An accountant who keeps it casual tries on a power suit.

by Mick Kelly . photo by Matt Rose

You’d be amazed how difficult it is to find a power suit in downtown Asheville. It’s not that no one is wearing one. You see several suits on the street. But the power suit isn’t what Asheville’s funky downtown boutiques are known to sell, and when we wanted a suit for accountant Leah Noel (who happens to be six feet tall), it took a few days.

Why a power suit? Noel, an Asheville native who started her own accounting firm in 2009, has been looking to glam up her image a bit. She’s 33 and has always been trim and youthful-looking. (“I still get carded,” she says. “It’s nice to look young, but in the business world, people don’t take you seriously if they think you’re a kid.”) While she’s open to working with any client, she’s lately found a niche working with entertainment clients—doing books for the Asheville Afro-pop band Toubab Krewe, for example, or the filmmaker Chris Bower. None of this requires her to dress up. In fact, she often wears jeans, khakis and t-shirts to work. (Also, her business development director David Smith reports, Noel says “dude” a lot.)

Working with rockers bridges two worlds for Noel, a softspoken, studious type who’s has always had a facility with numbers but has a creative side, too. She says she identifies with historical figures like Zelda Fitzgerald, who decided late in life to take up ballet. While she’s buttoned-up in some ways, she’s also fun-loving and up for a challenge. In 2009, she ran the Virginia Beach Rock N’ Roll Half Marathon.

After scouring downtown Asheville, we found just the right combination for Leah. At Christine’s, a relatively new consignment shop on Broadway in downtown Asheville, we discovered a fitted gold top and long black suit jacket and skirt that complemented Noel’s six-foot frame. In four-inch stilettos, also from Christine’s, Noel was towering and totally striking, turning heads on our way to the photo shoot in downtown Asheville’s Hotel Indigo.

Guadalupe Chavarria at Studio Chavarria gave Noel’s long, curly locks a medium brown color with champagne highlights. And Scott Thompson, owner of Makeup at the Grove Arcade, gave Noel fresh, light makeup with just a touch of peachy, glossy lip color. The result? “It was like I was in a different city,” Noel says of her makeover day. “It was fun. It felt very Hollywood or New York.” So will she start wearing more suits? Probably, she says. “It surprises people.”

Leah’s clothing by Christine’s. www.christineconsignments.com
Hair by Guadalupe Chavarria of Studio Chavarria. www.studiochavarria.com
Makeup by Scott Thompson of Makeup at the Grove Arcade. www.makeupatga.com
Shot on location at the Hotel Indigo in downtown Asheville.