Live Your Big Adventure

     Click Here To See Jesse Garza and Joe Lupo’s Contributions

Dubbed ‘the closet whisperers’ and industry experts by the media and pop culture powers that be, Jesse Harza and Joe Lupo are the co-founders of Visual Therapy and behind some of the most popular and memorable images to grace the fashion landscape.  Celebrated by a roster of loyal clients, the two soulfully travel around the country teaching ‘the Visual Therapy way.’  Seasoned favorites of the Oprah Winfrey Show and regular contributing experts to Oprah.com, Jesse and Joe have also been featured in The New York Times Sunday Styles and Home sections, as well as in O, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, In Style and New York Magazine, along with many other national publications.  They are also frequent guests to a number of regional new and morning television programs.

The to co-wrote Nothing to Wear? A 5-Step Cure for the Common Closet, which was released by Hudson Street / Penguin in Spring 2006 to rave reviews.  Jesse and Joe are represented by the William Morris Agency in New York City (literary and celebrity appearances.)

Their second book, Life in Color: Visual Therapy’s Guide to the perfect palette for beauty, fashion and you!, was released by Chronicle in December 2008.

Their third book is expected for release in Fall 2009.

Jesse Garza
Jesse Garza has worked in the fashion industry since he was twenty-one, when he began selling clothing at Chicago’s renowned boutique, Ultimo.  Mentored by the store’s founder and legendary style maven Joan Weinstein, Garza rose from working the sales floor to becoming creative director over a period of 10 years in which he collaborated closely with the best names in fashion staging runway shows, creating artful merchandising and adapting cutting-edge design for the Chicago market.

Inspired by the creative partnership of designer Yves Saint Laurent and French businessman Pierre Bergé, Garza moved to New York to set up a luxury lifestyle consultancy with friend Joe Lupo, a banker wit ha fascination for fashion.  With Garza’s A-list Rolodex and Lupo’s business acumen, the two successfully launched Visual Therapy in 1995 based on a sincere belief in the transformative power of clothing chosen to express one’s tryly unique personality.  Since then, Garza – a self-described “Fashion Evangelist” – travels the country with Lupo to work with a roster of high-visibility clients as well as to appear regularly on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” where they have been responsible for creating the looks featured on some of the programs highly rated makeover and seasonal fashion shows.

Joe Lupo
Joe Lupo unofficially began his career in fashion by selling high-end men’s dress shoes while still in high school.  Moving to Chicago to attend college, he began working at a bank where he quickly advanced, becoming vice president at the precocious age of twenty-five.  Lupo’s love for clothing was further stoked at Ultimo, where he would spend Saturdays discussing fashion with friend Jesse Garza and men’s style expert John Jones.

Leaving the world of banking to start Visual Therapy with Garza in New York, Lupo was able to realize a long-held dream of making a business out of his passion for fashion. With his banking background, Garza is especially suited to handle all of Visual Therapy’s corporate consulting services and has worked with companies like Audi, Volkswagen, Bentley Motors and Oxxford Clothes, as well as with all Visual Therapy’s private male clients. Advocated by such high-power contacts as Oprah Winfrey’s stylist Andre Walker, organizational guru Julie Morgenstern and William Morris power agent Joni Evans, the partners have become known in the media as the “style SWAT team” and have been widely covered in such publications as Vanity Fair, the New York Times, In Style and Elle.