Simply Fashionating
Welcome to A Fashionating Life. Encouraging women in their 40s and beyond to feel empowered by fashion in their everyday lives. Inspiring women to embrace their personal style and see clothes as a powerful tool in the story they tell the world. A Fashionating Life explores the intersection of real-life and editorial inspiration for real women with plenty of life experience, confidence, and style.
Our Story
A FASHIONATING START
Born in New York but raised in Southern California, Ellen developed her own sartorial point of view by digging for treasures in the thrift and vintage stores of Melrose, downtown, and other parts of LA. She wore many of these finds with her mother’s 60’s and 70’s pieces, and accessorized with her Nana’s antique jewelry. Her passion for creating unique looks was further fueled when she saw Pretty in Pink, a movie she fell in love with when she was just 12 years old.
Meanwhile, 1600 miles away in a tiny rural east Texas town, the same film gave Jennifer validation of her own creative and curated look, reimagining some of her mother’s vintage clothing, with a mix of handmade items, discount finds and classic preppy pieces off the rack. Before that, she corralled her elementary school girlfriends into starting their own “fashion house” and held regular design meetings on the playground to share their original creations.
Neither could have been farther geographically from NYC’s heart of fashion, or each other, but both studied trends and styles from afar, poring over fashion magazines – each of them the only one of their peers with subscriptions to Vogue and Elle, not Teen Beat – and dreaming of one day having a closet full of designer creations, developing their own signature looks, and sharing their passion with other like-minded souls.
A FASHIONATING STORY
Ellen studied marketing at a fashion school in LA. Her career included working in merchandising for a popular activewear company, repping a popular shoe line, and overseeing the launch of a line of watches by a well-known clothing designer. It was an exciting time for Ellen as she was living her dream of a life that revolved around fashion.
Jennifer’s life took a political turn as she embarked on a 15 year tenure at the Texas State Capitol. All the while, fashion played a big part in her life as she built a career wardrobe set apart from the cookie-cutter styles that frequented the corridors. In order to feed her fashionable yearnings, Jennifer began selling a private label out of New York at quarterly trunk shows to fashion-loving friends and colleagues desperate for an “outside the box” work look.
A love of the arts brought these two sartorial souls together. And after years of shopping together and for the other, the pair decided to launch a style blog.
A FASHIONATING LIFE
….isn’t a shopping site. Its creators aren’t outfitted by designers or personal shoppers. They don’t have stylists and they aren’t ladies who lunch. They are are working moms of boys who believe in form AND function, style AND substance, and in the power of a fabulous shoe. They have means but love a good deal and believe budget trends compliment couture classics. They have an affinity for the secondary market, whether that is designer consignment discoveries or vintage finds. They believe fashion is art and should always find a loving home. And they believe style is an investment and an extension of one’s personal brand.
While the two of them have their own unique and individual styles – Jennifer is classic with a modern twist and Ellen is modern with a classic touch – the two friends and collaborators unite around the need for a fashion point of view for women in their 40s with well-established careers, who may or may not have children, who believe that design rules based only on a women’s age should be ignored.
Regardless of lifestyle and budget, A Fashionating Life is about wearing clothing as self-expression and living life stylishly, no matter where it takes you.
A Little More About Us
We Are All Those Women: Breast Cancer Beyond October
Approximately 26,000 women 45 and younger were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020. I was one of them. . . . Literally the day before my 46th birthday I got the call that I had Triple Negative Invasive Ductile Carcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer,...
Where’s Waldo? I Mean Jennifer
If you’re scrolling through our social media posts or blog, you may see a noticeable absence of yours truly. Never fear, though. I am still here. I just don’t look like me. There’s no easy way to say it, so I’ll just rip the bandaid off: I have cancer. I am...
The Flaws of Friendship Interview: How We Make our Friendship and Business Work
We recently gave an interview to a wonderful podcast and blog called The Flaws of Friendship, a space for women to celebrate friendships as imperfect as they may be! When Stacey sent it to us to approve, we could not wait for it to go live. This piece could not have...
Welcome New Faces – We Hit 1,000 Followers!
Hello! Welcome if you are new to AFL and welcome back if you were already following us. As we recently broke the 1k follower mark and have a lot of new faces stopping by to say hello, we thought we would do a little recap about ourselves and our goals for A...
Pivot Points: Life Lessons from the Working World
We knew our blog would have a different POV because of our age. As much as we do not think there is anything about our styles that says, “40 Something,” our real-life experiences, both personally and professionally, do bring a certain “40 Something” perspective to our...
Better an Oops Than a What If
That is something that I am still wrapping my head around. If I cannot do something perfectly, the first time, then I do not even try. And mistakes? Forget about it. I cannot make them. The one place I have always been confident was in fashion. From junior high until...
Younger Girl’s Game: Hold My Beer – A Fashionating Life Turns 1
Isn't this a younger girl's game? There it was. Our first time coming face-to-face with one of the many negative comments we were so afraid of receiving. Adding to the potential devastation was the fact that it came from someone we have a personal and professional...
Life is Fashionating with Influential Magazine
We are thrilled to share that A Fashionating Life was featured in one of our favorite publications, InFluential Magazine. To view the article, click here or read below. “Do women of age become less and less of value? Of course! If you’re talking about the motion...
Pretty in Pink
I don’t generally do pink with my red…. And when I do, it’s usually an orangey-pink, more of a coral – along the lines of this year’s Pantone Color of the Year, “Living Coral.” But when a dear friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, I set out to find something to...
Royal Influence
Like practically every other fashionable woman on the planet, I love Kate Middleton’s style and try and copy it as much as possible. And while I don’t have her waistline, budget or overall lifestyle, I find ways to inject her style into mine. When I saw her coming off...
