Ep 58: Creating Your Mindful Closet with Guest Dacy Gillespie

April 1, 2025

Love You More

Ep 58:  Creating Your Mindful Closet with Guest Dacy Gillespie

Episode summary:

In this episode, Jen is joined by personal stylist Dacy Gillespie, who shares her journey from burnout in the nonprofit world to building a career around her lifelong love of fashion. What started as a one-year break has turned into twelve years of helping other women through her business, Mindful Closet. Dacy opens up about how she defines self-care—setting up her life to avoid burnout. She walks listeners through her personal styling process, which includes an intake questionnaire, curated Pinterest boards, closet edits, shopping tutorials, and integration sessions designed to help clients find what truly feels like them.

Throughout the conversation, Dacy emphasizes the emotional side of fashion, particularly for women navigating years of societal messaging about beauty and body image. She sees herself as a guide, someone who helps clients uncover their own preferences rather than telling them what to wear. Jen and Dacy also talk about the power of social media and how curating your feed to reflect a diversity of bodies can shift how you see yourself. By showcasing real people of all shapes and sizes, Dacy aims to normalize the beauty of difference and encourage people to feel confident in clothes that reflect who they are.

More about Dacy:

After years in high-stress careers that clashed with her sensitive, introverted nature, Dacy founded Mindful Closet in 2013 to pursue a more emotionally sustainable life. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Real Simple, The Strategist, and Lifehacker, and she’s a frequent podcast guest. She lives in St. Louis with her husband and two kids. 

 Favorite Quotes:

“I wanna hear what their relationship to their body and their clothes has been over the course of their life. I wanna hear what messages they got from their mother, their grandmother, their high-school friends…” - Dacy

"I do think there is a lack of permission to choose what works for you as opposed to taking care of everyone around you” - Dacy

"If you can’t become more familiar with a diversity of bodies it’s going to be really hard for you to be able to feel good in your clothes.”- Dacy

“I’m really scared that as a society we are going to forget what a woman without modifications looks like.” - Dacy

Resources:

Mindful Closet Website
Unflattering- Dacy’s Substack
Dacy’s Instagram

 Substack
Jennifer's Instagram
McDaniel Nutrition Therapy Instagram
McDaniel Nutrition Therapy Website