Some mothers are horrified when their 3-year-old insists on leaving the house in a mismatched tutu and T-shirt combo paired with rain boots even though the sun is out. They might attempt to steer their kid towards more muted, cohesive outfits. Not Amrit Tietz, the creative director and cofounder of the media company Spread the Jelly, which focuses on modern motherhood. Tietz finds herself inspired by her daughter’s looks. “She’s so free,” says Tietz. “She’ll wear butterfly clips and I’ll say, ‘Isn’t this fun?’ and put them in my hair as well.”

Freedom fuels Tietz’s entire philosophy of getting dressed in the morning. As a child, her own fashion sensibility was influenced by her Indian heritage—seeing the colorful, sequined fabrics her relatives wore—as well as her musical theatre friends who had no qualms about wearing dramatic, showstopping outfits to class. Tietz has always treated her wardrobe as a canvas for self-expression, routinely putting together looks that others might say clash: athletic shorts with lace tops, T-shirts with vintage Chanel skirt suits. 

In the corporate world, she’s refused to change the way she dresses to accommodate workplace norms. In her first job, one of her bosses once remarked that it looked like she was wearing a nightgown to a pitch meeting, and she retorted that she actually was wearing a silk slip under her blazer. “Why the hell not?” Tietz says. “It wasn’t inappropriate, and it was definitely unexpected.” 

For Tietz, getting dressed in the morning should be fun. But perhaps more importantly, it is her way of pushing back against a culture that tries to make people conform to a fixed idea of what is proper—even if that means suppressing people’s identities.

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