For celebrity stylist Erin Walsh, fashion has always been more than what you wear — it’s how you align your inner self with the world around you. In her upcoming book “The Art of Intentional Dressing: Your Essential Style Guide for Manifesting a Magnetic Life,” Walsh distills two decades of red carpet expertise and client transformations into a new framework for using style as a tool for self-discovery.
The heart of the book is her Create method, a six-part approach that stands for Clarity, Ritual, Editing, Alignment, Truth and Expansion. Walsh says she’s been shaping this system subconsciously throughout her career, but the method took form after she set out to “bring a deeper meaning and purpose” to fashion.
“People tend to think of fashion as a luxury,” she told WWD. “But as my friend Jenn Hyman told me, fashion isn’t a luxury because every single person has to get dressed in the morning the same as they have to brush their teeth. The method is a means to align all the moving parts of our lives by getting more intentional about fashion, yes, but also getting intentional in all aspects of our lives.”
Rather than teaching readers how to follow trends, “The Art of Intentional Dressing” aims to reimagine style as a daily ritual for grounding and empowerment. Walsh wants to encourage readers to ask not just what they want to wear, but how they want to feel. “Whether it’s a famous person or a non-famous person getting dressed to go to a meeting or to a once-in-a-lifetime occasion,” she said, “the question to ask is, ‘How do you want to feel?’ When you start making fashion choices intentionally, it becomes impossible to leave your authentic self out of the equation.”
Walsh, whose client roster includes Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez, said that many people encounter “style blocks” when their wardrobes no longer reflect who they are. Closets often become “cemeteries of past selves,” Walsh said. Her advice: start from the inside out.
“You need to address, as DVF [Diane von Furstenberg] told me, the idea of the woman you want to be first. Edit your closet according to how you want to feel, so every single piece reminds you of that person you want to be,” she said.
Walsh’s philosophy also extends beyond clothes. She described her own grounding practices — music, movement, scent and gratitude — as ways to create energetic alignment before styling herself or a client. “Alignment is all about walking in this world in integrity, honoring your best self with the choices you make,” she said. “Everything becomes better when you decide to level up by getting intentional about your life.”
With a foreword by Hathaway and visuals that guide readers through reflection and wardrobe editing, “The Art of Intentional Dressing” will be published by HarperOne in May 2026. Walsh doesn’t promise instant transformation with the book, but an ongoing journey. “It’s not like you read a book on style and suddenly you are healed or fixed forever,” she said. “To keep growing, you need to commit to yourself — and keep rebooting back into that intention.”
