Mikaela
Pabon
Bold prints, real confidence, and the courage to start again.
I am a self-taught fashion designer and the founder of Dressed in Joy, a content creator, and a speaker who believes style is one of the boldest ways a woman can take up space. I help brands tell richer stories, and I help women step in front of the camera and into the next chapter of their lives.
From the South Side of Chicago to a New York runway
I grew up in a home where fashion was a quiet dream more than a real possibility, the youngest voice among five older brothers, always watching and always imagining. I spent more than twenty years in tech and data before I ever let myself say the word designer out loud.
In 2019 I started Dressed in Joy from my Brooklyn apartment with a love of bold tropical prints and a refusal to believe that color and confidence came with an expiration date. Five years later I was showing an original collection at New York Fashion Week.
Read my full story →Ways we can build something together
Whether you are a woman ready to feel at home in front of the camera or a brand looking for a creative collaborator, there is a door here for you.
The Posing Workshop
In person in Brooklyn or live on Zoom. Learn how to feel at home in front of any camera, so the photos finally look like the woman you actually are. This is the work I am known for, and it is the fastest way I know to help a woman feel confident and seen.
1:1 Designer Mentorship
For the aspiring designer with a head full of ideas and no map for where to begin. Private mentorship from concept to first product, with the lessons I learned the hard way building Dressed in Joy from scratch.
Speaking
Keynotes, workshops, and interactive posing sessions on confidence, visibility, and the courage to start again, especially for women writing their next chapter.
Brand Partnerships & Content
Content that converts, from a creator who has negotiated her own brand deals and knows how to make a product feel like a story women want to share.
Print Design & Licensing
Original prints in unexpected colorways, available to license or develop with your brand. I bring the artwork and an audience that already trusts my eye.
Shop Dressed in Joy
My fashion brand, known for joyful prints in sizes S to 4X. The clothes started it all, and they are still where the whole story lives.
A look at the work
Runway looks, original prints, campaigns, and the moments in between. This gallery grows as you send me images.
You are very popular around here, and I've been loving hearing your name continuously swirling around with how great you are to work with and execute Microsoft campaigns. Thank you for your creativity, dedication, and being an all-around amazing partner to all of us.
Come hang out in my inbox
Style, the messy middle of midlife, and what I am building next. Spam is wack, and I promise never to send any.
Book Mikaela
to speak
Keynotes, workshops, and hands-on posing sessions on confidence, visibility, and the courage to start again. I speak to the woman who suspects her best chapter is still ahead of her, and I show her she is right.
A speaker who has actually done the thing
I am not speaking from theory. I built a fashion brand with no formal training, walked away from a stable corporate career to do it, and learned how to show up on camera and on stage as a Black woman in midlife who was told, in a hundred quiet ways, to wait her turn.
When I talk about confidence and reinvention, I am telling my own story, and I am showing your audience that the next chapter is theirs to write too. Audiences leave with permission, a plan, and the kind of warmth that makes them feel like they just talked to a friend who gets it.
Bring the Posing Workshop to your stage
This is the work I am known for. Instead of a talk the audience watches, this is a session they feel in their bodies. I get the whole room on their feet, walk them through the exact posing techniques I teach my clients, and send them home knowing how to show up in any photo with confidence. It is part keynote, part hands-on workshop, and it is unforgettable for women's events, retreats, and brand experiences.
Bring it to your eventWhat I speak about
Each of these can flex to a keynote, a fireside chat, a panel, or a hands-on workshop, and every one can be tailored to your audience.
The Confidence to Be Seen
My signature talk, and the work I am best known for. Why visibility feels so hard for so many women, and how learning to be at home in front of a camera changes how you carry yourself everywhere else. This one can be a keynote or a fully interactive posing session where the whole room gets up and practices, and leaves with photos that actually look like them.
Nobody Told Me What My 40s Would Look Like
A keynote on reinvention and giving yourself permission to begin again at any age. The story of leaving a corporate career to build something of my own, and what it really takes to bet on yourself in the second half of life.
Self-Taught and Self-Made
Building a brand and a body of work without a roadmap, from data analyst to fashion founder to New York Fashion Week. For audiences of creative entrepreneurs and anyone who has ever felt unqualified to chase the thing they actually want.
Joy as a Strategy
How bold color, print, and creative play became the foundation of a real business. A talk about leading with joy in a world that rewards burnout, and why your most authentic self is also your best brand.
Where I belong on your stage
Reinvention, confidence, midlife and beyond
Building a brand from scratch, self-taught
Design, inclusive sizing, creator-led brands
Visibility, voice, and owning your story
Workshops, fireside chats, content moments
Warm, candid, and always quotable
Ready-to-use bio
Mikaela Pabon is a Brooklyn based fashion designer, content creator, and speaker. She is the founder of Dressed in Joy, a women's fashion brand known for bold prints in sizes S to 4X, and she made her New York Fashion Week debut in 2024. Mikaela speaks on reinvention, confidence, and the art of building a creative life after 40.
Copy short bioMikaela Pabon traded a corporate career of more than twenty years in tech and data for a sewing table and a head full of color, and never looked back. She started as an executive assistant, became a database administrator and then a data analyst, and spent her final corporate decade at JetBlue. Raised on the South Side of Chicago and now based in Brooklyn, she founded Dressed in Joy in 2019 and grew it into a brand celebrated for joyful tropical prints in sizes S to 4X, debuting an original collection at New York Fashion Week in 2024. A self-taught designer, content creator, and hula dancer, she now helps women find the confidence to be seen and the courage to start again, on stage, on camera, and in their own lives.
Copy long bioLet's talk about your event
Tell me a little about what you are planning and I will be in touch within two business days.
Hi, I'm Mikaela
A self-taught fashion designer, content creator, and speaker who believes the best chapter of a woman's life is almost never the first one.
A Chicago girl with a head full of color
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the youngest in a house full of family and the only girl among five older brothers. It was a home where the rules were strict and the big dreams mostly had to stay quiet, so I did what a lot of creative kids do. I kept the dreaming on the inside, and I waited.
Fashion was the thing I kept coming back to, the language I understood before I had the permission to speak it out loud. It took me a long time to give myself that permission, and learning to do that is a big part of why I do the work I do now.
You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.Edith Head
I was a data analyst before I was a designer
For more than twenty years I built a career in tech and data, starting as an executive assistant at Accenture and working my way up to database administrator and then data analyst, the kind of path that looks responsible on paper and quietly hums underneath you that something is missing. Somewhere in there I spent a season living in Hawaii, where I learned to dance hula, a practice I still keep every week because it reminds me what joy in my own body feels like.
That whole detour was not wasted time. The analyst in me still runs the business, reads the numbers, and knows how an audience actually behaves. I just finally let the artist drive.
Dressed in Joy, and a runway in New York
I started Dressed in Joy in 2019 from my Brooklyn apartment, built around bold tropical and animal prints in colorways nobody expected, made for real bodies in sizes S to 4X. I taught myself almost all of it as I went, one mistake and one small win at a time.
In 2024 I showed an original collection at New York Fashion Week, eight looks built from prints I designed myself. These days I am growing into print design and brand collaboration, while helping other women find their own confidence on camera and the courage to begin again. Turns out the second half is where the good part lives.
Three things that run through everything I make
Joy on purpose
Bold prints and unexpected color are not a gimmick for me. They are a daily decision to take up space and feel good doing it.
Made for every body
Sizes S to 4X from the start, because confidence was never supposed to be reserved for one kind of woman.
It's never too late
I speak to and design for women in midlife who are not winding down. They are just getting to the part where they finally choose themselves.
How I got here
Where it began
Youngest of six, five older brothers, and a quiet obsession with style that had nowhere to go yet.
Accenture, Chicago
I started as an executive assistant, with a front-row seat to how big companies really run.
Into tech
I became a SQL Database Administrator, the first time I really bet on my own ability to learn something hard.
Data & systems, coast to coast
Database and data roles across Western Union Speedpay, IBM, a New York travel agency, United Airlines, and ADP, between Chicago and New York.
JetBlue
The chapter where my data career found its footing, and where the quiet pull toward something of my own grew impossible to ignore.
Dressed in Joy is born
I launched my brand from a Brooklyn apartment with bold prints, inclusive sizing, and very little idea of how hard it would be.
New York Fashion Week
My runway debut, eight looks built entirely from prints I designed myself.
Designer, creator, speaker
Growing into print licensing and brand collaboration, and helping women everywhere find their confidence and their next chapter.
Want to work together?
Brand collaborations, coaching, the posing workshop, or a stage to speak from. There is a door here for you.
The work
Collections, lookbooks, and the brand work in between. A living gallery of what happens when you let color lead.
From the archive
A few favorites from collections past. Every piece started with a print I designed and a woman I had in mind.
Partnerships & campaigns
A selection of work with brands I love. Content built to convert, from a creator who knows how to make a product feel like a story women actually want to share.
Microsoft
Align Probiotic
Adobe
Clorox
Kleenex
Target
Looking for a creative collaborator who brings the artwork and the audience?
Let's talk
Whether you are building a brand campaign, planning an event, or want to talk Dressed in Joy, here is the right door for each conversation.
Brand partnerships & content
Paid partnerships, sponsored content, and creator collaborations are handled by my management team at Never Settle Media.
isabella@neversettlemedia.com For EventsSpeaking & bookings
Keynotes, panels, workshops, and the live Posing Workshop. Reach out here and I will be in touch within two business days.
aloha@mikaelapabon.com Everything ElseDressed in Joy & general
Design inquiries, licensing conversations, press requests, and anything I haven't thought of yet.
aloha@mikaelapabon.comOr come hang out in my inbox
Style, the messy middle of midlife, and what I am building next. Spam is wack, and I promise never to send any.