This week, Stephanie Johnson joins me for a conversation about her Hard 75 Style challenge, how working as a shopping Editor impacted her style journey, and her brief dip into Jersey shore style in high school. Enjoy!

Episode Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Welcome

Welcome to Intuitive Style. I'm Maureen Welton. On this podcast, we explore the overlap between mindfulness and personal style.

Today's guest, Stephanie Johnson, demonstrates week over week in her Substack newsletter, The Green Apple, what intuitive dressing looks like in practice. In our conversation, we talk about how her professional experience in fashion has influenced her personal style, how she modifies an outfit for a day in Brooklyn versus a day in Manhattan and about her hard seventy-five style series.

I'm delighted to share this episode with you.

Let's start by talking about your newsletter, which is how we met. Would you just tell us a little bit about [The Green Apple], please?

Yeah. So, I started this newsletter, I want to say two years ago and I wrote like Three newsletters and then I, I kind of stopped sending them out. I got really into it again this past summer and I, I've been more consistent, but it was, it was really an outlet for me to write about what I wanted to write about. I worked for fashion digital magazines previously and a lot of what I wrote about was dictated by an editor or client so I just really wanted to write about style in a way that wasn't filtered and wasn't sponsored. So that's what I get to do.

And it's mostly about personal style and just the way we show up authentically in the world and how we dress ourselves.

Awesome. Well, I have really enjoyed following along. So speaking of which, you really caught my eye with your seventy-five hard style challenge. Can you share a little bit more about what that challenge is?

Yeah! This challenge was started by Mandy Lee. I believe her handle on everything like IG, TikTok, and Substack is Old Loser in Brooklyn. Which is a great name. She started the challenge in 2024 as kind of like a New Year's resolution type thing on social media. And it's an iteration on that, like, seventy-five hard health challenge, which I actually know basically nothing about, but I know that's when you're like very disciplined for seventy-five days. So she just kind of applied it to style. The rules are mostly like get dressed for seventy-five days, document your looks, try not to buy anything new. And, and really understand why you're doing this challenge, like set your goals and intentions. So it could be because you want to save money or maybe you want to slow down what you're bringing into your business. Closet or you just want to get to know your style better.

One of the rules I haven't been so great about is she wants you to really rely on your own kind of inspiration. So don't go on Pinterest or TikTok and just copy someone's look. And then another rule is to organize and clean out your closet before you start the challenge. And I believe also after, so you can kind of see like what you got rid of to start and what you ended with.

What about this challenge attracted to you at this moment? Why did it seem like a good fit?

I started getting into getting dressed, which, which sounds so crazy, but I've been working from home since 2019. So I very much fell into a rut, but I've been trying to get dressed for like two years really consistently. And I saw this challenge last year. And it just didn't feel like the right time for me. I just moved in 2025 and I think I was like, okay, you know, I'd already cleaned out my closet. I purged a lot. I'm living in New York now, which feels like you kind of have to up your style game, so I was ready to take it on starting this January.

One thing in particular about your series on this challenge is that you have a particular rating system for how you think about the outfits. Can you tell us a little bit more about your rating system and how you landed on it?

Yeah, that was something I just made up because my intention with this challenge besides like getting out of my PJs every day was to really learn more about my personal style. So I rate things on a scale of one to five when I wear them. One is like, this really doesn't feel like me. And five is like this, this does feel like me. The scale is really just based on like my intuition, which I know you speak about a lot in your Substack and just really leaning into authenticity. So it could be like how comfortable I feel in this and how much this may be leaned into my style words. It's just been a really helpful way to look back on an outfit and, and get a sense of how I felt when I wore it that day.

It's so fun and so unique to see someone talking about rating your personal style with how it feels and how you experience being in the outfit. Just seeing that as such a focus of of you, how you decide success of your wardrobe, it really resonated with me because so much of the time I think it's popular or accepted to dress for other people and how you're going to be perceived. And just seeing your, your me writing felt really innovative and, and also exciting. And I think really it shows where we're moving as a personal style culture towards caring a little bit more about how we experience our own clothing rather than just letting everything be about how we're perceived.

Thank you. That's exactly what I was going for. And I guess I didn't even think of that, but it is a lot about how I feel versus how other people perceive me.

One outfit of yours that really caught my eye, was that some of your, you know, I think in general you would say, right, that your style is on the casual side. And I noticed that there were a couple kind of more lounge outfits that you rated quite highly. There's a lot of pressure that lounge clothing isn't stylish or doesn't involve effort or doesn't convey effort and. I was just curious, can you share a little bit more about your experience with lounge and how and why that would be something that you rate really high?

It's something I'm kind of working through because I'm not a dressy person. I tend to dress very casual. Like one of my style words is like undone. So if something feels too polished, it doesn't feel like me. Very often if I'm wearing something that feels really comfortable and like layered and it's in a color palette, I like, I'm going to give it a high rating and that tends to be my athleisure outfits. Something I am trying to sift through is. Does this feel like a me outfit because I had fallen into such a habit of always wearing this type of clothing or does it really feel like the type of person I am authentically and want to dress as? So I'm kind of working through that. Some outfits that are really casual might get like a five out of five and some might get like a two out of five because I put no effort in and I just kind of threw on sweatpants.

That goes back to the idea of the challenge and your effort overall to to get dressed. Would you share what getting dressed means to you? Like, what is not getting dressed? What is just putting on clothes?

Yeah, it's like a very basic definition. It's getting out of my pajamas because... Literally, that's it. I have had a job working from home for so long that I could like roll over and just in my pajamas start working. So fully in the morning, getting out of bed, putting on a complete new outfit. The days when I basically threw on something that's like outside pajamas. I'm like, okay, you didn't really do the thing today. I've had a few days in this challenge where I've noticed that, but some days I'm like, okay, I'm going to wear these leggings. And I'm going to wear high socks with them and I'm going to layer a sweatshirt with a turtleneck and I'm going to put on jewelry. So, I intuitively know when I'm making an effort and when I'm not and how to differentiate those two.

Would you say, now I'm putting my, my point of view into this, but like to me getting dressed would be putting on something that I'd be comfortable wearing outside of the house. Do you think, is that any way that you're defining it?

Yeah, absolutely. I think I think that's actually a perfect definition. I think there was a time in my life where I probably could have worn PJs outside of the house, but now I want to always feel like I put a little effort in.

Sure, sure. And, and societal, you know, during COVID it was particularly, you know, different as for what was okay to wear outside. We were wearing a mask anyway.

Yes.

So this is kind of a personal anecdote, but I am curious what you think about this. Going back to the idea of wearing stuff at home that you would be comfortable wearing out of the house putting in that effort. A couple years ago, I had more disposable income and I did a one-on-one personal styling session with Allison Bornstein, the stylist.

That's cool.

It was very cool. And if I could go back, I think the biggest thing that I regretted was I had us focus our conversation on the clothing that I wore only out of the house and I was like anything that I work from home and we don't need to talk about because that stuff is fine. And now if I could play that back I would be like how can I merge the two, how can I make sure that the clothes that I'm wearing at hom