Episode 126 - Sensuous Style Upgrades: Create A Wardrobe of Beauty & Joy

Written By Mary Lofgren
 

  • Mary

    Host

    Hello and welcome to the Come to your Senses podcast. I'm your host, embodiment-based coach, Mary Lofgren. Here we explore how to live bravely and beautifully through a lifestyle of embodiment. You'll hear gems to empower you around mindset, mindfulness, somatic psychology and neuroscience, as well as beauty, food, style and the art of slow living to meet your soul through the senses. I am so happy that you're here. Let's begin. Hello, beautiful listeners, and welcome to Come to your Senses. Welcome to today's episode, which explores one of the most delicious, fun, expressive aspects of being a sensual being, and that is the way that we express ourselves through our style. Here at Come to your Senses, my goal is to inspire you to live with more ease art, expression and embodiment. And the thing about style is that you are already living with art and expression every single day. What we wear, how much skin we choose to show or not, how you walk down the street all of it is expressive of who you are. And even if you're a person who thinks, oh, I don't pay any attention to fashion or style, that is still a style. You are expressing the fact that this is a part of your life that maybe you don't care that much about, and I was researching in preparation for today's episode, sensual style and everything that came up in the Google image search was just such an eye roll. It was all just so overtly sexual, and there's nothing wrong with that, believe me. I love a good Miami number when you go to Miami. I freaking love Miami. It's one of my favorite places on the planet, and when you go to Miami, there's all these amazing shops where you can just buy the most fabulously slutty neon bedazzled garments and I love them so much. And yet, being sensual and I equate sensuality and being a sensual person with simply being an embodied person and someone who is attuned to their embodiment through pleasure, beauty and enjoying and including the senses as a guiding force in how we live our lives and expressing that through style, as though the way that you dress and adorn was like a homing device for more of that to be generated within your being because of how you feel, and more of that to be attracted into your life. That is a sophisticated art and it's something that we are going to explore in several juicy gems today. This episode was inspired by the retreat that I am going to be teaching on September 9th called Show Girl, charm School. Own your magnetism, play with power and live your legend. And this retreat is not just how to perform burlesque and conjure your inner brazen showgirl, but it's how to bring that quality of expression, bold power, erotic aliveness and rip roaring fun To Every aspect of your life. When I started performing burlesque, there was no area of my life that did not dramatically change and improve. I was better at my job, I was more courageous and more aware of what I wanted and brave enough to ask for it in dating. I started earning more because I knew and understood my value on a deeper level, and my style completely shifted. And so, if you are ready to merge your femininity and your feminism, join the Red Lipstick Revolution at schoolofsensualliving.com/showgirl All one word to take advantage of some of the early bird bonuses and $100 off your tuition. Schoolofsensuallivingcom/showgirl. I will see you there.

    So I'll preface today's gems by saying that if you hear a subtle snoring in the background, that is my sweet foster dog, bertha. Last week we had Butler, who was sighing in the background, and this week I am fostering the sweetest little Boston Terrier pit bull mix named Bertha. She snores even while awake. So if you hear some subtle snoring or heavy breathing in the background. Please excuse Bertha, as she is our style support animal today. So we're going to start with quote by Coco Chanel Fashion fades Only style remains the same. I'm also going to read to you a paragraph from the Signature Style workbook, which is a workbook that I share with clients when we do their personal style session. Style can often feel intimidating, but at its essence, style is simply devotion to beauty, made visible More than how we dress. Style is how we express. Another quote that I love from Diana Vreeland is I loathe narcissism but I approve of vanity, and I love that quote because sometimes I pray I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but I pray for my loving higher power universe, god, whatever you call it, for the parts of myself and my character that stand in the way of my basic goodness, as they would say in Buddhism shining through, and I'll say please clear any obstacles to my basic goodness, remove these parts of my care, except my vanity, because I love my vanity so much. I love adoring and adorning my body, my face, my hair. In fact, the other day I was on vacation with some really good friends from high school who have known me a really long time two weeks ago and I was getting ready to drive home and my drive home was about nine hours and I was getting ready and I went down to the beach one final time to dip my toes in the water and as we were walking back, one of my oldest, dearest friends said to me you know, mary, you're probably the only person I know who prepares for a nine hour drive, but putting on a beautiful pink dress with leopard clogs and a mohair cardigan and does her makeup and curls her hair. And the thing about that is that adornment gives me an energetic attunement. That, to me, is all style is is. It is expression of energy and a way of lifting my energy through beauty, because I don't always necessarily feel good when I look good, but I always, 100% of the time, feel bad when I look bad. And one might put me on the couch to analyze aspects of my self-esteem and, you know, conflating my self-worth with beauty, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, when my hair is coiffed and my lips are glossy and my outfit is prime, I feel amazing. That's very different than how I feel when I'm wearing dirty pajamas with stringy hair. It's just a fact, and so I share this with you because everything that we do here at Come to your Senses is driven by feeling.

    First, and that is our first gem. A quote that I often share from the Buddha is that everything in life arises from the tip of your intention, and so when you are imagining your vision, expressing yourself as essential being through your style, that is the mindset that I want to encourage you to carry into your vision is that perhaps the old paradigm way of dressing for your sensuality and to express your sensuality might be to look attractive according to someone else's standards outside of you, but the sensual living perspective on style is that beauty is a pathway to our divinity and it is a way that we bring heaven down to earth, and that whenever you choose to express your sensuality through how you dress, you are asserting your erotic aliveness. My ancestors, some of my ancestors, came over on the Mayflower Yikes, so we've got some long lineage of Puritan culture in my bloodline and suppression of life force, which is what erotic energy is, and so this first gem is about knowing that when you choose to express your erotic aliveness, your life force, through how you dress, you are setting the sacred free. Okay, that was our most abstract gem in the collection. Now we're going to move into some of the more practical elements and we'll start with fabrics so velvet, peekaboo lace, a dress with peekaboo eyelets, satin, pure cotton linen. Do you notice, as I'm saying, these types of fabrics, the yumminess that is pouring through my voice? Because sensuality is all about engaging our senses, obviously, and these fabrics have such a yummy touchability to them that when touched by another person, but also just when draped across your skin, naturally give your nervous system a cue of comfort which helps to relax your body and relax your mind and settle you more deeply into your senses through this kind of subtle, subconscious cue.

    The next gem is having a sensual statement piece. So let's say, for example, you have a gorgeous lace top or bodysuit that's like completely see-through. If you were to wear that with, say, a leather pencil skirt and some Christian Louboutin five-inch pedestal heels, that's gonna be a lot of intensity. It's a lot of intensity for you, it's a lot of intensity for your admirers and you might be a super intense person. And if you are, rock on you, leo's Sun, scorpio, moon, scorpio, rising you. But for someone like me Virgo Scorpio, rising, lieberman A lace camisole is something I would pair underneath a blazer, with maybe a cigarette pant, a chic pair of flats and maybe an unassuming earring. And what I'm doing in the creation of this outfit is I'm taking this one very bold piece and I'm coupling it with less bold pieces, almost unassuming or coy pieces, that allow the bold piece to actually say what it's here to say. So it's not in competition with any of my other pieces. Another way to play with statement and really catching someone's eye is through lipstick. So, for example, let's say you're wearing emerald earrings and they've got this beautiful like I'm thinking of like an oversized costume emerald that has like a beautiful rich green, a complimentary color to that might be a hot pink or a rich violet, and pair that with just a little bit of mascara so that your lipstick isn't competing with your eyeliner and the emerald can really bounce off of the lilac or violet lipstick. Oh, extraordinary. That said, you can rock an ice blue eyeliner with violet lipstick and an emerald earring, if that is what your sensual style and your sensual animal expresses, as no problem. I encourage you to be as wild and wooly as you want to be in how you express yourself through your style, even if that means it doesn't work out. You know that's.

    Another gem is that great style, in my experience, comes from a shit ton of experimentation and a lot of things that just don't look right. I have been loving lately this app called Combine C-O-M-B-Y-N-E, and it's an app where you can upload a whole variety of items and images and other people who've uploaded hundreds of images, and where you can just pair and make outfits. And there are challenges, like I recently did a challenge called Coronation Day, where I created an outfit worthy of going to a coronation party. I swear to God, it just brings me so much joy, and what's great about it is that I can pair a Maxi Tutu skirt with a Burberry Blazer and see how those two would look together against a rhinestone British flag clutch purse, and so that's a great way to experiment and it's really helped me be more adventurous with my style. I'm sure that there are dozens of apps out there like this. This is just the one that I'm enjoying right now, but I'll keep you posted as I discover more and that I'm so glad that I mentioned the clutch purse, because that brings us to our next gem, which is the art of accessorizing. So clutch purses, for example, are something that so easily brings a lavish, glamorous, color-filled beauty to an otherwise ordinary day and ordinary outfit. Having an off-the-shoulder top where you're showing a little bit of your shoulder, and a statement necklace that draws attention to your shoulder and really says who you are, magnificence. You could take a buttoned-up suit and if you just add a gorgeous green peep-toe kitten heel, hello, amazing. You instantly go from corporate to catwoman. And I've told this story on the podcast many times, but the first time I ever got a corporate job, the whole reason I got the job well, maybe not the whole reason, the reason was really actually because of my presentation, but the impact piece was that I wore a red suit. This was my third interview. It was the final interview. It was a job I had wanted more than anything in the world and still today, 20-some years later, the person who interviewed me says that she remembers that red suit. So do not fear, my corporate friend, to express and share your passion and your personality through these tiny accents.

    Well, in my case, it was a red suit, so it was a glaring accent, but these tiny accents, like a green heel, can take you from drone to diva and the final gem in bringing more sensuality into your style is inspired by my friend and teacher, joe Weldon, who wrote an entire book on the history of leopard print and the way in which leopard print has this lineage of subversion. So, across time, leopard print has been a way of expressing stature. It's also been a way of expressing a primal, raw sensuality. And you don't have to go full leopard print dress. In fact, I personally don't wear a lot of leopard print in just kind of my all over items. But I love a leopard print heel, a leopard print clutch, purse, even a leopard print mini skirt or pencil skirt. Leopard print, because it has that neutral palette, can be matched to almost anything you know I think about. Once again, I don't know why I'm obsessed with the color green today, but let's say I'm wearing a green dress with a pencil skirt, kind of a shape Pair that with a leopard pump. Oh my Goddess, it's like pure femininity, primal power come to life In the final gem. My loves that I want to share with you comes from one of my teachers, my great teachers on style, and her name is Zipporah Solomon. Zipporah was featured in the movie Advanced Style, which, if you haven't seen that movie Run, do Not Walk. It is a life changer and this erotic aliveness that we're talking about here, which has only a tiny percentage to do with sex and has everything to do with the truth inside of you being seen and verbalized and expressed outside of you without apology. Advanced Style is like the textbook for this way of life, and Zipporah, in a recent class that she taught called the Art of Dressing that I attended, said she was talking about hats and she has a vast collection of accessories and hats, and she said you want to stand out, forget tits and ass, wear a hat. And so I leave you with that, my friends, that having standout style might just be simpler than you think, and if you enjoyed what you heard here today, know that this is the tip of the tassel of what you will experience when you join us. For Showgirl Charm School, go to schoolofsensualliving.com/showgirl or click the link below this episode. As always, thank you so much for listening, liking, subscribing and reviewing, and I will see you in our next episode. For coaching classes and community in creating a lifestyle of embodiment, head to schoolofsensualliving.com. There you'll find a free video series on how to reduce anxiety and intercept the stress response through powerful, confident body language. Head to schoolofsensualliving.com/confidence to watch your first video today.

I write to you this morning from the comfort of an oversized white oxford shirt that is half buttoned/half tied at the waist. Black booty shorts adorn my derriere, and cozy slippers kiss my feet with every step.

The casual elegance of this ensemble gives me a sense of authority and elegance, and this is the essence of today’s episode my friend:

Style is a somatic experience. 

Authentic, expressive, sensuous style can change your energy from dismal to diva in no time at all.

Feeling sensually radiant and alive in what you wear changes how you think, how you feel,  how you show up, and who you think you are.

In today’s episode you’ll discover gems on: 

  • How to engage with your body in a more intimate, expressive way through style

  • How to engage the pleasure of the senses in how you dress

  • How to make an unmistakable, unforgettable impression with your style

Style can feel intimidating, but at its essence, style is simply devotion to beauty made visible.

Let’s swap the self help books for a bespoke beaded necklace and see what happens…

 

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Mary Lofgren
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