“For me, having grown up in a very poor country and conservative family, paying attention to fashion had a lot of guilt associated with it for me. I wanted to prove that it’s about being creative and that there is nothing wrong with fashion. I wanted to show that I could be really into fashion and turn it around, bringing back a sense of individuality and making it your own and something that everyone could have.” Sheena Matheiken

occupation: founder of the uniform project

Sheena, who was born in Ireland and raised in India, makes fashion magical, especially when you are as inspired, thoughtful and courageous, a person as she is. I have been a fashion editor and stylist for many years, and the little black dress has always been a staple idea for all of the fashion magazines, but Sheena has taken what has been a timeless standard to the level of nobility. Her favorite thing about fashion is reinvention, so in order to raise money for educating Indian children for the organization Akanksha, she and her partner Eliza (whose closet is coming next) came up with the idea of Sheena wearing the same black dress for 365 days, and styling it a different way each day. Sheena’s creative journey is chronicled on their blog The Uniform Project. As Sheena says, it’s all about “the message behind the dress – the creativity, versatility, and individuality,” and the goal of promoting re-use and philanthropy with fashion. It goes without saying how moving Sheena’s committment is to her cause, but I am equally fascinated by her ability to detach from whatever identity she had before with her clothes. She is such a visionary that her style is not only effortless in finding an exciting way to wear the dress each day, while working an eighty-hour week as the creative director of an advertising agency, but she is.. completely re-invigorated by the challenge. On the transforming experience of The Uniform Project , Sheena says that it has been “very affirming and liberating…This is who I am… What you put back is really what defines you.”

If you like Sheena, you might also enjoy Malcolm Harris, Ashley Wick, or Carrie Bergmann.

Check out The Uniform Project on Twitter or Facebook.