#GIRLBOSS (17 page)

My definition of what’s cool may be a rare one. It’s not about being popular, or waking up with a pizza spinning on the turntable like an ’80s teen movie. Being mean won’t make you cool, being rich won’t make you cool, and having the right clothes, while it may help, won’t make you cool. It’s cool to be kind. It’s cool to be weird. It’s cool to be honest and to be secure with yourself. Cool is the girl at a party who strikes up a conversation with you when she notices you don’t seem to know many people there. It’s that vibe that I always wanted Nasty Gal models to have. I want our customer to look at Nasty Gal and see someone who could be her friend modeling the clothes. Or even better, I want her to project herself into the lifestyle and attitude, soaking it up to add to her arsenal of amazing qualities of which having great clothes is only one small part.

Own Your Style

The last thing I’d ever subscribe to are fashion rules. However, I do think that you should put effort into what you wear. Clothing is ultimately the suit of armor in which we battle the world. When you choose your clothing right, it feels good. And there’s nothing shallow about feeling good. Owning
your style, however, is much more about your attitude than it is about what’s on your back. But don’t underestimate the transformational possibilities that getting dressed can afford you.

While I have the freedom to wear whatever I want at work, I dress the part. In fact, everyone at Nasty Gal does. When I’m confident in what I am wearing, it makes me feel more confident throughout the day. Granted, I could probably negotiate a deal in my pajamas, but I’m a lot more dangerous in a pair of leather pants and boots that could hurt a fool.

Some girls can pull off a trend as though they just rolled out of bed, grabbed the first thing they saw, and skipped out the door without even giving the mirror a sideways glance. When I try to wear too much of a trend, I end up looking the opposite—like I spent way too much time in front of the mirror. It’s important to know which trends are for you and which ones you should watch walk down the runway and right on by.

We’ve all seen girls who constantly tug at the hem of their dress, readjust straps, and mess with their hair. If you’re not confident, no dress, no matter how smoking-hot it is, will solve that problem for you. If I see you in a club hobbling like an injured baby colt, I want to push you over. I
will
push you over
.
And, if I can push you over, you’re not owning anything; and that’s what I want you to do, #GIRLBOSS: Own your style like you own your used car. This means wearing what you like and what makes you feel good. And it means getting dressed for yourself—not your boyfriend, not your friends, not your
parents. Here’s one thing the fashion industry probably won’t tell you: Confidence is more attractive than anything you could put on your body.

And that brings me to my other point: Owning your style sometimes takes effort, and it’s okay to expend effort on how you look. For a long time women wore only dresses and spent hours on their hair because that is what society mandated. But now we don’t have to do it—we
get
to do it. Being a girl is fun. We can experiment with our look as much as we want. I remember being a little girl and watching with fascination as my mom used an eyelash curler. The key is making sure you’re doing what you want, not doing things because your boyfriend can’t stand to look at you without any makeup on. If every other girl you know is wearing a push-up bra and you do not want to wear a push-up bra, then by all means, do not wear one. But they’re there if you need ’em.

There are certain common themes that I hear when I talk to Nasty Gal customers all over the world. “I was the only girl who didn’t shop at the mall,” a lot of them say. “My town was so boring that just putting effort into my look was seen as crazy.” And to that, I always say, “Hell yes.” Putting in effort is exactly what you should be doing. You should get dressed for your life. I don’t care if the only place you have to go is the post office: Get dressed, #GIRLBOSS, and let your freak flag fly.

PORTRAIT OF A #GIRLBOSS:

Ashley Glorioso, Senior Stylist at Nasty Gal

When I was younger, I hated being in school. I hated everything about it, so I knew that whatever I did wasn’t going to involve any extra schooling past high school—I couldn’t get out of that place fast enough. I thought I was going to work with animals, but then realized I was too emotionally attached to them, so needed to work with something that couldn’t get hurt or die. Clothes. Perfect!

I’ve been pedal to the medal ever since and I have no intention of stopping! I started working retail in high school to earn some cash of my own, and I realized that there was so much to the retail world. I worked for small boutiques at first, and for pennies, but learned so much about the industry that it made my time there priceless. I worked at a small store in Westlake Village, California; I was only sixteen but running the store. I was comfortable being in charge at such a young age. Baby boss lady!

I learned about everything from merchandising to receiving, and even made sure I learned about stuff
that I wasn’t even interested in. I felt as if the more I learned about retail, the more options I would have later on. I think it’s good to have more than one skill set in the fashion industry. A lot of companies require you to wear many different hats, so the more experience you can gain, the better!

I started styling for fun on a friend’s lookbook shoot when I was eighteen, and thought,
Wait, I like this! And I’m decent at it!
I was shocked people did this for work. That was when I started to pay way more attention to what was going on in fashion—delving into every season of shows and every magazine I could get my hands on. I studied the makeup artists, the hairstylists, the photographers, the clothing stylists . . . I learned how everyone had a different eye, and how it was all art.

I think fashion is the ever-undulating industry, and style is something that a person has inherently without really trying. I went through so many weird phases throughout my life. I was never a great vintage shopper, but now I am well versed in the magic of a good tailor, so I don’t hesitate to buy vintage because I know that I can rework that baby into utter perfection. Nowadays my style is all over the place and I try not to fit into any one category. Some days I feel very gypsy and wear a long skirt with a weird top, a long
vest, a furry vest over that, and 2,056 necklaces and rings. Other days I wear my boyfriend’s ripped T-shirt and some huge jeans and do not give two fucks. Sometimes I wear a frilly dress with socks and Mary Janes, and other times a suit. So be it. I like to keep people guessing. Hell, keep me guessing!

Above anything, I think clothes should make you feel good about yourself! I can’t imagine anything worse than a girl trying to fit into a certain trend and then feeling uncomfortable with what she’s wearing. What’s the point!? Who cares if everyone is wearing boyfriend jeans? If you feel like a chunky dude with poopy pants, take them off! You should walk out of the house and be thinking,
Damn, I look good
.

I’m super lucky that I can do what I love every day, so that keeps my creative juices flowin’ like wine. I also keep myself busy with freelance projects on the weekends so I never feel as if I’m not creating something. Sometimes I need a creative break, so I lie on my couch for hours at a time watching
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
. This usually happens after I have styling dreams where I keep saying “cute” over and over again.

I never assisted anyone; I just gave it my all. I always networked with anyone whom I met in the industry, I believed that I could do it, and people believed
me. Get your hustle on. My uncle always instilled the importance of work ethic in me from a young age. I asked for things and he always said, “If you want something, you have to
earnnnnn
it!” I thought it was the most annoying statement ever. Yet the older I got, the more I realized I could get a job, make my own money, and not have to ask for things. So I did. And it was so satisfying!

Obviously, the older I got, it wasn’t just about buying things, but not wanting to be the girl living paycheck to paycheck, as in, “Can I pay my rent this month?” I wanted to live comfortably and not be stressed about finances. I also wanted to be able to do nice things for my family. I knew that they appreciated even the small things, like my being able to pick up the tab at dinner. The more I accomplish in life, the more I realize that I am not a complete and utter failure, and I’m actually proud of myself! I had no idea what I wanted to do out of high school, so to be where I am now . . . that’s
somethin’.

The Chances

Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.

—Edgar
Cayce

W
hat are the chances?

That’s a good question.

More than a half-million new businesses are started per month in the United States alone, but 80 percent of them will fail within the first year and a half. So what are the chances that mine would still be alive and thriving seven years later? You could do some calculations, plot some graphs, and determine the exact probability, but I think we all agree by now that that’s not my jam! The answer, no matter how you spin it, is that the chances were that of a snowball in hell.

I have a tattoo that reads “1%.” It’s something I got years ago with Gary when he was already my ex, but it was our humorous homage to the ideals of the one-percenters. In the wake of a bunch of bad press, the American Motorcyclist Association once claimed that 99 percent of its members were regular citizens and only 1 percent were outlaws. The gnarliest of the gnarly outlaw bikers latched on to that, calling themselves one-percenters. While we weren’t outlaws, Gary and I identified with their ethos that when you are a one-percenter, you live your life your way. Currently, the popular meaning of the so-called 1 percent refers to Wall Street, and that ethos is completely different. This idiomatic shift has become especially ironic for me, but the tattoo hasn’t lost any of its significance. It’s a reminder of how unlikely it was that I’d ever find myself seated in the corner office.

In a 2011
TED Talk
in San Francisco, author and speaker Mel Robbins talked about how the chances that you are you
are about 1 in 400 trillion. (Yes, that’s a four hundred followed by twelve zeros.) This takes into account the chance of your parents meeting out of all the people on the planet, the chance of them reproducing, the chance of you being born at the exact moment that you were, and every other wildly improbable factor that goes into each individual person. The whole point of her crazy calculation was that we should take the sheer improbability of our own existence as a kick in the butt to get out of bed in the morning. If you hear this fact as discouraging—that you’re only one in billions—then flip the script. You are one in billions! Someone has to succeed, so it might as well be you.

I didn’t stick around high school long enough to be voted “Most Likely to” anything, especially since my Subway polo, Dickies, and I looked about as far away from Most Likely to Succeed as you could possibly get. Anyone looking for a sure bet, in business or in life, would never have put their money on me. But that didn’t dissuade me from betting on myself. In the end I beat the odds. Now, whenever I’m faced with improbable situations, I remind myself that if I really want something badly enough, I have it within myself to make it happen.

My entire path is littered with my defying every piece of advice I’ve ever been given. I’m giving you carte blanche to pick and choose from the advice outlined in this book. Hell, ignore it all if you want. But don’t ignore this: You create the world, blink by blink. It is entirely yours to discover and yours to create.

That’s the number one thing, perhaps even the only thing, you can absolutely count on. Regardless of what your dreams are, if you listen only to those around you, the chances of your dreams coming true are very small. The world loves to tell you how difficult things are, and the world’s not exaggerating. And that’s a real bummer. But, here’s the real shit: You can’t have it all, and nothing comes easy. You will make sacrifices and compromises, get let down and let other people down, fail and start over, break some hearts, take some names, and learn to pick up and continue when your own heart gets broken. But difficult doesn’t mean impossible, and out of the bajillions of things in this universe that you can’t control, what you
can
control is how hard you try, and if or when to pack it in.

Paul recently reminded me of a Nasty Gal barbecue when, unprompted, he took the hose and began to spray me with water. I grabbed the nearest thing I could—a hamburger patty—and threw it square at his chest, knocking the wind out of him. He was wearing a white shirt, and it left a big meat stain right on the front. So when life hits you with something unexpected, you have to be prepared to hit right back—and leave your own smear in the process.

In a now famous commencement speech at Stanford University, Steve Jobs urged the graduating class to “stay hungry. Stay foolish.” Never let go of your appetite to go after new ideas, new experiences, and new adventures. Compete with yourself, not with others. Judge yourself on what is your personal best and you’ll accomplish more than you could ever
have imagined. Life stops for no one, so keep moving. Stay awake and stay alive. There’s no AutoCorrect in life—think before texting the universe. Breaking the rules just for fun is too easy—the real challenge lies in perfecting the art of knowing which rules to accept and which to rewrite. The more you experiment, take risks, and make mistakes, the better you’ll know yourself, the better you’ll know the world, and the more focused you’ll be.

And once you’ve found success, don’t stop. It’s not about being insatiable; it’s about not resting on your laurels. This crazy, loopy universe that we live in is pretty entertaining, and we’re only here for a short amount of time. #GIRLBOSSes make it count. Look up and look around, and if you’re not finding something inspiring, then you’re probably not looking hard enough. Remember, I touched every piece of clothing in those thrift stores. You have to do that with your life.

An advantage of being naïve is being able to believe in oneself when no one else will. I was dumb enough and stubborn enough to pour everything I had into a business called Nasty Gal and to tune out people who tried to tell me I was doing it wrong. Had I stopped at the first catty eBay seller who tried to crush my spirit, I’d probably still be peddling shoes that I’d never be able to afford to wear. If you start listening, you should find that your heart has known what’s up all along.

This short life of mine thus far has been a pretty fantastic ride, there’s no doubt about that. I’m resolved to making
sure that doesn’t change anytime soon. When I think about the future, I know that the most fantastic things are too awesome to even imagine today. Great entrepreneurs are like Indiana Jones: They take leaps before seeing the bridge because they know that if they don’t, someone else will get that holy grail. That holy grail is yours for the taking.

Bad bitches are taking over the world. When I walk into the Nasty Gal offices, it’s clear: Busting your butt isn’t just for the wallflowers anymore. We’ve arrived, and we’re killing it.

There’s a chance for you, #GIRLBOSS. So take
it.