Byrdie Bell, Closet Flashback
“I’m not bound to any conventional sense of what’s ugly and what’s not ugly.” Byrdie Bell
occupation: actor
When I showed up to film Bryrdie, it was also the first time I had met her. She answered the door in a terry bath robe, wet-haired and makeup-free, exuding right away her open and willing-to-share all spirit. While she was lacing up her plastic platform stripper boots, it was easy to get drawn into her stories of being an outsider in Greenwich, CT, where the dress code was topsiders only. The key to Byrdie’s impeccable style is how she pairs these clear massive platforms with the sweetest of floral vintage dresses and her hair swept up. When worn this way, the boots go from trash to class, the latter being what Byrdie is all about. She’s currently obsessed with finishing everything off with her new boxy secondhand jean jacket, and…
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Dani Baum
“Too many artists are afraid to call themselves artists. Too many artists are afraid to follow their heart. Acting is the most important thing to me. When I am in a scene with another actor, and they are putting in 100%, and I am putting in 100%, it’s the most beautiful thing in the entire world.” Dani Baum
occupation: actress
I love how ungarded and effusive Dani is about life. To decompress she “dances like there is no tomorrow” and she is so refreshingly honest about the trouble she has finding a middle ground, “people say to me all of the time, ‘you are either all or nothing.’” Her driving force and the reason she gets up in the morning is to act, “life beats down and crushes our souls and theater reminds us that we have one,” a Sanford Meisner quote that she read during…
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Rachel Trachtenburg
“If I walk down the street in jeans and a plain t-shirt, I don’t feel like the world sees me as I want to be seen or as what I am.” Rachel Trachtenburg
occupation: singer, model, musician, actress, student, and activist
Rachel is extraordinary for sixteen. She is a powerhouse personality, with tons of creative talent and drive – think Wednesday Addams’ precocious smarts mixed with Rainbow Bright’s kaleidoscopic color sense and the 1970s earthy vibe of one of her idols, Joni Mitchell. Rachel has been nurtured to be herself, and her freedom of expression creatively and intellectually is abundant. She has been playing the drums in her family’s traveling band since she was six, and I don’t think there are many her age with a handmade Syd Barrett hair…
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Nick Fouquet
“Go out, open your eyes, see different things, get out of your comfort zone. That’s what makes a person grow. It’s all part of living.” Nick Fouquet
occupation: professional adventurer, actor, Sundance Kid, and designer of Fouquet, a line of espadrilles and accessories
Nick is the spitting image of his free-spirited hero Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Rugged and tanned, in his chambray shirt and Peruvian cowboy hat tilted back, he is inspired by the quote, “Quo non ascendet?”, or “To what heights can I not rise?”. Lofty in his goals, Nick wishes to surf a tsunmai wave, and unrestrained in his lifestyle, his favorite person on SLU is Zarzan, because he has no boundaries. The outer limits are where Nick has gone already, fearlessly backpacking alone for a couple of years from South America to Nepal, Brazil, Thailand, Australia,…
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Liam McMullan and Aesha Waks
“He’s the comedian, and I’m the serious one.” Aesha Waks
occupations: writers, musicians, and actors
Liam and Aesha remind me of one of my favorite movies, directed by the legendary Bernardo Bertolucci, called The Dreamers, which is set in Paris during the 1968 student uprisings. It’s not an exact comparison for many reasons, including the fact that the film is about a sister and a brother, and Liam and Aesha are engaged to be married. However, the movie’s capturing of a certain idealism of youth is reminiscent to me of the couple’s struggle to hold onto their ideals and themselves upon entering a complicated and flawed “adult” world, much like the late 1960s in the movie. Liam and Aesha live in her family’s very idyllic house that doubles as an artist’s commune – it’s situated directly on the water with views of Manhattan,…
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