A young professor turns 30 and is in desperate need of new duds.

by Mick Kelly . photo by Matt Rose

Heather Talley hurried ahead. After graduating from UNC Asheville, she was accepted at Vanderbilt University and finished her Ph.D. in sociology at age 27. Now, at 29, she’s a tenure-track professor in Western Carolina University’s department of anthropology and sociology, and she just wrapped up writing her first book. Career? Stellar. Style? It could use some sprucing up. In addition to often being mistaken for a student, Talley, the self-described “perennial single girl,” hasn’t had time to update her wardrobe in a while. I’m “startlingly attached to being in my twenties,” she says.

These days, she lives in downtown Asheville but drives to WCU in Cullowhee looking quite conservative—longish dresses, suit jackets. She occasionally wears jeans but generally tries to over-dress so that her colleagues and students will take her seriously. “In my end-of-year evaluations, one student wrote, ‘She doesn’t dress professionally.’ I thought, are you kidding me? I look like a church lady compared to my colleagues.”

For her makeover, VERVE’s style team dressed her in fresh, flattering clothes from Frock Boutique. Okay, so she might not want to teach class in a zebra dress. But professors can have fun too, right? Betsy Bradfield and Jenny Lane at Frock say animal prints never go out of style (we couldn’t agree more). Courtney Southerland at Pi gave Heather a playful, versatile hairstyle with a few swept-up strands on the sides, and Scott Thompson at Makeup at the Grove Arcade gave Heather dramatic, smoky eyes. With her 30th birthday just around the corner, there’s no more frumpy teacher look here. Talley is all grown up and sexy as ever.

BeforeZebra dress by Bailey 44, from Frock Boutique. www.befrocked.com.

Hair by Courtney Sutherland at Pi Salon & Spa. www.pisalonspa.com.

Makeup by Scott Thompson at Makeup at the Grove Arcade. www.makeupatga.com.

Purse from Lulu’s Consignment Boutique in Fletcher. www.ilovelulus.net.

Special thanks to Betsy Bradfield and Jenny Lane at Frock and Jenni Cockrell at Pi Salon & Spa.