By Deb Petersen
It’s nice to have a place of your own to escape to on occasion. Some of us have studios. Others find peace in a garden. Roxanne Hoover goes into her closet with her laptop and a cup of coffee and closes the door. It’s the ultimate girl version of a man cave.
Chances are pretty good her closet isn’t anything like yours; it’s certainly not like mine. Roxanne’s closet has a chandelier, zebra carpeting, lighted drawers and cabinets, and, in addition to two walls of hanging clothes, she has 24 handbags, 30+ hats, and room for 560 pairs of shoes. That’s pairs, not individual shoes.
It’s pretty, and it’s pretty big.
“I wanted a closet like no other, on the eccentric side,” Roxanne says. Her husband, Denny, was on board all the way.
“He told the builder, ‘She deals with three men every day, so give her the girliest closet she wants,’” Roxanne remembers. Roxanne and Denny have two sons, Jackson, 14, and Westin, 12.
She is quick to credit her team of builders: contractor/crafter/mastermind Buddy Walker, custom cabinet wizard Scott Osmon, and electrical guru Greg Allen.
“They more than exceeded my expectations, which is really cool,” Roxanne says.
Hints of red and gold come through what appears at first glance to be black paint on Roxanne’s cabinets.
“It’s the Roxanne Special,” she says, laughing. Her laugh is one of her signatures. “It’s discontinued. Scott won’t do it again.”
The glass shelves in the cabinets were Greg’s idea. Roxanne was going with painted wood until Greg pointed out they would scratch with all the shoe activity, and the lighting would be more spectacular if it could shine through glass shelves.
Roxanne’s eyes twinkle when she tells the story.
“You have to have the right team,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to see your stuff. I’m a shoe girl, so the shoe wall makes me happy.”
Roxanne isn’t territorial about her closet. Her sons often study there while she folds clothes, answers emails, or shops online. They’re working through the 50 Ways to Draw Buildings and People books.
“We go over the day together,” she says, clearly content that her sons are happy spending time with her there. Bella, the family’s purebred blue Great Dane, enjoys the closet, too, making sure she’s in most photos.
Roxanne shares her closet with girlfriends, too, loaning out shoes or whatever else they need.
Guinn Osborn, who works with Roxanne at Vivid Salon, the business Roxanne started when she was 23, loves the island in the closet, where Roxanne’s favorite family photos are displayed. When you open the jewelry drawers, lights turn on inside. A lighted cabinet holds Roxanne’s collection of sunglasses.
“There’s a drawer just for bracelets,” Guinn says. “And of course, the lighted shoes…”
Speechless is a typical response to the shoe wall.
Estella Tullgren, one of Roxanne’s clients, is a girlfriend who has enjoyed the sharing of the closet.
Roxanne calls her and Pat Bailey sisters, which makes Estella, who sees the relationship as more of a mother-daughter thing, laugh.
“My three men are my life,” Roxanne says, “but I really wouldn’t be the woman I am today without people like Estella and Pat. I want to soak them up and learn from them. They had a lot to do with shaping me. They are so nurturing. They’re my girls.”
When Estella heard about the closet as it was being built, she knew she had to see it.
“My curiosity was piqued to the highest level possible,” she says. “It’s every girl’s dream closet—just beautiful. The lighting, the organization…everything in its place. Other women need to see what she has created.”
Roxanne attributes the flair in her closet and the adjoining bedroom, which is equally luxurious, to the same sense of style she employs at her salon.
“My profession is about style and color,” she says. “The artsy fartsy in hair goes right into fashion and decorating.”
She loves black, but dresses it up with bright colors, a big slouchy hat or a fedora, maybe a contrasting scarf.
“I’m not a matchy matchy girl,” she says.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking Roxanne is only about hair, shoes, and extravagant closets.
“She loves to support worthwhile community and school projects,” Estella says. “If a friend needs something, she is there.”
Roxanne is passionate about making sure her son’s Bomber football team has a good meal before the kids play. She and Denny, along with other volunteer parents, feed 110 boys at Mountain Home Junior High before every home game with help from anonymous donations.
“I really have 110 boys,” Roxanne says. “We bleed blue and gold.”
There’s a one-year gap between Jackson and Westin, when neither of them will be at the junior high.
Roxanne laughs in that big way again. She promised she would feed the team that year, too, even though she won’t have a son on the team.
“She’s high energy,” says Estella. “Her laughter fills a room.”
Would Roxanne change anything? The question was about her closet, but her answer is clearly about her life. Nope.
“I am super blessed with amazing clients and relationships,” she says. “I love what I do. I have an awesome job—making people beautiful. It’s about customer service and what you’re willing to do for your people. I will do whatever it takes.”
Does she have advice for other closet dreamers?
“I’m not a big advice giver,” she says with another laugh.
If you watch Roxanne, and really pay attention, you’ll pick up her advice: work hard, do what it takes, have fun, and wear every pair of shoes you own, whether or not you keep them in a girl cave. M! April/May 2015
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