About Closet Couture
Closet Couture is a digital fashion media brand that reaches influential women who love to shop. Members create online closets filled with clothes from their real and fantasy wardrobes. Since its launch in Santa Monica, CA in October, 2008, Closet Couture has become women's go to for online shopping and wardrobe management paired with content about fashion trends.
The Closet Couture Story
I had the idea for Closet Couture in 2006, after a cantankerous, style-challenged year living in Los Angeles. As a child of New England, I grew up under the straight-laced, headband wearing, kilt-obsessed (with the pins to fasten) preppy brigade. LL Bean snowflake sweaters were worn without irony. After a prim Connecticut education, I moved to New York and began interviewing for jobs in publishing wearing conservative suits (Jones New York), square toed loafers (sans penny) and panty hose (believe it.) Born of a sheltered sartorial existence, the process proved to be a much-needed turning point for me; particularly after a future colleague at Random House confided that her only hesitation on hiring me had been my hose. I was not born with the fashion gene nor was acquiring it going to be easy.
Marriage brought me west to Los Angeles where work in television gave me further fashion friction. I resorted to all black, thinking surely this universally safe uniform was coast-agnostic. Unfortunately, the only people who wear head-to-toe black in LA are catering waiters and trainers. After unassisted shopping forays where flushed cheeks accompanied bashful returns, I speed-dialed tolerant New York friends who walked me through climate-appropriate, industry friendly separates that could get me through the next month in Hollywood without embarrassment. Fully aware that these kind amigos would not be available to me 24/7, an idea was born. How could I connect the mutually fashion-interested with one another for quick, easy tips and advice no matter what the predicament, without shame or excruciating phone bills?
Closet Couture was hatched by me, someone flailing in fashion’s cruel arctic breeze, for everyone living under the big tent of universal style; challenged and gifted alike.
Peruse, shop, connect. Getting dressed should be fun!
In allegiance to style,
Christine Elia
Founder
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