by Jess McCuan  .  photos by Matt Rose 

You couldn’t find two women more different than Karen Clerici and Forrest Hogestad. Or so you’d think when you first meet them. Clerici, 45, has both a finance degree and an MBA, and she spent 18 years creating and marketing investment products for the global financial services firm Transamerica. If anyone was a corporate career woman, it was Clerici. As an executive VP at Transamerica, her style, she says,  was "100 percent power suits." Now, she’s a financial advisor at Webb Investment Services in

downtown Asheville. Her husband Guy Clerici is chair of the Pack Square Conservancy’s board of trustees and works in a sleek law office just a few feet from hers.

Then there’s Forrest Hogestad, 57, who is, for the most part, your classic Asheville bohemian. She is a painter and does not own any power suits. She does, however, own two consignment shops, The Enchanted Forrest on Merrimon Avenue and a new location on Hendersonville Road. She has a nursing background but describes herself as "much more alternative than nursing." When she moved to Asheville from Charlotte in 1995, she read The Artist’s Way, bought a small cottage, took up a paintbrush and decided to go into business for herself.

The two women are far apart in many ways. Clerici is married, Hogestad is single; Hogestad eats mostly vegetables and is trying to give up caffeine, whereas Clerici "would eat a veal calf and not blink," she jokes.

But they share more than you might expect. A love of cowboy boots, for example. Both have five pairs. They’re both runners—Clerici was a high school track star and still runs regularly, and Hogestad runs two miles every day. While their current professions couldn’t be more different, both came to Asheville looking to step away from the corporate world and reinvent themselves. So VERVE helped them do just that. In fact, they were such good sports for these makeovers that we turned them not just into different versions of themselves, but—for an afternoon—into each other.

The financier gets funky. 

Karen Clerici, a financial advisor at Asheville’s Webb Investment Services, started her makeover day wearing a Jones of New York power suit and Mikimoto pearls. During the day, and especially for a first meeting with a new client, she pulls her hair back for the "you can trust me" look, she says. She’s shown, above right, in her sleek office in Patton Avenue’s Capital Center. 

By the afternoon, Scott Thompson of Makeup at the Grove Arcade and Kathryn Strohl of downtown Asheville’s Ad•lib boutique helped Clerici step into a new earthy, stylish Asheville look.

Karen’s cardigan by Echo, pants by Fenini, necklace by Teresa Goodall, earrings by World Traveler and Pax leather bag, all from Ad•lib.

The painter suits up.

Artist and free spirit Forrest Hogestad loves to hula hoop. And she doesn’t mind doing it in public. She started her makeover day in a flouncy purple dress that she sometimes wears to parties. By afternoon, she had transformed herself (with the help of an adorable Bebe suit that she found at her shop) into the consummate corporate power broker. At right, she’s at the head of the boardroom table in Clerici’s investment office.

Forrest’s dress and boots, above, and Bebe suit, at right, from the Enchanted Forrest Boutique at 1950 Hendersonville Road in Asheville. Special thanks to Constance Ensner of Asheville’s Constance and Context boutiques.