Katie Casper is an engineer

What her process can teach us about getting dressed (and buying less).

I believe in instincts. It’s how I live my life, how I make decisions. I’ve never really understood how else you’re supposed to choose anything if not by following your gut.

But what happens when your instincts stop landing?

When they get… interrupted. For me, that was having a baby. Actually, two of them. Somewhere in that stretch, my style instincts left me. They’re probably still sitting in a ditch next to the rest of my young, firm, tan body.

I always thought style lived there – in instinct. You either had it or you didn’t. It wasn’t something you could learn. You just knew.

So what do you do when you don’t automatically know what works, what feels right? Do you just give up and become someone who leaves the house in Crocs… unironically?

Or do you find another way in.

Good thing we have people who can model great style…and teach (and re-teach) us how to actually get dressed.

That’s what I keep coming back to when I watch Katie Casper’s content.

For those of you who don’t know Katie Casper, she’s a fashion creator paving the way on secondhand finds. But that alone undersells what she does.

When I first started writing this, the headline came to me almost immediately: Katie Casper is an engineer. I hadn’t looked into her background yet. I definitely wasn’t thinking about her career. It was just a reaction to watching her and her process.

And then I learned: she actually is an engineer, by trade.

First, a moment of applause for that.

But, as I thought about it, this is what sets her apart. What Katie is actually proving, whether she’s saying it outright or not, is that style can be worked through.

It doesn’t have to be just something you either have or you don’t.

And with her engineering brain steering the way, we get to learn from it in real time.

A little bit on Katie…

A second-hand prodigy was born

Katie studied industrial engineering at Arizona State and built a career in tech. Today, she’s a Director of Software Engineering at a commerce platform — her actual, full-time day job. As someone who works in software but daydreams about fashion, I particularly love this about her.

At the same time, she developed her style through thrifting. She’s describes it as having champagne taste on a beer budget, which meant looking at runway and luxury retail for inspo (started on Tumblr now we’re here!), and then figuring out how to recreate those looks another way - Goodwill, Salvation Army, resale platforms.

Growing up digging through Nordstrom’s “Last Chance” stores for a designer find (according to my dad, this was not for the faint of heart due to the stench…), I am familiar with the chaos of this process. It’s a completely different entry point into fashion. It’s about the hunt - it’s scrappy. And in many ways, it’s the opposite of the instant satisfaction we become used to as online shoppers with a healthy budget.

Secondhand shopping is where she found her niche.

Through some casual research, I noticed that she started posting on Instagram more intentionally around late 2023. Then in 2024, she came in with a clear point of view — vintage finds, TRR hauls, and tips that actually felt usable. By September, she refined it even further and launched The Weekly Roundup on Substack: curated secondhand finds, paired with context around why they matter and how to actually wear them.

Since then, she’s built a real audience across Instagram, TikTok, + SubStack — all growing, all centered around this same idea. And now here we are, watching it unfold and waiting to see what she does next.

Making life more sustainable for us all

Her focus on secondhand is the most obvious layer of what she does. That’s what people latch onto first.

But the more interesting part is how that mindset extends beyond where she shops.

She’s talked about going through periods where she doesn’t buy anything at all — as a way to push herself back into her own closet. And instead of that feeling limiting, it actually seems to open things up.

Once you remove the option of buying something new, you’re left with what you already have. And the question becomes how far you’re willing to go with it.

This really hits home for me. I’ve gone through my own “shopping freezes.” Losing my instincts is what sent me down that path in the first place because I didn’t know what to do with what I already had. Buying something new felt like the only solution. Over and over.

I still struggle with it.

But Katie has become a bit of a check for me. Occasionally, instead of the impulse checkout, I’ll force myself to explore my closet. It doesn’t always lead somewhere great, but it slows the cycle down in a way that feels meaningful.

That’s the kind of influence she has. She’s changed how I think about what I already own. Challenging me to get creative, to revisit pieces I’ve forgotten about, to have fun with what I might otherwise write off as junk.

I have a lot of junk.

The ultimate Houdini act

What impresses me most about Katie is her ability to take something vintage, outdated, or just straight-up weird and make it completely wearable (like a cycling jersey that she cut up!). And somehow, it looks better than the perfectly styled, out-of-the-box outfit I would have defaulted to.

Watching her put an outfit together, the first thing that stands out is that clothes aren’t fixed. A piece isn’t locked into the category it was designed for. She’ll take something and rework it until it lands somewhere else entirely. Layered t-shirts. Skirts become dresses. Dresses become tops. Menswear gets reshaped. And then there’s the two belts.

I actually have a strange personal history with that one. In college, I visited my cousin in New York and kept him out so late one night (do I sound cool now?) that he accidentally wore two belts to work the next day. It somehow became my fault, and I never heard the end of it.

Little did I know that was a fashion trend waiting to happen!

But with Katie, there’s a willingness to push things past their obvious use.

Recently, she took what could have been a dress—or maybe a top (I’m still not sure). It was the kind of piece that should come with instructions. She turned it inside-out, wrapped it around herself, then over her shoulders, and it became a completely different thing.

Katie really does create magic with her closet.

One of the comments on that post perfectly summed her up: “I swear I didn’t know what clothes were until I found your account. You’ve made me look at everything differently and pull out pieces I know I would never see otherwise.”

She paired it with a black pencil skirt and made it look like it was supposed to be worn this way all along. Poof!

A front row seat to her process

Katie’s process is rooted in contrast — she calls it tension. “Something juxtaposed. Something chill.” So…something polished gets paired with something that interrupts it. Something that should feel formal gets pulled in another direction. It’s subtle in some outfits, more obvious in others, but the tension is always there.

And I know this because she doesn’t keep the process to herself.

You get to hear her think through what works and what doesn’t. You see her try things on, adjust, reconsider. Over time, it becomes clear that she’s building a playbook she can return to.

She’s spent enough time working through her own approach that she can now articulate it.

That’s where the engineering mindset really shows up.

She breaks things down - proportion, balance, weight, how something sits - and makes small changes to see what shifts. Over time, that builds logic around something most of us treat as instinct.

A lot of us know when an outfit feels off. Very few can explain it. She can. And once you hear it enough times, you start to internalize it.

I’m learning so much from her. There are the shopping tips (like how to get a designer bag for under $100). But more than that, she’s answering the question I couldn’t crack: how do you get dressed when you stop trusting your instincts? That’s what stayed with me.

Katie, she’s just like us

Katie describes her style as “effortless and chic with something unexpected” - and it really does land. But to me, there’s also a kind of tomboy ease to it that makes her feel approachable. As someone who isn’t exactly thriving in tight clothing right now, she’s given me the confidence to lean into a baggier, more relaxed version of myself.

The more I watch her, the more I realize it’s not just about how she dresses. It’s the context around it. She has a full-time career in a completely different world, and she’s a mom. From where I’m sitting, she’s basically holding down three jobs.

And knowing that changes how I see her content. It doesn’t feel casual to me. There’s too much consistency, too much thought behind it. You can tell she’s carving this out outside of normal working hours, and that effort (and passion) shows.

It’s made me take this a little more seriously myself. I’ve always had this vague idea that I wanted to build something, but it’s easy to push that off when life feels full. Watching her has made me more aware of how much of it just comes down to deciding to do it anyway. Sitting down to write when I’d honestly rather crawl into bed (or, more realistically, fall asleep to terrible reality TV).

For a long time, I didn’t think I had anything to add here. Or maybe I just didn’t know how to say it without feeling slightly cringe.

Recently, I got a vote of confidence from one of my favorites, Courtney Grow (I wrote about her here), and that was enough to push me a bit. I turned on paid subscriptions — mostly as a way to hold myself accountable to doing more of this.

There’s zero pressure, obviously. But if you also find yourself overthinking outfits, people, style, all of it - come join.

Closing

There’s just one thing that not even Katie can get me on board with: wearing socks with heels. And I say this with great admiration for how they look on her personally. But for me, this feels like a hard boundary. I’ve never been able to pull off any type of sock look with a shoe that isn’t a sneaker.

Is it because my ankles are not as… ankly as they need to be for this? Or is it that I’m just not confident enough?

Either way, no matter how great the tension is, you won’t catch me out on the town in socks!

And I think that’s fine. Because that’s what works for me. The bigger picture here is that Katie’s shifted the way I approach getting dressed when something isn’t working. I don’t move on as quickly. I’ll stay with it a little longer, adjust something small, see if it changes. I’m looking at the pieces differently now. And every once in a while, I’ll come back to something I’ve worn a hundred times and wonder if I’ve been approaching it too narrowly the entire time.

Could this be an unlock for how I live my life too?

In any case… life feels like a rat race most days, and I appreciate that she’s helped reignite my spark for getting dressed. She’s reminded me that it can be fun! And some days, that’s all I need.