The Psychic and the Store

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The first thing she asked me to do wasn’t tell her my name. Without saying a word, she began chanting as she slowly walked around the room. The sound was unfamiliar, almost hypnotic, filling every corner of the space. When she finished, she handed me a collection of crystals.

“Arrange them,” she said.

“However feels right.”

I remember looking down at the crystals, wondering if there was a right answer. There wasn’t. Or at least, I hoped there wasn’t. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I trusted my instincts. Only then did I begin to notice where I was. Tarot cards were carefully arranged in a stack on the table. The scent of incense lingered in the air. Native American wooden masks watched silently from the walls, while ancient bowls and artifacts lined weathered wooden shelves. It felt less like stepping into an office and more like stepping into another world.

Thirteen years ago, my then-boyfriend, now my husband, thought it would be fun if we visited a psychic while we were in Santa Fe. It wasn’t something I had ever considered doing. I was curious, but skeptical. If anything, I expected an entertaining experience and a funny story to tell afterward.

Instead, I left with a sentence I’ve never forgotten.

She looked at me and smiled and said a sentence I’ll never forget.

“There’s a little boy waiting for you.”

Without warning, tears started rolling down my face. At the time, I was in my late thirties. My career was thriving, and I wasn’t sitting in that room looking for answers about motherhood.

But when she said those words, something shifted. I didn’t expect to cry. Yet there I was, wiping away tears I hadn’t seen coming.

Looking back, I think she touched a hope I hadn’t fully admitted to myself. I knew I was getting older. I knew life wasn’t standing still. And in that moment, she gave voice to a future I wanted more than I realized.

A short time later, my firstborn son, Kai came into my life.

I’ve thought about that afternoon many times over the years.

Was it intuition? Coincidence? A lucky guess?

I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that thirteen years later, while visiting Santa Fe again this summer, I found myself walking back through that same door.

Walking into her office felt strangely familiar. The chanting. The crystals. The scent of incense. The same quiet sense that time had somehow stood still. This time, though, my life looked completely different. I was married, had two incredible boys and had bought a store called Designer Revival.

However, this visit I was thinking about something entirely different…my business. After more than a decade of building Designer Revival, I found myself asking the question every entrepreneur eventually asks:

What’s next?

She told me my business was stronger than I realized.

Then she said I was “on the brink of something new.”

I immediately wondered about this Substack.

I had only recently started writing it, and in many ways it does feel like the beginning of something new for me, a different way of talking about fashion, the store, and the life I’ve built around both.

Was that what she meant? Or maybe it was something I haven’t even thought of yet.

Then she got more specific.

“You’re going to do extraordinarily well on eBay live.”Will she be right? I have no idea.

But as I walked through the streets of Santa Fe afterward, I found myself thinking less about her predictions and more about why people have been drawn to psychics for thousands of years.

It’s easy to dismiss the idea.

Yet throughout history, people have sought guidance from oracles, clairvoyants, astrologers, and fortune tellers—not because they lacked intelligence, but because they were living with uncertainty.

Kings consulted them before wars. Leaders sought them before making difficult decisions. Ordinary people asked about love, family, health, money, and the future.

In other words, the questions haven’t changed very much.

Then it occurred to me that the fashion world has been asking many of the same questions for decades.

Christian Dior openly believed in fate. He consulted fortune tellers and sought their guidance around some of the biggest decisions of his career.

Coco Chanel had her own relationship with luck and mysticism. She surrounded herself with symbols that held meaning for her. The lion—her astrological sign—appeared throughout her world, and the number five became so intertwined with Chanel that more than a century later, we still associate it with her name.

Yves Saint Laurent was fascinated by astrology. And generations of designers have filled collections with tarot cards, constellations, celestial symbols, protective eyes, crystals, mythology, and other references to the unseen.

At first, the relationship between fashion and clairvoyance seems strange.

Then it makes perfect sense. Fashion is one of the few industries built almost entirely on intuition. Designers create collections months before anyone knows what they’ll want to wear.

Buyers invest millions of dollars in trends that don’t yet exist. Editors decide what’s next before the rest of us even know we’re ready for it.

And those of us in luxury resale are making our own predictions every day. Which handbag will become tomorrow’s icon? Which designer is about to have a resurgence? Which forgotten piece sitting on a rack today will suddenly become the thing everyone wants tomorrow?

Maybe that’s why fashion has always been drawn to psychics. Both are trying to see tomorrow before the rest of us. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that she may not have given me the most important lesson that day. The crystals did.

Before she ever said a word about my future, she handed me a collection of crystals and asked me to arrange them in whatever way felt right.

Looking back, maybe the crystals weren’t about predicting the future at all. Maybe they were simply asking me to trust myself. I’ve been doing that ever since. I trusted my instincts when I became a mother. I trusted my instincts when I bought Designer Revival. I trust my instincts every day I walk into the store.

And now I’m trusting them again as I write this Substack and as we step into something new with eBay Live.

Do I know whether she can really see the future? I don’t. But perhaps that’s the wrong question. Maybe the reason people have always been drawn to psychics isn’t because they want someone else to tell them their future. Maybe they’re searching for permission to believe in the future they’re already hoping for.

Thirteen years ago, I walked out of that little office carrying hope. Hope for something I hadn’t even realized I wanted quite so badly until she said it out loud.

This time, I walked out carrying hope again but also something else.

Trust in my own instincts and whatever comes next, I think I’ll listen to them.

Thanks for reading The Revival…til next time.

XOXO, Tiffany