I’m Erin Flynn, Cladwell Founder
Welcome! I’m the founder of the personal styling app called Cladwell.
Here is where I frequently write, curate, and share honest stories about what it’s like to build a business, live with intention and style.
Transparency lives here. So glad you made it.
on my mind this week…
What 2020 Taught Me
We cannot unsee what we witnessed in 2020.
As an Enneagram 4 (the individualist) who runs a sustainable fashion company, I am passionate about what makes each of us unique. Yet despite my inherent attraction to it, the pandemic revealed the trouble with a society hell-bent on individuality.
The year 2020 shined a spotlight on our global interdependence, and it wasn't pretty.
Doctors and nurses were short on the very supplies needed to save lives. The individual’s choice to hoard toilet paper left their neighbors with none. There was even a pickle shortage thanks to a glass jar supply chain delay. The ripple effects of personal choices were felt around the world.
Illusions of individuality were shattered, revealing what has always been true; we are meant for community. Not only do our personal choices have power, but they can also be a matter of life and death.
Just like pandemics start with one person, movements start with one voice.
The crowds that filled streets in protest of racial injustice were the catalyst to policy changes happening now. We are individuals inextricably linked to each other. Ignoring our connectedness is foolish.
Fashion activists have struggled to make this truth widely known for the last decade. Our demand for new clothes directly connects to the hands that sew them and the waste that surrounds them.
When systems of business and education proved malleable by going remote, we became enlightened about industry’s ability to change, if they so choose.
Though we say we want things “back to normal,” don’t rush to forget what 2020 revealed.
We are connected. Our individual choices have a global impact, and real change happens when we care for the collective.
In case you missed it, we launched Cladwell Capsule Templates!
Curated mini wardrobes for a wide variety of styles. Have you ever looked to Pinterest or Influencers for style inspiration? Us too!…The problem, though, is it’s a dead end. Getting the looks just means buying more stuff or staring blankly into your closet wondering how to achieve the style. We wanted more than inspiration. We wanted something we all could PLAY with, TRY out & CREATE together.
(Enter Capsule Templates)
You can use them to discover styles, customizing them with items in your closet to get the looks. You can create your own and share them with the world. We curated 30+ of them, and this is just the beginning! We are excited to create and feature more… INCLUDING ones made by YOU!
Let’s take a look at one now.
PARISIAN
You're drawn to that french minimalist vibe. Your clothes fit perfectly, have a level of ease and sophistication about them – these are elements that make up your aesthetic.
Living the Parisian Way
How do the French enjoy life? The French live in the être (to be) instead of living in the faire (to do) or the avoir (to have).
Indeed, in France life doesn’t revolve around work, money, or having the nicest and most expensive things. Instead, the French lifestyle is all about enjoying the best moments in life, whether it’s through social gatherings (with the “apéros”), French cuisine, arts, or philosophy, among other things. It’s all about living in the present moment and finding contentment in most things in life.
Be a “Flâneur”
“Flâner” which could be almost translated as “to stroll” or “to lounge”, is a concept so French that the word has no true English equivalent. The flâneur is someone who, rooted in the present, wanders through a city with no destination in mind but with a clear purpose: to observe the world in a philosophical way.
This French term was used by 19th-Century French prose-poet and essayist Charles Baudelaire to identify an observer of modern urban life. At this time, in a society characterized by progress and capitalism, the flâneur becomes a revolutionary who doesn’t want to participate but to contemplate.
In “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” (The Painter of Modern Life) published in 1863, Charles Baudelaire wrote: “For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite”.
Today, Paris remains the ideal city to flâner. With its café terrasses where chairs face outwards and toward the street, Paris is the perfect city to people-watch, to sit down and just observe the world around us.
(sourced from LEONCE CHENAL)
Try on the Parisian Life, today.
take a stroll
sit to enjoy your coffee or lunch slowly
buy fresh bread to pair with tonight’s dinner
enjoy the arts at a free museum or gallery
wear your favorite polished outfit just because