Fashioning a Business

Delia Folk ’14 wants you to know: Fashion is not frivolous. “It’s either your superpower or your sabotage,” Folk says. And she is determined to make it your superpower.

As the co-founder of the fashion media and styling company The Style That Binds Us, Folk is working to educate women on the power of fashion to accomplish their professional and personal goals. Her company, working with both individuals and corporations, offers personal style consulting, digital styling courses and public speaking engagements, as well as a YouTube channel, blog, newsletter and podcast.

Folk entered William & Mary as a transfer student eager for change. Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, she initially took the same path as many of her high school classmates to the University of Alabama. While she enjoyed the Roll Tide atmosphere, she also wanted something new.

“In college, you should have new experiences, meet new people and learn to think differently,” Folk says. In her sophomore year, she visited William & Mary with her mother and grandmother and immediately fell in love with the school — “as anyone would.”

It was here, surrounded by sorority sisters in Kappa Kappa Gamma, that Folk’s professional aspirations took root.

“I met an incredible group of driven, ambitious women in Kappa, and that really rubbed off on me,” she says.

Folk set her sights on a career in fashion, an industry that she says transcends simply a love of clothes and brings together people and ideas from all over the world. Knowing that storytelling is at the heart of fashion branding, she decided to pursue a major in marketing at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business.

Julie Agnew ’91, Richard C. Kraemer Term Professor of Business and one of Folk’s former professors, encourages all her students to think deeply about marketing — a critical subject for every profession.

“Understanding human psychology and knowing how to sell your product, ideas or even yourself is crucial for success and making an impact,” Agnew says. “Delia has always been a fashion-forward, positive go-getter. It has come as no surprise to see her achieve the success she has today.”

A summer internship at Versace in New York City solidified Folk’s resolve to pursue fashion as a career. She loved being surrounded by superstar designers (on Folk’s first day in the office, Donatella Versace’s salad was still in the fridge from her last visit) and immersing herself in an industry that was even more dynamic and global than she had realized. Landing her first job after graduation as a buyer at Barneys New York, Folk started meeting more emerging designers. Inspired by their compelling personal stories, she started a blog to highlight their work more broadly.

“Barneys was all about sourcing from across the globe the most incredible up-and-coming brands that no one’s ever heard of,” Folk says. “But if you don’t know the story behind the brand, why would you buy it?”

While Folk was advancing in her career, her mother, Alison Bruhn P ’14, earned a Professional Image Consulting Skills Certificate from the Fashion Institute of Technology and began a professional styling business, with clients from Alabama to 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?’” Folk says.

And so, in April 2018, Folk and Bruhn cofounded The Style That Binds Us and created a community for those already in love with fashion as well as those eager to learn.

The company leans into its intergenerational nature, with mother and daughter working closely together. Folk, who identifies as more intense and direct, brings a business-minded acumen; Bruhn, whom Folk describes as more patient and calm, brings teaching skills from a previous profession in education. “We really balance each other out,” says Folk.

In the often-exclusionary fashion world, Bruhn sees their collaboration as a unique strength.

“We create a kind, encouraging atmosphere by being a mother-daughter company,” Bruhn says. “Our mission from the very beginning has always been that everyone, of every age, size, race and lifestyle, has a seat at our table and has a right to engage with fashion and style and to feel important, confident, appreciated and beautiful.”

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced challenges, but it also inspired opportunities: Their corporate sponsorships and public speaking rocketed in the aftermath of the pandemic.

“Coming out of COVID, everyone thought, ‘My wardrobe feels like it’s from 2016, and everyone’s really casual,’” Folk says. “But how casual is too casual?”

Together, Folk and Bruhn have appeared on television shows like “Good Morning America” and “New York Live” and have started working with major corporations such as Nasdaq and Blackstone to educate employees on appropriate professional dress.

Folk applies the mindset from the W&M business school that encouraged professionalism. “We dressed up in business professional style to go to class,” she says. “It puts you in a different frame of mind when you’re wearing business professional versus a T-shirt and shorts.”

It’s an outlook that Folk tries to instill in others: How you dress affects how you feel, which affects how you act.

As an alumna, Folk keeps in contact with the William & Mary community. Clinical Professor of Marketing Dawn Edmiston Ed.D. ’20, who met Folk as the student interviewer during her faculty candidate interview, has enjoyed seeing Folk’s professional ascent. “It’s been a joy to remain 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 Women’s Stock Pitch competition, and in November, she hosted a webinar for the W&M@Work career development series.

Looking ahead for The Style That Binds Us, Folk envisions expanding the corporate partnerships and digital styling courses, all with the goal of making fashion more accessible to a wider audience.

“As an entrepreneur, you create something from nothing,” Folk says. “And when it actually impacts people’s lives for the better — that is magical.”