YOU CAN TOO

Reorganization, makeover gave her room to add a vanity

Stacy Smallwood is passionate about fashion. As owner and head buyer of Hampden Clothing, an upscale women’s boutique in Charleston, S.C., Smallwood travels regularly to Paris, New York, Milan and London, where she buys the most up-to-date stylish clothing and accessories for not only her store but also herself. Over time — call it an occupational hazard — she acquired a lot of clothes.

As a result, her home closet — an extra bedroom she had transformed into a large walk-in — was a disaster, nothing like the sleek, well-edited and organized shelves and displays in her fashionable King Street shop. Clothes, shoes and bags were jumbled together; she had never bothered to edit out older or unworn items. And she spent years rationalizing keeping dresses and bags by saying, “I love it and might wear it again.”

But most mornings she would wake up, stare blankly at her closet, and then, like many women, gravitate to the same pieces over and over again. “Despite being in fashion, I was struggling to get dressed every morning,” Smallwood says, “so I would often start my day in a bad mood.”

Then one day she hit a wall. “I looked around and was sick of the mess, and I knew the only way for me to get clarity of my mind was to start with my environment.”

Smallwood enlisted the help of professional organizer Julia Pinsky, founder of Pinsky Project. Pinsky, who had a long career in fashion and merchandising before beginning her organizing business, specializes, as she says, “in making See CLOSET, page 6