The South Carolina blogger opens up about her newly renovated farmhouse and running a mega-popular business.
By Jessica Leigh Mattern, Country Living
If you don’t recognize her name, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize Julia Engel’s face. Photographs of the Gal Meets Glam fashion blogger pop up all over the internet thanks to her large following—especially when you search for chic outfit ideas or popular home trends on Pinterest.
If you don’t recognize her name, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize Julia Engel’s face. Photographs of the Gal Meets Glam fashion blogger pop up all over the internet thanks to her large following—especially when you search for chic outfit ideas or popular home trends on Pinterest.
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Take a look at her Instagram feed, which alone boasts more than 1.2 million followers, and you'll find yourself in awe of how her stylish, flower-filled, wanderlust-y feed comes together so seamlessly.
We caught up with the blogger and dress designer to ask her how she does it, including all of the details behind her newly renovated South Carolina farmhouse and what her life is like beyond the blog.
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[post_ads]She recently moved from San Francisco to Charleston to embrace a slower lifestyle. "It’s really nice when you go sit on your porch and see your neighbors walking by. It was the change of pace I was looking for," she tells CountryLiving.com. Plus, she loves southern culture. "Everyone gets dressed up to go out. And it’s also so fun. Everyone loves having a party for no reason."
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Each room in her farmhouse was inspired by a color. Her home is now a mix of country, traditional, and English elements, with lots of cheerful hues. "It’s like the English countryside meets the Bahamas," she says. "It’s really fun." And she doesn't hold back with color, either. "Each room has a color scheme, so our bedroom has purples, our bathroom is pink, our front entrance is coral and blue, and our kitchen is blue. Each room has lots of personality."
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You'll find a lot of color in her new Gal Meets Glam clothing collection, too. The dress designer now oversees a creative team to build a collection of dresses each month that she sells at Nordstrom and on her site. Julia begins the process by selecting the color palette, then chooses prints and fabrics before finally designing each silhouette. Unlike some of her fashion colleagues, she leads every part of the creative process including styling and photography. "We’re shooting each collection in a different spot based on the theme," she says. Next up, she'll venture to London to shoot her July lineup, which features soft and muted colors.
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Her ultra-feminine dress line has already done insanely well. Within a couple of days of launching, much of the collection sold out with her selection of day dresses—particularly the "Courtney" maxi—clocking in as most popular.
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She loves her blog, but she's also very honest about the challenges that come with it. "If I were to start it now, I don’t think I would have the guts to do it," she says. "Starting it back in 2012, it was just my friends and family who followed it. Sometimes now when I think how there are 1.2 million people who will see this picture I post, it freaks me out. It makes you overthink everything."
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Interacting with her followers is her favorite part of her job. The blogger says that having that many followers doesn't always feel real, which is why she loves meeting readers in person. "When we meet people, and when people message and communicate with us, that makes it so rewarding."
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[post_ads]She's a Joanna Gaines fan, and she's got the shiplap to prove it. "Yeah, I love her," Julia says. "I think everybody does, right?" And just like Joanna, the blogger loves shiplap, which now covers most of her house.
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She's obsessed with the color pink, but she repainted her pink farmhouse for the smartest reason. After realizing you could see the pink dollhouse-like exterior from every room in their window-filled house, Julia opted to repaint it a classic shade of white. Now, no matter where she stands, her punchy interior looks perfect next to her neutral exterior and porch, which she recently made over with Lowe's.
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Trends are not her thing, and she doesn't tailor her blog content or dress designs. "When you try to cater to everybody, you cater to nobody because nothing’s defining you," she says. "I’ve always been really specific with what I wanted Gal Meets Glam to be."
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And she's most inspired when she sees people embracing their own style. "One of the most empowering things about social media and blogs is that people finally realize they can kind of do whatever they want," she says. "They can be themselves and have their own funky style and it’s okay because we get to see so many people doing that."
See more at: Country Living
