2023 was a hard year for Shelby and her partner. The couple was living in Reno, Nevada, at the time and, very suddenly, they found themselves falling on hard times. It was a scary situation for them, made even scarier because of how quickly, and easily, it actually happened.
“My partner lost his job,” Shelby said. “And because he lost his job for two weeks, we actually couldn’t pay rent for the next month, and that was enough for us to end up being homeless.”
It’s a situation that plagues countless Americans; one that we try not to talk about because the reality of the situation is that the only thing keeping many of us off the street is a single paycheck.
Forbes reports that 78% of all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck. That means that these people are only two weeks, one pay period, one bad day away from poverty.
It’s a scary reality, and it’s one that Shelby and her partner were, naturally, unprepared for.
“It’s kind of crazy for everything to be perfectly fine, just to suddenly lose everything like that,” she stated. “It was very big and it was very sudden and I had to abandon a lot of my personal items, a lot of my clothing.”
Luckily, Shelby shared, she and her partner had friends that were able to help them.
“We had some friends come and pick us up from Nevada and move us to Casper,” she said. “I’ve never moved across state lines in my entire life. But we made it.”
Shortly after moving to Casper, Shelby was looking for a job. She applied to multiple companies but realized something important. If she got called for an interview, she didn’t have anything professional to wear.
And that’s where Dress for Success came in.
Dress for Success is an international nonprofit organization that was started in 1996 by a woman named Nancy Lublin. Lublin, a second-year law student, received a $5,000 inheritance from her great-grandfather, and she decided to turn that $5,000 into an organization that has since helped thousands of women achieve economic independence.
For almost 30 years, Dress for Success has offered business attire to women of all different types of background. And in January 2023, Dress for Success Casper officially opened, headed by Executive Director Amy White.
White, who previously worked at Adecco for 35 years, said that one of the main organizations they donated to throughout the years was Dress for Success. Adecco is an organization that connects companies with employees, and White said that after working for the company for a while, she began to notice a trend.
“While I was at Adecco, we found that there were often times when the people that we served just did not have clothing for work; either appropriate clothing for the job they were taking, or interview clothing.”
White said that she and her colleagues would occasionally go buy clothing items for the people they found jobs for, but that those occasions were “a small amount of clothing for a very certain thing.”
When she eventually left Adecco, on the search for something different, White said she kept thinking about the countless people over the years who needed help to find business attire.
“I left Adecco in 2021, and I was kind of deciding what I was going to do next,” White shared. “And I’d always loved Dress for Success. It really fell right in line with what my passions are, which are helping and mentoring people and providing them career services and helping them see the next step.”
Sometimes, White said, that next step is hard for people to even see, let alone take.
“Sometimes people just can’t see the next thing, or how they get there,” she said. “It just seems like an impossible thing. So I wanted to help people see that it is possible.”
So, White said she “investigated” what it took to open her own branch of Dress for Success. After a year of crossing t’s, dotting i’s and going through all of the steps necessary to acquire the partnership, White was officially awarded the affiliate in November 2022 and Dress for Success Casper opened in January 2023.
White was introduced to Carrie Reece, the executive director of The Seton House, by another Dress for Success affiliate. The Seton House is a local nonprofit organization that shares many of the same goals and ideas as Dress for Success.
“What I wanted to do was provide the widest number of services to the widest number of people,” White said. “Primarily, we serve women; most of whom are single and with children. And most of them have had some kind of life event and they’re oftentimes restarting their lives.”
Shelby was one of those people. She arrived in Casper at the beginning of 2024 and both she and her partner immediately began searching for a job.
“When I got to Casper, I started looking for work,” she said. “And I realized that I didn’t actually have that much to work with. I ended up going to Casper College’s career fair and I met Amy, who told me what Dress for Success was and what their whole thing was about. And it was just really exciting to have a program like that in my perfect time of need.”
That “time of need” happens more than one might expect, in Natrona County and beyond. In addition to the economic uncertainty that plagues many people, women may find themselves in need of other resources. The Seton House serves as a resource for these women, and it partners with Dress for Success in a number of different ways designed to help them thrive.
Dress for Success doesn’t just exist to give women clothes for a job interview. Its goal is to empower women, and it does so by, yes, helping them find the right attire, but even more than that, the organization helps give women the skills, the training and the confidence to be the best version of themselves; to give them strength when they feel weak, to give them confidence when they feel meek, and to help them find their voice when they can’t speak.
“Our flagship program is our suiting program, where we provide a clothing package for interviews, and then we provide another package once a person gets a job,” White said. “The idea is that, hopefully, clothing is not a hindrance when you’re kind of getting your life back together. But we’re also known for our career services. We offer one-on-one coaching, so when somebody comes in to these appointments, I talk with them a little bit and ask what their scenario is. Do they have a job? Are they looking for a job? Do they need help with their résumé? A lot of people just need a little direction on how to present themselves in an interview.”
In addition to the clothing program, and the coaching program, Dress for Success has also recently started a professional women’s group. It’s an educational networking event that is open to the community and it happens once a month.
“Once you’ve gotten a job, that’s kind of the first step,” White stated. “But a lot of people don’t have a support network that helps them keep that job. So we created something just to serve as a resource for women.”
That is exactly what Dress for Success was created to be — a resource for women.
According to the national Dress for Success website, the organization’s vision is “a world where women do not live in poverty. We strive for a world where all women are financially independent, are treated with dignity and respect and are directly impacting their lives and those of their families. We aspire to a world that fully harnesses the power of women and recognizes their role in economic sustainability.”
Dignity. That’s an important word, an important idea, when it comes to the services that Dress for Success offers.
Asking for help is hard. Admitting that you need help, to others and to yourself, is even harder. Part of what Dress for Success tries to teach its clients is that asking for help is OK. Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up. And Dress for Success wants to help Casper women pick themselves up. It offers clothing, and training opportunities, to be sure. But, maybe more importantly, Dress for Success gives women an opportunity to rewrite their pages and redefine their lives. Amy and her team of volunteers are able to offer their hands to those who have been kicked out, beaten down or broken. And they help pull these women up, look them in the eye and say, “You are strong. You are safe. You are loved.”
Dress for Success, and its local partners, give women hope during those times where it feels like there’s very little. That’s how Shelby felt, but when she met Amy and she learned about what Dress for Success could do for her, it was the first time in a long time that she felt like maybe, just maybe, things were going to be OK.
“To be perfectly honest, Dress for Success fits so well within Casper, Wyoming,” Shelby said. “I don’t think I’ve ever lived somewhere where the people were so nice, and so helpful. This town has a very strong sense of community and it just feels very welcoming and wonderful to be a part of it.”
Community — that’s another important word in the story of Dress for Success. Anybody who has lived in Casper for a while knows how important community is to its residents. The town is known for people helping people, and the case of Dress for Success is no different.
“About 95% of the items that we give out to people are donated from the community,” White said. “The community has been very generous with us. What we can’t use, we thrift to someone else. We have a warehouse downtown that was donated to us, and because of that generosity of people, our services are a hundred percent free to the people who need us. They don’t pay anything.”
Dress for Success was designed with the idea that if you look good, you’ll feel good. And even more than helping its clients look good, Dress for Success wants to help them feel good. That’s the goal right now, and it’s what the goal will continue to be in the future.
“My grand vision is that when people come upstairs into our boutique, they are absolutely wowed,” White stated. “I want it to be an experience for them that will leave them with newfound confidence. If you feel good about yourself, and you see yourself differently … what a difference that can make in your life. And that’s what we see happening. It’s just that transformation. Clothing doesn’t seem like a big thing until you don’t have it.”
That’s a hard lesson that Shelby learned when she moved to Casper at the beginning of 2024. It was a lesson that she unfairly had to learn, but she learned it nonetheless. She learned something else too, though. And the thing that she learned is something that she wants others to know as well. She learned that it’s OK to ask for help.
“One of the biggest things I’ve been taught in my life is how to feel good within yourself, so that you can present better to the world,” she stated. “A lot of people assume that ‘Well, dressing well means other people think I look good.’ But it’s not that. It’s, ‘Are you comfortable? Do you feel like you can succeed in the day? Do you feel like you’re strong enough, through your attire and through the way you carry yourself?’ The way you dress is a really big, pivotal part of that. And the one, really important thing that I want to stress to people is that asking for help is not a bad thing. I think there are times in our lives where asking for help is so important, and Dress for Success is one of those programs that is there to help you, wherever, whenever, and however you need.”
When Shelby met with Amy that first time to pick out an outfit, she was nervous. She didn’t know what to expect, or what to say, or how to act. But when she walked through the doors of Dress for Success, she was immediately greeted with grace, empathy and dignity. She left with some clothes, but, even more so, she left with a newfound confidence. That confidence helped her during her job interview, and she ended up getting the job. She began that job as a part-time administrative assistant, and just a month after starting, Shelby was offered a salaried position. She says that Dress for Success played a big part in that.
“I called Amy and told her about it, and we shared in my success,” Shelby beamed. “She was very excited to hear about it, and she even extended some more outfits to me to compensate for the full-time employment that I was offered.”
Amy White started Dress for Success in Casper because she knew that if people looked good, they would feel good. But she also started it because she believed that success didn’t actually come from the way somebody dresses — it comes from the way somebody feels. She wanted to help Casper women to feel good about themselves and, in the last year, that is exactly what she has done.
“At Dress for Success, we just try and make a connection,” White said. “And then I try to understand where somebody is, and then encourage them. And you can’t do that with everyone, I’ve learned, but I can provide a resource. No one knows what you’ve been through or where you are, or what you’re doing now. But wherever you’re at, it’s not the end of your story. You have a future. You have an opportunity. And we just want to help.”
Dress for Success is hosting a Boutique Summer Sale on Aug. 3 at the Holiday Inn East from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. This event is open to the public and it’s offering brand-new and nearly new designer clothing, shoes and accessories at great prices, for a great cause. To find out more about Dress for Success, visit its website or follow it on Facebook.
