so that I can support the art of the divine feminine on this Earth. 

---

My personal style is a love letter to my body and a divine expression of the Creator’s beauty and creativity through me. Having a high vibrational sense of fashion means consciously choosing clothing that makes you feel powerful, authentic, sacred, joyous, and all the things that connect us to God.

Your dress is a code: both to the world and to yourself. It’s a guidepost on who you are and who you are becoming. The way you adorn yourself can help point the way for you—it can open the right doors, and close the right ones too. By listening to your body, to her whispers, her singing, her laughter, her pain, you can unlock a new level of intimacy with your spirit that keeps you in alignment, every stylish step of the way.