How Little Styled Lane Came to Be

From the Founder: The Story of How I got Started

I used to think a career was something you picked once, like an outfit for the first day of school. It turns out mine was something I’d been quietly assembling my whole life, one small moment at a time.

It started with outfits and tablescapes

Long before I had a word for it, I was styling. I can still feel it: the quiet thrill of curating an outfit that was perfectly on trend but also an expression of me, not seeking outside complements but being pleasantly surprised when I’d receive positive feedback and family and friends asking my advice on their wardrobe, outfits, or packing. The pieces had a mood, and I was the one who got to bring it out.

Holidays were my favorite stage. I set tablescapes with a seriousness that must have seemed funny to the adults around me, adjusting a napkin, moving a candle, stepping back to look again. And Christmas decorating was never a chore for me. It was sacred. I took it seriously and I loved every minute, because when the room finally came together, it felt like magic. I wasn’t just putting things in a space. I was building a feeling, and the feeling was the whole point.

I also grew up in an entrepreneurial household, where I learned that you could make your own path and build something from an idea. I didn’t know it yet, but between the joy of creating and the example of people who built their own way, a seed was being planted.

The path I was too scared to take

I started college as a history major, drawn to how knowledge of history can help shape the future. However, not long after, I switched to business, because I’d always been told to choose something practical.

Then, in one of my classes, we were assigned to research career options based on our strengths. One title rose to the top for me: Art Director.

If you’re not familiar with the role, an art director is the person who shapes the overall look and feel of a project. They decide on the visual story: the color palette, the mood, the textures, the props, the layout. Then they guide photographers, designers, and stylists to bring that vision to life. It’s part storyteller, part designer, part leader, and it felt like a name for the thing I’d been doing since I was little.

And I ignored it. Creative careers were risky, and the conventional wisdom was that you couldn’t make as much money in them. So I stayed the course with business and only let myself take a couple of graphic design courses on the side, a small way of keeping a creative door cracked open. I never let myself walk through it.

The creativity that wouldn’t stay quiet

After graduation, my mom and I took a photography class together, just for fun. Or so we thought. Looking back, it was the same theme showing up again. I had been suppressing my creativity for years, and it was dying to come out. That class taught me to see a composition the way a camera does, and it reminded me how much I missed making things.

The detour that almost took me somewhere else

I was several years into my early career at a manufacturing company where I encountered my first serious potential detour. I nearly went into the kitchen and bath business with my parents. It was a real possibility, and I’m grateful for what it taught me about spaces, materials, and running a business. But it also made something clearer. I was drawn to the potential of building something of my own.

A seed, planted

The second potential detour of this period of my life was to go back to school and pursue a degree in Interior Design. I joined a mentor group where my mentor, by choice, was an architect. I wanted to network and learn as much as I could before making the leap. I toured the University of Idaho campus and sat down with the dean of the interior design college to ask everything I could. But I didn’t take the leap because of the competition and risk of it not being something I could support myself. I stayed at my corporate job, where things felt safe.

Around that time, I happened to hear Lauren Conrad’s Asking for a Friend podcast, in an episode with Kate Martindale about styling, and something stirred. Styling wasn’t just decorating. It was a craft, and a career, and an art form. Still, I didn’t act on it. It was just a seed planted, one that would sit quietly until I was ready.

The side outlet

Alongside my corporate job, my creativity kept finding ways out. During Covid, I started making flat lays for Beautycounter. Arranging products, textures, and color on a tabletop felt like second nature. It reminded me how much joy I get from composing a scene and telling a story with objects, and it gave me a taste of what it could look like to do this work for real.

The home build

On the tail end of the pandemic, my husband and I had the opportunity to build a semi-custom home with a local builder. I got to make tweaks to the original design of the home (reworked the kitchen layout, added a private hallway to the primary suite, extended the back patio, reworked the primary bath, etc). I also chose the finishes of my home and learned the importance of light, tone, and what sleek lines do. I chased the modern trends and realized I created an amazing home, for someone else. To us, it felt sterile with no character. I was starving to add in worn elements with patina to balance the modern bones.

When I thought I had made it

Eventually I moved on to a role in talent operations at a global tech company, and I truly thought I had made it: the title, the company, the prestige, the paycheck, working remotely. I had the runway and the resources to build tools from scratch and lean into my strengths. I was working crazy hours but was committed, even with a new baby at home and becoming a new mom. I designed internal sites and dashboards from the ground up, and I was coined the creator and pioneer of the group. It was creative direction in a corporate setting, and I loved it.

It was also during this time that I took my first trip to Europe, to Greece. It filled my head with architecture, culture, and slow, beautiful ways of living. I loved hunting for unique finds and bringing home pieces with a story. It was the old-world charm my history-loving heart had always been drawn to, and it stayed with me long after I got home.

When everything changed

Then I got “reorg’d”.

Suddenly, all the effort, the sacrifice with a new baby at home, and the cushy paycheck didn’t feel worth it. I had seen how quickly everything could shift outside of my control. It was a hard lesson, but it showed me that the security I’d been chasing wasn’t as secure as I’d believed.

The trip that changed everything

Toward the end of my time there, I took a trip to Ireland and London. I soaked up the traditional architecture and the quiet of the countryside, while kind of in search of my soul, my next move. I wandered into a bookshop and staring me blank in the face was Amy Porterfield’s Two Weeks Notice. I picked it up and read it feverishly.

Once I came home and returned to work, I found out I did not get the promotion I had been advocating for for years. I decided that it was time to talk away and resigned.

Putting it all together

That book was the last nudge I needed. And Robin Zachary’s Styling Beyond Instagram backed up my idea, showing me that styling could be a real business and not just a pretty feed.

Looking back, the path I was too scared to take in college was the one I kept circling back to: fashion, tablescapes, graphic design, photography, flat lays, travel, home design, and building from scratch. Styling, creative direction, and entrepreneurship weren’t separate paths. They were one path, and I’m finally walking it.

That’s how Little Styled Lane was born. I’m building it slowly and with intention, and I’m so glad you’re here for it.

If you’ve ever felt like your interests were scattered, or you talked yourself out of something because it felt too risky, I hope this reminds you that creativity that’s been suppressed doesn’t disappear. It just waits for you.

With love,
Katrina