As an advocate for boosting local women’s self-esteem, Emily Avedikian knows confidence can stem from a wide range of places. As the founder of Keeps Boutique, a nonprofit clothier housed on The Gatehouse property, Emily works one-on-one with her clients to ensure they have the necessary tools to walk with a sense of confidence, even when in the face of turmoil.
Emily didn’t set out to become a nonprofit founder when she started the boutique in Southlake at the age of 15. She was just a teenager who saw a problem and knew she could make a difference. Now 11 years later, she’s grown Keeps Boutique into a local resource for the residents of The Gatehouse, a community for women and their children who are leaving a crisis, to turn to. Over the past decade, her impact has been felt not only by the women she consults but also the community at large.
Finding Her Style
Even as a girl, Emily was always drawn to clothing. Emily’s parents homeschooled all four of their children, which gave Emily more flexibility throughout the day to balance her other interests. She still took the time to learn all the typical topics, but she was also able to spend more time on style and fashioning unique looks.
“I always loved organizing closets and putting things together,” Emily says.
Her mom, Jennifer also taught Emily about the importance of giving back. Starting at the age of 14, the two would volunteer at emergency shelters twice a month, which sparked an idea in young Emily’s mind.
“When I was talking with the girls who were my age in the shelter, they had just been pulled from their homes and they were telling me how they had nothing,” Emily remembers. “They were talking about what they were going to wear to school and were just trying to process what to do next.”
Emily realized while this was a universal problem, she had the power to help these girls regain a sense of ease.
“And I thought, my way of getting up in the morning and making myself ready for the day is putting my clothes on. And that makes me feel like I can take on my day,” Emily says. “So what a better way but to give them a place where they can create their own way of being able to take on the day.”
With that, Keeps Boutique was born. At the time, Keeps Boutique’s mission was to provide teen girls in foster care with quality clothing. She set up a boutique in the back of her father’s office and got to work finding new clothing items for her future clients. Emily considered taking in used donations, but she knew these girls deserved the same experience any woman had while shopping.
“We wanted them to have the best of the best,” Emily says. “Even though they were in foster care, going through the CPS processes, we wanted them to know that they can have the best clothes. They can go to college; they can reach for the stars.”
Emily and Jennifer pitched the organization’s efforts to a variety of clothing manufacturers at Dallas’ World Trade Center. Even though they were often told no, there were enough designers and brands who were excited by Emily’s vision and wanted to support her mission for her to start taking on clients by appointment. One of her first big donations came from D2 Showroom, who carried a line called Tulle. After first getting them to agree to donate, Emily was blown away by their generosity.
“I got that email that said they were donating 10,000 pieces, and I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh!’” Emily says.
With a strong concept and clothing on the racks, home groups full of girls ages 11 to 18 flocked from all over North Texas to shop.
Raising Confidence
After Emily started school at Baylor University, Keeps Boutique was brought onto The Gatehouse campus. There, the nonprofit was still able to connect ladies with new clothing, but the demographic shifted from girls to women trying to get back on their feet.
After graduating, Emily moved back to the Metroplex and began assisting The Gatehouse women who were trying to find appropriate clothing for next steps, whether it be a professional meeting, hearing or job interview. Just in 2018, she was able to serve 115 different women.
“What Emily does is so groundbreaking,” Chief Program Officer of The Gatehouse Dr. Leti Cavazos says. “People need to keep an eye on it.”
Emily has always loved pairing pieces together, but she knew the importance of giving these women the power of choice.
“When a lot of people come in, they just tell me, ‘Oh, you can choose...’ but I will never choose for them,” Emily explains. “That’s the beauty of it. They can start making their own choices and start thinking about what they want to look like and what they want to wear.”
Emily acts as a knowledgeable guide and helps people lay out different looks, but the final result is always up to the client.
“There’s a lot of control in deciding the way you look, and that can be really overwhelming,” Emily says. “And the gift of being able to receive is huge.”
That control can translate into power, especially when a woman finds her power outfit. One of Emily’s favorite success stories revolves around a bold clothing choice. A woman who just moved into The Gatehouse came in to see Emily at Keeps Boutique, told her she was going to see her future ex-husband later on that week and wanted to feel confident.
After setting out three different outfits, the woman just didn’t know which one to go with. So Emily sent her home with all three and told her to just choose what felt right the morning of the meeting.
A few weeks later, Emily received a letter from the woman who said she chose to wear the outfit that included a long red trench coat. And because of her appearance, two different people came up to her and asked her if she was the lawyer. Her ex-husband’s jaw fell to the floor.
“She said she felt like she could look people in the eye and the day really went her way,” Emily says. “Those are the stories that we love.”
Growing Keeps Boutique
Emily hopes to continue collecting success stories while also seeing her clients’ self-esteem grow. Using the proximity of clothing to self (PCS) scale, Emily is able to get a feel for how her clients look at themselves. This includes a set of questions that helps Keeps Boutique grasp how each woman sees herself, her self-esteem and her body cathexis or body image.
“It’s not enough to give someone a new outfit,” Cavazos says. “We also talk about and explore what that outfit makes you feel like. You think about people coming from abusive relationships... their self-esteem is really diminished from what they have endured. Emily’s job is to help them build that back up and reinforce who they really are and their full potential.”
By taking the time to see the growth in those areas and speaking to these women before they have a fitting, and periodically after they walk out with clothes, Emily can see clients’ confidence grow before her eyes.
“I really hope in the next 10 years to see some amazing numbers through collecting data and see our clients’ confidence grow,” Emily says. “All these little things we are doing, I want to see them on paper.”
She also hopes to continue serving the members of The Gatehouse, something she’s been recognized for on a national stage. In 2017, Emily was named one of “The 25 People Shaping Retail’s Future” – an honor that has also been bestowed to people like Kendra Scott and James Brett, West Elm’s president.
She is thankful for the award and loves being a part of the social work and retail industries, but her primary concern centers on her clients. Though they have come a long way since their start, Emily says Keeps Boutique still has areas where they need help need – the biggest of which is plus-sized clothing.
“That’s probably 50 percent of our clientele,” Emily says.
Emily loves receiving donations from big-name lines and nearby boutiques, but they often don’t have a wide selection of plus-sized pieces.
There are a few fixes for that. Emily says about 20 percent of her donations are just from individuals who want to donate new clothing items. As long as the pieces have tags, Keeps can take them. So when people ask how they can help, Emily suggests that they pick up a plus-sized item they can then donate next time they are out shopping.
At the end of the day, Emily still approaches clothes with the same glimmer of excitement that she had as a girl. But now instead of dreaming about future outfits, Emily spends her days setting her clients up for successful futures thanks to some new looks.
“It’s so amazing that this is my job,” Emily laughs. “It’s really interesting about how life works out.”