Relationship

One of the ways I sidestepped the reality of 2020 was to throw a lot of energy, time and money into a relaunch.

I’d stepped away from The Happy Wardrobe in 2019 due to my annual Seattle slump, which sent me in another direction for a while. But just before Covid became a thing, I’d made it to Arizona and sunshine kickstarted me back to my love of clothes and the women who wear them.

Relaunch! New website, looking into virtual assistants for accountability (knowing the slump would hit once the …

Trigger warning. This may be upsetting, feel free to delete without reading.

Or, if you want, skip straight to this article, which explains it all. Or read on, because I was there. When you get to the end, there's a letter from our hotel.

I went to Hawaii last week.

It feels, well, wrong, to tell you I traveled. We were meant to go in 2020 – yeah, right. Then, optimistically, Jan 2021. Nope. But after vaccination, negative Covid tests and masks upon masks, we got on a plane April the 10^th.

This blog was written by Dane, a stunningly intelligent assistant I have had the privilege of working with. Her English is better than mine and she has had amazing insight into my business. I haven't changed a thing. 

I’m Dane, one of Erin’s virtual assistants. I wrote this piece as a tribute to my experiences working with The Happy Wardrobe team, as due to personal circumstances, I am soon moving onto another career. I look back at everything with fond memories, and I hope you would learn some…

In the 80's when I was around 18 and two years under the age limit to get into an Auckland nightclub, I borrowed a friend's ID, gelled and spiked my hair, added blue eyeshadow and a zebra patterned top with shoulder pads and met a boy. 

This was at Club Casablanca, also known affectionately as Catcha-wanker. I vaguely remember neon flamingos, lasers and dry ice and a tiny dance floor. We gyrated to songs like Addicted to Love, and Livin' on a Prayer. He had no sense of rhythm. 

He was interest…

The movie Working Girl came out in 1988. I was working at the time (junior copywriter at an Ad agency) and I loved it.

So did everyone else.  It was a huge success, award nominations all round.

It highlighted some important issues of the time and we all like a "rags to riches" story.

It doesn't stand up well in 2020. The hero is considered a decent guy early on simply because Tess doesn't have a horrendous #metoo experience when she's unconscious. Sigh.

As for the title...

Moving on. In the…

This does relate to clothing, so bear with me. There’s a blue pottery French bulldog on my kitchen bench (thank you Tarjay). It’s one of those jars you’re supposed to keep cookies in. I don’t eat cookies or biscuits (as they are called in New Zealand). So I keep it full of dog treats instead. My French bulldog knows that after dinner, she gets her Greenie. She will sit there, look at the treat jar, look at me, look at the treat jar, look at me. She knows that I know what to do. Sure enough, I re…

Why self-doubt got between me and my love of leopard skin.

I have always loved leopard skin. I can’t exactly tell you why (though I could definitely tell you why you like certain things), but I’ve always been drawn to it.

The first time I bought anything made of leopard skin, I think I was about 13 and it was a one piece leopard skin bathing suit. I remember arguing with my mother about it because leopard skin is a polarizing subject.

I loved that bathing suit. In hindsight, it wasn’t the mos…