Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.

This online space has been around in one form or another since 2010, it focuses on making, creativity and living a curious life, plus a lot of clothing.

Some of the projects I've worked on in the past 10+ years include...

Talking About Clothes with Holly Chayes

An interview podcast that's all about clothing (and also, not *really* about clothing at all). Find all the details and listen to conversations about comfort, style, change and shopping here. Or search for Talking About Clothes with Holly Chayes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Who Wears Who?

A personal style coaching and content practice devoted to helping you own and wear your clothes intentionally, instead of being worn by them. Discover your own style guidance, and learn more about the practice of intentional style at WhoWearsWho.com

The Self-Made Wardrobe Project

Predecessor to Who Wears Who, a year-long challenge in 2014/2015 where I only wore clothes I made. That year would have been a lot easier if the clothes had magically made themselves. Learn more about The Self-Made Wardrobe Project and explore the archives here.

The Shawl Geometry Book Series

Enough shawl shapes to keep you knitting for a lifetime. A multi-year exploration of math, shape and space in knitting, where I documented traditional shawl shaping, and iterated on those traditions to create new recipes of shawl shaping. Ultimately this lead to 75+ shapes, and 400+ pages of common and uncommon shawl shaping instructions. This project was inspired by a dozen individual shawl designs, each encapsulating a love of geometric lace design. You can find The Shawl Geometry Series here.

 

Thank you for being here with me. –Holly

 
 
 

Don’t ditch the revision process!

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30 Mar 2025
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TL;DR Don’t give up when edits get hard. You might save a friend on a deadline. Once upon a time I did a lot of sewing – professionally and personally. And because I did a fair number of weird projects, there wasn’t always a store bought pattern I could turn to. So I did a lot of pattern drafting too. Unfortunately pattern paper is one of the few things you cannot get late at night in NYC. If you know nothing about sewing, all you need to know for this story is: 1) pattern pieces on paper are the same size as the final piece. For example, if you’re sewing a pair of pants you need pattern pieces the length of a leg. 2) Pattern pieces can get large and cumbersome. You typically buy pattern paper as a wide roll of paper. But you don’t have to use traditional pattern...
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Keep it healthy: setting revenue goals based on how much money you need…

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28 Mar 2025
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Might as well make your goals good. If you were to define how much money you needed, what would that number include? A couple notes before we begin: When you work in a creative or freelance field, money tends to be a tricky topic – can you make enough? When you work in entrepreneur and founder circles, money tends to be a tricky topic in a different way – how can you keep as much money in the business as possible? When you work in small businesses, money tends to be a tricky topic in a third way – how was this month? But regardless of the field, you do need to set revenue goals / forecasts / plans / expectations. Figuring out your numbers always seems to start with the same question: how much do you need? How much money do you need? On the surface it’s a straightforward...
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To-Do Lists: Do you write things down just to cross them off?

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24 Mar 2025
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I like having a record of events. I love the productivity meme split between “putting things you’ve already on your to-do list just to cross them off is stupid” and “putting things you’ve already done on your to-do list is genius.” It’s the cousin of the “to back plan or not to back plan” split in the planner world. (Back planning is just where you go back after events have already passed and add them to your planner.) I think I love the split because it gets to the heart of the question: what is a to-do list for? What is a planner for? Obviously they are both tools to get things done – to plan the project that is life. But I also use my as an imperfect record of events. When I get to the end of the day (or week) and ask: where did today go?! I...
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About – Holly Chayes

I’m Holly, a style and wardrobe consultant.
In short, I fix broken wardrobes.

In long(er), I work with you to bring your clothing into alignment with who you are, and who you feel you are meant to be.

More about me...

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