Life With Ferris: Adjust My Crown

I’m always wearing the wrong thing. I wind up dressing up for casual events and not spiffing up enough for “festive cocktail casual.” Who the heck can interpret these dress codes?

I don’t have daughters, so who can I ask about the pantsuit I just pulled out of my closet or the too-tight-but-I paid-too-much-for-it cocktail dress in the back of the closet? Flattering or not? In style or not? Keep or not? Appropriate for this upcoming event or not? With everything out there online, how is there not an app for that?

Enter Adjust My Crown, an app to scroll for style that is safe, encouraging and life-giving.

Lookout Mountain resident Sarah Stevens is the mother of four children, including two pre-teens. She is also the founder of Adjust My Crown, an app to bring people together to joyfully, safely and supportively answer the age-old question: “What should I wear?” and also provide a happy place to scroll for style inspo.

When I first heard about Adjust My Crown, I thought it was an app for teens (which it is), but there’s more. Yes, it actually had its origin years ago when Sarah and her friends sent pics of outfits to each other to determine what to wear to certain events. Sarah loved this ritual for several reasons; besides connecting with friends, she loved the end result of choosing the exact right outfit for them.

“I love putting outfits together differently and seeing friends have a softer expression on their faces when they look in the mirror, that aha moment where you’re a little kinder to yourself,” she explained, adding that when the perfect clothing is selected, “something shifts. I love that shift.”

And it’s that shift that speaks volumes about this new app and its implications.

Most all folks who are the least bit familiar with social apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and others know their potential for harm. If you don’t, Google it. Sarah didn’t need to learn more; she knew enough as the mother of 9-year-old and 12-year-old daughters because she regularly heard news stories about the impact of social media on girls specifically and the mental health crisis facing them. She knew the stories that were regularly making headlines could have been about her girls or their friends.

“I can’t have that. I couldn’t do nothing,” Sarah said. “It hits deep when the people who make up your whole world are on the front lines of a war whose toll we can’t calculate yet. You spend your days nourishing, praying for, loving on, creating a home for them to thrive and grow into their own little people, and the headlines were draconian.”

Sarah knew she had to provide a life-giving option for her daughters and their friends. And she knew style was close to girls’ hearts.

A light bulb went off one morning when she pulled the car over to answer a slew of texts from friends in several different cities, all asking “what to wear tonight?”

“The friends … are scattered all over, from San Francisco to Boston now. I remember the morning specifically when I had the idea. The day I was driving home from school drop off I had gotten a text from a friend who lives in Westport, Ct., and was visiting her little sister in Paris and needed outerwear. A friend in Atlanta was also planning ‘resort’ looks for spring break in the Bahamas. Another friend in Atlanta was looking at the early summer arrivals (the good things go quickly and they’re a competitive lot), and I remember an iridescent pair of ancient Greek sandals in one picture. At the same time, two friends here had sent pictures of more casual daily finds/outfits,” Sarah said.

Scrolling through all these texts and pictures, Sarah wondered why there wasn’t an online site to ask this question in a safe, supportive way and get an answer in a timely fashion. Hello, that event is tonight!

And just like that, she knew what to do, and it wasn’t to stand by and do nothing. Inspired with her idea of the new app, Adjust My Crown, Sarah ran it by her husband, James, who also happens to be life-giving.

“My husband never once said it was a crazy idea for a stay-at-home mom of four (with three being home-schooled!) to work on, and he supported me at every turn,” Sarah said. “He helped with business things I would never have been able to figure out. I spent months interviewing the app development firms with the best ratings all over the world, and we went from there. Once we picked a firm, I asked them to create a female led team and they accommodated.”

The journey to creating an actual app is not a simple one, especially for someone with zero background in that field. Sarah said her only experience with apps was on the consumer/user side, with a particular fondness for the Walmart and Hungry Root apps that keep their household running efficiently.

“I would have quit a long time ago if I weren’t so driven by my desire to carve out a community that’s safe, kind, and supportive around the thing we all do daily - get dressed,” Sarah said. “I’m completely out of my depths here. I don’t say that out of a sense of humility. I’m truly out of my depths. My only superpower is that I feel conviction to create a safe community for us because social media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

Adjust My Crown is a paid subscription that only costs a few dollars a month. In exchange, you get to post outfits you are considering and get feedback and suggestions on these “polls.” Sarah says, “I want to ensure there aren’t bots voting and there aren’t trolls creeping and a subscription does that.” Sarah carefully monitors the site, which has already been downloaded in over 30 countries, from France to Italy to Pakistan. Anyone interested in. an annual subscription can email Sarah at operations@adjust-my-crown.com or go to adjust-my-crown.com.

About the menial subscription fee, I believe it’s worth it. I know I can post pics of myself anywhere on social media and hide my face, but it’s a hard no on sharing anything like that in the general cyber world.

I actually learned about Adjust My Crown at the exact same time I was forced to deal with my unruly closet. “You solve that ‘closet full of clothes and nothing to wear’ dilemma on your own timeline - you can set the poll deadline for a few weeks out or a quick poll that ends in an hour or less. What’s special is that we support you where you are, where your body is now, your personal style (you can pick words to describe your style so when we vote on your poll, we can take YOUR style into consideration), and come alongside you to show you how special you ARE. It’s not that you’ll be special/beautiful if you embrace this trend/this style/this shape … you’re there now,” Sarah promises.

Sign me up. I will keep you posted.

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Ferris Robinson is the author of three children’s books, “The Queen Who Banished Bugs,” “The Queen Who Accidentally Banished Birds,” and “Call Me Arthropod” in her pollinator series “If Bugs Are Banished.” “Making Arrangements” is her first novel. “Dogs and Love - Stories of Fidelity” is a collection of true tales about man’s best friend. Her website is ferrisrobinson.com and you can download a free pollinator poster there. She is the editor of The Lookout Mountain Mirror and The Signal Mountain Mirror.