Dress for Success helps women find their strong suit
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then women gazing in the mirror at Dress for Success have come to consider their new and improved reflections as not only attractive, but beautifully powerful, to boot.
The national nonprofit has served more than 850,000 women worldwide since its founding New York in 1996. By year’s end, meanwhile, the San Francisco chapter, founded in 2005, will have served 10,000 Bay Area women since its inception — a milestone to be marked at its 10th anniversary gala fundraiser at the Julia Morgan Ballroom on Thursday, June 18.
Gala nights are not what brought Madison Kaviyakoen, a San Francisco bartender and single mother, to Dress for Success, but she is happy to celebrate her personal success.
A year ago, Kaviyakoen, now 27, was a single mother living in her Mini Cooper with her baby — her relationship with her parents so strained over career and values that she couldn’t live at home. Catholic Charities gave her shelter. Dress for Success guided her to a new mind-set.
At the Sutter Street nonprofit, tucked into a two-room, 1,400-square-foot high-rise office, she found mentors who worked on her confidence, from the outside in.
A stylist held up a black and white print dress for a job interview, something Kaviyakoen, whose self-esteem was floundering, would never have considered.
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“Other people would tell me they saw a smart, confident, educated woman in me, but I didn’t feel that inside,” said Kaviyakoen. “I trusted them — and when I put it on, I saw a whole different woman.”
The polished exterior led to self-confidence, and self-sufficiency with a new job mixing cocktails at the Battery private social club.
“I have pride and dignity in myself and my work,” she said. “It’s something I didn’t grow up with.”
Clients are referred by 120 Bay Area nonprofits, and offered five free programs: job search help, a career center, a professional women’s group employment retention program and a financial literacy program. Most are single mothers ages 18 to 38, living under the poverty level when they arrive. The nonprofit’s staff of two operates on a $350,000 annual budget.
Heather Knox-Sloan, 43, a Sonoma divorcee, had been out of the workforce for 12 years, but with the group’s suiting and career help, she landed a job at a customized furniture company in the East Bay and now works as a leasing agent and interior designer.
“I went from the soccer mom in sweatshirt, sneakers and jeans to wearing suits every day,” she said. “They encouraged me to go further with my own personal expectations. I learned I looked pretty good in a suit, too.”
On the wall at Dress for Success, an Oprah Winfrey quote reads: “Life is about becoming more than we are.”
Christina Laygo, 45, who spent two decades as a drug addict, took that to heart. She’d been molested as a child and worked off and on as a makeup artist to make ends meet when she wasn’t living with boyfriends or in homeless shelters. In 2010, a shelter counselor told her about Dress for Success. She quit drugs cold turkey, she said, shed her provocative tops and jeans and suited up professionally, landing two jobs — a day shift at a clothing boutique and a nighttime shift at an outsourcing firm, just to stay out of the shelter.
Today, she’s an assistant catering manager at a social media company, and grateful for her Dress for Success mentors, noting, “It’s empowering to know that women I’ve never known before just want the best for me.”
Cheryl Pitts, 28, was also sexually abused in her tween and teen years. She was married with a baby in her 20s when a series of events led them to become homeless. Raphael House and Compass Family Services provided housing and therapy, but her first (plus size) interview suit and lessons on how to stretch the wardrobe with scarves came from a Dress for Success stylist.
At last year’s gala, she met the owner of a Union Square beauty salon, who offered her a job as a manager, and she accepted. She also continues to network with the professional women’s group.
“They don’t just give you a suit and send you on your way,” Pitts said. “I consider what I have with Dress for Success a lifelong relationship.”
Said Renee Surcouf, executive director of the San Francisco chapter, “All women who’ve come to us have been on a journey, but we don’t want them to look back — we want them to look forward. When they put on the suit, that’s just the beginning.”