Michelle Cliffe does not have a problem with JLo lingerie, Toronto Fashion Week or Restylane injections. She just doesn't want to dedicate any more of her life to them.

For four years, the 29-year-old has run her eponymous publicity agency, Cliffe Communications, representing a who's who of fashion clients from her Toronto office. Now Cliffe has decided to close her agency and refocus her energy on something a little less, well, superficial.

"Once you've sold one tube of lipstick, it's all the same after that," she says. "I love doing PR, I love doing communications. But the fashion world was feeling a little bit empty to me, after a while."

When she started out as a publicist for the John McKay agency, and later while working on her own, Cliffe found it exciting to represent high-end brands and fashion events. But, after a while, she says she began to feel that something was missing.

"You go to Fashion Week, and it's like, if I hear one more person say, 'Do you know who I am? I need a front-row seat' -- you can get caught up in it, but the shine wears off."

Cliffe's exit from the fashion world began about a year ago when she attended an event hosted by the Framework Foundation, a Toronto-based charitable group that auctions off the work of local artists in exchange for dedicated volunteer hours.

After watching the scenes of devastation on CNN, she and a friend packed up and headed to Louisiana for 10 days to volunteer with an animal-rescue group called Noah's Wish.

Cliffe returned in late October for another five days of volunteering and to collect her new pet, an abandoned Jack Russell cross named Katie, who joined Cliffe's menagerie of rescued animals, which now boasts three cats, two dogs and a budgie.

For a while, Cliffe considered returning to school to study animal care and pursue an entirely different career path. But she didn't want to sacrifice the hard work or considerable talents she had poured into the communications industry.

After months of soul searching, she decided to close her agency. She gave notice to her one full-time employee and when contracts with clients expired, she did not renew them.

"I thought I'd like to find that place where I can just throw myself in and be there full-time," she says. "To focus on one thing would be really nice."

Some non-profits don't put much stock in her commercial experience, and she has been surprised at the haphazard PR techniques of charitable groups.

Perhaps the biggest surprise has been the way Cliffe's friends, family and clients have reacted to her decision to turn her back on fashion PR.

"A lot of people are actually mad about it," she says. "By and large, my friends are very supportive. But a lot of them don't want to talk about it."

It's the same reaction she's experienced when she tells people she's a vegetarian. Some roll their eyes, others get visibly angry and one man left the room.

In a perfect world, she would love to work with GreenPeace or the David Suzuki Foundation, organizations that, Cliffe acknowledges, are worlds away from the sort of clients she's had in the past, among them, JLo lingerie, Bowhaus: Design for Hip Canines, the Institute of Cosmetic & Laser Surgery, and Restylane, an "injectable" used to smooth out wrinkles.

And though she considers fashion design an art form, and respects the creative side of the beauty world, she says, "What I don't like is how the industry is run and the falseness of it. It's the periphery that I have a problem with."

Because of her change in lifestyle, Cliffe has not been on a shopping expedition in seven months. But she has not gone completely cold turkey on the fashion scene. One of her close friends keeps her up-to-date on the goings-on in the material world.

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