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The Elegance Edit: Issue 19
Learn how to pose, and what red carpet body language can teach us
Olga Kuznetcova
November 01, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
Olga’s Note
Dear Ladies,
Welcome to Issue 19 of The Elegance Edit – your weekly guide to body language, elegance, and timeless style. Each edition offers thoughtful insights to help you feel more poised, confident, and graceful in every part of your life.
In this week’s edition, we’ll be exploring a quiet element of elegance which can be a difficult one to master, but one that can make a big difference to your social experiences – the art of not oversharing.
Upcoming Events
ELEGANCE REFINEMENT MENTORSHIP
A Transformational Coaching in Grace, Confidence & Modern Feminine Presence live with Olga Kuznetcova
📍 Live on Zoom | 🗓 JANUARY, 2026| ⏰ Tuesdays & Thursdays | 6:00 - 8:00PM EST
USA ELEGANCE TOUR
A transformative in-person weekend across the U.S., where women learn elegance, confidence, body language and the art of presence.
November 7 - 9: Los Angeles, CA
December 19 - 21: San Francisco, CA
NYC IN-PERSON CLASSES
These classes can be attended by beginners looking to learn the foundations with coaching from me in real life.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM - BUSINESS ETIQUETTE
12:30 PM - 2:30 PM BUSINESS DRES CODES
3:30 PM - 5:30 PM BUSINESS BODY LANGUAGE
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2025
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Heels 1.0: Foundations
12:20 - 2:20 PM: Elegant Body Language
Learning Restraint
How to Stop Oversharing
Many of us have been there. Whether it’s yourself, or someone you’ve witnessed. I watched it only last week at a networking dinner. An accomplished professional within ten minutes of meeting, had shared details about her divorce proceedings. The table grew increasingly uncomfortable, not because people lacked empathy, but because the intimacy felt unearned and overwhelming.
Oversharing often stems from a misunderstanding about how relationships actually develop. We've somehow convinced ourselves that vulnerability creates immediate closeness, but authentic intimacy doesn't work this way. It builds gradually, through shared experiences and demonstrated trustworthiness over time. When we dump personal information on acquaintances or new colleagues, we're not creating intimacy. The recipient suddenly feels responsible for emotional labor they didn't sign up for, while we might mistake their polite attention for genuine closeness.
The Psychology Behind the Compulsion
Understanding why we overshare is crucial to changing the pattern. Often, it's driven by anxiety rather than genuine connection-seeking. When we're nervous in social situations, we sometimes fill silence with increasingly personal information, mistaking volume for substance.
Sometimes oversharing comes from a desire to appear authentic in a world that feels performative. We think that by revealing our flaws and struggles, we're demonstrating honesty and relatability. Sometimes it’s someone else encouraging this oversharing. We asked in last weeks Elegance Game When someone asks about your personal life during casual conversation, what demonstrates the most elegant approach to sharing information? While it might sound like we’re telling you to completely avoid sharing and instead deflect (B) & (D) actually sharing selectively (C) based on the relationship depth and context, offering genuine but appropriate responses that invite reciprocal sharing can be more effective in building real emotional connections.
Elegant communication involves matching your level of sharing to the depth of the relationship and the context of the situation. Casual acquaintances don't need to know about your therapy sessions. New colleagues don't require details about your family dynamics.
This doesn't mean becoming fake or superficial. It means developing social intelligence to gauge what's appropriate and when.
Consider the setting as well as the relationship. Professional environments call for different sharing boundaries than intimate dinner parties with close friends. Group settings require different discretion than one-on-one conversations.
The Power of Strategic Silence
There's something captivating about people who seem comfortable with themselves but don't feel compelled to explain every aspect of their experience. They participate fully in conversations without making themselves the constant subject. They can acknowledge challenges without providing detailed accounts of every difficulty.
Strategic silence also means resisting the urge to fill every pause in conversation with personal anecdotes. Sometimes the most powerful contribution you can make to a discussion is thoughtful listening rather than sharing your own related experience.
Paradoxically, appropriate boundaries often create more intimacy than excessive sharing. When people trust that you won't overwhelm them with unsolicited personal details, they feel safer engaging with you at all. They know that interactions won't become emotional ambushes requiring them to provide comfort or advice they're unprepared to give.
Healthy boundaries also demonstrate self-respect. When you're selective about what you share and with whom, you signal that your personal life has value and isn't available for casual consumption. This makes people more interested in earning your trust rather than taking your openness for granted.
People are drawn to those who seem to have rich inner lives without feeling compelled to broadcast every detail. There's an attractive confidence in someone who can be present and engaged without making every conversation about their personal experience.
Practical Strategies
Start by practicing the pause. When you feel the urge to share something personal, take a moment to consider whether it's appropriate for this relationship and setting. Ask yourself what you're hoping to accomplish with the sharing. Are you seeking connection or just filling uncomfortable silence?
Develop your listening skills. Often, the urge to overshare comes from anxiety about contributing to conversations. But thoughtful questions and genuine interest in others can be far more valuable than personal anecdotes.
Create appropriate outlets for processing personal experiences. Whether it's therapy, journaling, or conversations with close friends, having proper channels for working through your thoughts and feelings reduces the pressure to process them in inappropriate social settings.
Learning to share appropriately isn't about becoming closed off or inauthentic. It's about developing the social sophistication to build relationships sustainably, creating connections based on mutual interest and gradual trust rather than one-sided emotional disclosure.
In our loud, oversharing world, restraint has become a rare and valuable quality. The person who can be warm and engaging without overwhelming others with personal details stands out as genuinely sophisticated.
Embody the Elegance You Admire
True refinement is never accidental, it’s studied, practiced and cultivated with intention. That’s why I created the Elegance Refinement Mentorship.
This 8-week coaching program, led personally by Olga Kuznetcova, is for women who want to elevate the way they move, speak, lead, and express themselves in every room they enter to the highest level. Each session is taught by Olga and designed to help you embody quiet confidence in both professional and social life.
Enrollment for Cohort THREE is STARTING NEXT WEEK. If you're ready to refine your elegance, apply below:
Olga’s Recommendations
Cultivating Cultural Currency
Much like elegance, cultural enrichment is a journey, not a crash course. By actively seeking out exhibitions, reading literary fiction, attending theater performances, or exploring documentary films, you develop a rich reservoir of thoughtful conversation topics that naturally steer discussions away from personal oversharing. Subscribe to one cultural newsletter, visit one gallery monthly, or commit to reading one acclaimed novel quarterly. These small, consistent habits will slowly expand your conversational range, giving you engaging material to contribute in any setting.
COP30
Maintaining Grace Under Pressure
COP30 (this year hosted in Brazil) brings together world leaders, policymakers, and changemakers for crucial climate negotiations, but the real test of professional elegance often happens in the margins – during coffee breaks, evening receptions, and informal networking moments. These downtime spaces can create a false sense of intimacy, and might tempt us to overshare personal frustrations, or complain about colleagues. Whether you're navigating climate summits or industry conferences, remember that restraint and discretion during social moments often matter more than your contributions during formal sessions.
10 – 21 November 2025
