Meg Strachan, Dorsey Founder, on Style & 13 Things She Would Buy Again

24.01.2023, 09:40 harpersbazaar.com

Need some shopping inspiration? In Lucky 13, fashion tastemakers share the 13 items they love so much, they'd hit "Add to Cart" twice.

Meg Strachan struck styling gold when she developed her lab-grown gemstone jewelry label, Dorsey. She flipped the script by designing tennis necklaces and bracelets that are more affordable and meant to be worn daily, not just for red carpet events. "I wear the same pieces of jewelry all year and wear the same rivière for the holidays as I do for the summer," she tells BAZAAR. "We focus on classic pieces, and we don't lean into jewelry trends at all."

Strachan's accessible styling is one reason she's amassed more than 21,000 Instagram followers. Items she shares on her Stories tend to sell out, whether they're high-wattage pieces from her own line or a designer piece she found somewhere else. She attributes her sensibility to an influence she grew up with: her grandmother, Dorsey. Strachan closely watched how the matriarch dressed from a young age, taking note of her oversized blazers, leather pans, and slouchy coats. "She'd fit right into a street style line up today," Strachan says. "Twenty years ago, she wore Birkenstocks styled the way that the rest of us do today."

The founder still wears a few of her grandmother Dorsey's hand-me-down blazers, and considers how she wore her clothes as important as what she was wearing. She "wasn't putting something on for a mirror selfie then taking it off to wear what she was comfortable in that day," Strachan explains. "There was no tagging a coat. She wore what she loved and she wore it with a lot of poise and personal style. She got dressed for herself, no one else."

Channeling her grandmother's style has made Strachan a deliberate shopper, to the point of quitting impulse shopping altogether. This isn't an exaggeration: If Strachan sees something she likes in a store, she puts it on hold for 24 hours before she commits.

Yet some of Strachan's best purchases have come from moments of fashion serendipity—and led to several more. For example: "I was in New York City a few weeks ago, and I wore my husband's old gray cashmere sweater from J. Crew that I accidentally shrunk into my size. I've never had more people ask me about a sweater." After that, Strachan bought it in her true size, in three colors, to go with the other timeless items in her Lucky 13 list ahead.