Witchy October Shopping Bag

In this newsletter: A quick favor, how to submit questions to my new Style Advice Column, and our witchiest shopping bag ever!!

Boo! This month I was really drawing a blank as to what I should do for the Shopping Bag (for those of you who are new here, the Shopping Bag is a monthly curated shopping list of second-hand finds sent right to your inbox) – so I took to social media for requests and suggestions. ..

However, before I dive into this month's shopping bag – I have a favor to ask you. I've been speaking with a young man named Ramzi who is currently doing his best to keep himself and his family safe and alive during the ongoing genoicde in Gaza. He's in his early 20s, and should be studying at university or hanging out with his friends. Instead he spends all day trying to find ways to raise money for his family's needs. We've already managed to raise a few thousand dollars for him over the last six weeks and he was able to buy food, winter clothes, flu medicine, and a newer more insulated tent for his family to live in (they've been displaced over 15 times). Now that some of their more immediate needs have been met, Ramzi is hoping to be able to afford eye surgery for his brother Mohamed.

The total cost of the surgery is $1600 – so far we've raised $815 towards that total and need $785 more (so we need the fundraiseer to reach $2650 total since the first $800 raised was for the tent). Mohamed is at risk of losing his vision in that eye if he can't get surgery soon, so please consider donating to his fundraising campaign (the Freefunder was generously organized by my client Seema and her husband so you know who is handling the money).

Any amount helps, even if it seems small to you it means the world! Thank you so much <3

Now, with the hard and odd pivot back to much lighter and less important things...

When I asked for Shopping Bag suggestions, I got some really great ideas for future bags, some questions that were probably better answered in an Ask Sophie style advice column (coming soon!). But the one request I got over and over again was witchy.

I'm always trying to toe the line with these shopping bags between seasonally relevant and too-temporally-specific. I want these roundups to include items that feel right for the time of year but I don't want them to feed into disposability culture by featuring items that would only be useful for one second. With this in mind, I've generally avoided holiday-inspired bags that encourage the idea that you have to have a special, on-theme outfit for every occasion. That's why I didn't necessarily want to do a Halloween costume or super spooky-inspired bag. However, what I loved about the witchy request is that there are a lot of people who like this kind of dressing all year round! In fact, "witchy" is a descriptor that comes up all the time in client sessions when people are telling me their style goals!

So witchy freaks – this Shopping Bag is for you!! Inside you'll find diaphanous, lacy, drippy finds. This is also a great bag for anyone who loves to wear black.

As always – the Shopping Bag is a perk exclusive to Style School Valedictorians, so if you want to access this month's curated witchy shopping list (just on the other side of the paywall), click that upgrade button!

Also – November 10th will be the first installment of the Ask Sophie style advice column, so if you have any pressing style questions you want to be included for consideration in this first column please reply to this email or comment them below!