Fairfield County Business Journal 0201119

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FEBRUARY 11, 2019 VOL. 55, No. 6

westfaironline.com

Lynn Cesaria. Photo by Phil Hall.

INSIDE PAGE

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RIDES FOR THE UNDER-18 CROWD

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ONLY IN AMERICA

Fashion statement LYNN CESARIA AND THE PURSUIT OF DRESSING FOR SUCCESS AND STYLE

BY PHIL HALL phall@westfairinc.com

D

uring her interview for the Business Journal, fashion stylist Lynn Cesaria looked at the red-and-black plaid shirt I was wearing and asked how many more plaid shirts I had in my closet. When told her this was the sole plaid shirt in my wardrobe, she exhaled a sigh of relief and smiled. “People tend to buy

the same things over and over and over,” she said. “I go through people’s closets first and I see the same thing hanging in every color, but it is the same version. One client had 32 blouses that were all the same cut — it did nothing for her.” With a 25-year-plus career spanning work as fashion illustrator, photographer, personal shopper and stylist, Cesaria uses her Southport-based consultancy Lynn Cesaria Style to dress

men, women and teenagers. And while the concept of a personal fashion stylist might seem to be a luxury for the very wealthy, Cesaria stated that her services span the socioeconomic spectrum. “I have clients who are on a budget,” she explained. “I dress people who are average working people, house moms, kids. People think a stylist is for very wealthy people. It is for everybody who is not happy with the way they look when they look in the mirror.” For Cesaria, the core challenge comes in trying to determine and encourage the aesthetic style that matches a client’s personality and environment. » FASHION

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Moxie Project working to help women improve leadership prospects BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com WHEN IT COMES TO EXECUTIVE CAREERS FOR WOMEN the common buzzwords have become all too familiar. Glass ceilings, gender pay gaps and demeaning (or worse) behavior by male colleagues, while all reportedly improving, remain significant barriers for women looking to improve their work situations. But the three women behind The Moxie Project, a six-month intensive executive boot camp officially launched last month, believe they may offer a key to helping to develop female influencers. “We took a lot of our

own experiences and delved into the research that’s out there to see how we could go about developing women leaders,” said Ellen Keithline Byrne, a Wilton resident who co-founded consulting firm Moxie-Leaders with Karen Kirchner of Fairfield and Denise D’Agostino of Somers, New York. “We believe that for an organization to keep its relevancy in today’s marketplace there needs to be diversity at the top.” The three women have been in the leadership development, executive coaching and/or talent management business for decades. Byrne has been a consultant to such companies as Xerox and JPMorgan Chase as » MOXIE

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