The following story originally appeared in the 2025 winter number of W&M Alumni magazine. – ed.
Delia Folk ’14 wants you to know: Fashion is not frivolous. “It is either your superpower or your sabotage,” says Folk. And it is determined to make it your superpower.
As co -founder of fashion media and styling company, the style that connects us, Folk is working to educate women in fashion power to meet their professional and personal goals. Her company, working with individuals and corporations, offers personal style counseling, for digital styling and public speech commitments, as well as a channel, blog, bulletin and podcast on YouTube.
Folk entered William & Mary as a transfer student thirsty for change. Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, she initially took the same path as many of her high school friends at the University of Alabama. As she enjoyed the atmosphere of the wave, she also wanted something new.
“At college, you need to have new experiences, meet new people and learn to think differently,” Folk says. In her sophisticated year, she visited William & Mary with her mother and grandmother and immediately fell in love with the school – “as someone would like.”
It was here, surrounded by Sorority’s sisters in Kappa Kappa Gamma, who took root for the professional aspirations of the people.
“I met an extraordinary group of encountered, ambitious women in Kappa, and this really rubbed on me,” she says.
Folk put her footage in a fashionable career, an industry she says simply transcends a love for clothes and unites people and ideas from all over the world. Knowing that the story of stories is at the heart of the fashion brand, she decided to attend a marketing Major at Raymond A. Mason Business School.
Julie Agnew ’91, Richard C. Kraemer Term Business Professor and one of the former people’s professors, encourages all her students to think deeply about marketing – a critical topic for every profession.
“Understanding human psychology and knowing how to sell the product, ideas or even yourself is essential to success and make an influence,” says Agnew. “Delia has always been a fashion, positive foreword. It has not surprised to see it achieve the success it has today.”
A summer practice in Versace in New York City strengthened Folk’s determination to pursue fashion as a career. She liked to be surrounded by superstar stylists (the first day of the people in the office, Donatella Versace’s salad was still in the refrigerator from her latest visit) and plunging into an industry that was even more dynamic and global than she had done. Drawing down her first job after graduating as a buyer at Barneys New York, Folk began to meet more developing stylists. Inspired by their persuasive personal stories, she began a blog to highlight their work more widely.
“Barneys was about helping from all over the world, the most incredible and future brands that no one has ever heard,” Folk says. “But if you don’t know the story behind the brand, why would you buy it?”
While Folk was progressing in her career, her mother, Alison Bruhn P ’14, won a professional certificate of image counseling skills from the Fashion Technology Institute and started a professional styling business, with clients from Alabama in New York . Bruhn also started a blog, focusing on fashion issues affecting women as they move through different stages of life.
“People would see us together and say,“ You have a great relationship. You work in the same industry. Why are you doing this separately? ‘”Says Folk.
And so, in April 2018, Folk and Bruhn Cofround the style that connects and created a community for those who are already in love with fashion as well as those eager to learn.
The company relies on its intergenerative nature, with the mother and girl working closely together. Folk, which identifies it as more intense and direct, brings a business -minded conceit; Bruhn, whom Folk describes as more patient and calm, brings teaching skills from a previous profession in education. “We really balance each other,” says Folk.
In the fashion world often exclusive, Bruhn sees their cooperation as a unique force.
“We create an atmosphere by encouraging, being a mother-daughter company,” Bruhn says. “Our mission from the beginning has always been that everyone, of any age, size, race and lifestyle, have a place on our table and have the right to engage with fashion and style and feel important, safe, of appreciated and beautiful. “
Pandemia Covid-19 presented the challenges, but also inspired opportunities: their corporate and public sponsorships were attacked in the consequences of the Pandemia.
“Get out of Covid, everyone thought, ‘My dresses feel like they are from 2016, and everyone is really casual,” “Folk says.” But how casual is very casual? “
Together, Folk and Bruhn have appeared on television shows such as “Good Morning America” and “New York Live” and have started working with large corporations such as Nasdaq and Blackstone to educate employees with appropriate professional clothing.
Folk applies opinion from the W&M business school that encouraged professionalism. “We were dressed in professional business style to go to class,” she says. “This puts you in a different frame of mind when wearing business professionals against a blouse and shorts.”
Next to a view that the people try to get into others: how you dress affects the way you feel, which affects the way you do.
As an Alumna, Folk keeps in touch with the William & Mary community. Clinical Professor of Marketing Dawn Edmiston Ed.D. ’20, who met Folk as a student interviewer during the interview of her candidate at the faculty, has enjoyed seeing the professional climb of Folk. “It has been a joy to stay connected for more than a decade. Delia’s positivity and professionalism were evident from the first moment we met, “Edmiston says.
Folk now serves as a role model for current students at the Business School: in July 2024, she returned to campus to mentor students in the stock women’s competition, and in November, she received a webinar for the career development series of career Work w & m@.
Looking forward to the style that connects us, FOLK foresees the expansion of corporate partnerships and digital styling courses, all with the aim of making the most accessible fashion for a wider audience.
“As an entrepreneur, you create something out of nothing,” Folk says. “And when it actually affects people’s lives for good – that’s magical.”
Annie Powell, university marketing