Cary Tauben

occupation: fashion stylist

“Heels + Hair = Power.” Cary Tauben

I am wondering if Cary was a supermodel in his mind when he was piling on beaded bracelets to his elbow in day camp, even before his supermodel hair. I would have no doubt been as inspired by his boundless aesthetic then as I am now. I love that Cary finds it amusing to be mistaken for a girl from the back, and I find it hard to believe that most men and women wouldn’t die, in their deepest truths, to have Cary’s hair, sense of ecstasy over a heel, and freedom within themselves to manifest their most current character for the day (whatever that may be). I have no idea where these clothing phobias begin and end and who created them, but what’s scary is that we all follow without questioning, and why? So that men can remain trapped and in a mass of nondescript khaki pants and Crocs?

If you like Cary, you might also enjoy Paul Alexander, Leo Cerezo, or Sonny Groo.

Jose Pozo

occupation: party promoter

“Everything in life is mental. It’s just an attitude. If you want to be rich, rich is all a mindset. Everything is a mindset. You can be anything you want to be, but first you have to become it inside, and then everything that you want gets attracted to you.” Jose Pozo

This was a first for me – getting serenaded to a freestyle rap about StyleLikeU (though it wasn’t a surprise coming from Jose, whose warmth filled the room as he danced throughout most of our interview). He says that he loves people and feels that there is no such thing as a bad one. I was freaking over his signature layers of bracelets, rings on every finger, and piles of necklaces, all of which have immense significance to him. The abundance of skulls and bullets might not appear to reflect Jose’s belief that one is most powerful when coming from a place of peace, but don’t let his alpha-male side fool you – his right arm is filled with saints. “You are what you wear,” he says, and in his heart he is a superstar and dresses like one.

If you like Jose, you might also enjoy Matt Parrotti, Heron Preston, Tay Trong, or Maurice Pierre Saint-Hubert.

J.D. Szalla

occupation: employee at the Guggenheim Museum

“I must quote an article in New York Magazine by Amy Larocca who I believe articulated something I have felt since high school. ‘To casual observers, the fashion world often looks entirely glamorous, the domain of the intimidating, the beautiful, the chic. But it can be a very dark place, and not because of status or material lust. In a lot of ways, fashion offers an unusally accepting home for people who’ve spent their lives feeling othered and odd, for those anxious to treat their internal darkness with external fantasy and flair.’ For me, this is every day, and I am still looking for a place to fit in here in New York City. Could there possibly be a Breakfast Club, Mudd Club, or CBGB’s here in New York in the 21st Century?” J.D. Szalla

A few days after I left J.D.’s interview, with a rabbit’s foot that he gave me (and that the dog at Fashion Indie ate) and a loaned copy of Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs, he was concerned that his interview wouldn’t make it on this site, that he might have been too intense and honest. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth – I was flying from the collaboration. J.D. defines my theory that style is the outer manifestation of an interesting, thoughtful, and creative person, and I feel blessed that his lust for originality and his desire to connect to others like him led him to want to be part of this. When asked who his favorite person on StyleLikeU is, J.D. was notably selfless and humbling in his

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Carter Emmart

occupation: Director of Astrovisualization at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History

“Whatever I wear is just a reflection of the delight that I have in being able to be exposed to the world. I try to take this view as we go into space and bring it to humanity, as we are all afloat on this one ball, this Paradise in the Universe.” Carter Emmart

While the fashion business shakes over the new wave of Paris Hilton-types in the front row, I am quaking over Carter, whose fashion reflects both his travels worldwide and literally out of this world, as the one who is responsible for taking the science of the universe and making it visible. He feels that to understand something and to turn it into a whole career, one should have a deep knowledge of that subject. Carter has not only worked at NASA and with the second person to walk on the moon, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, he regularly visits and studies about places such as the Hindu Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia, a ruin built in the twelfth-century that he has been fascinated with since he was a kid. He feels that places like this, as well as cathedrals and other stone edifaces that are odes to God, are models of the universe in their attempt to reach for the heavens, much like the plantetarium today. The jewelry and scarves piled on his neck and wrists, from Bangkok, Vietnam, Mali,

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Taylor Moore

“You have to remember your soul, goals, amenity, and the big picture, but at the same time you don’t want to be consumed by the big picture. You have to see the trees not the forest.” Taylor Moore

Taylor says that for him, style is incorporating his surroundings and developing his own interpretation of what he sees. He is from a small, “WASPy” town on the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama (“we go sailing on the weekends”). His life is a visual journal, like his grandfather’s cardigans and WWII sunglasses, his grandmother’s broaches, a studded bow tie and jackets given to him by friends, and a black leather bomber from the Lower East Side. Interior design and painting are all included in his illustrated story, but it’s done with huge overtones of humor and irony. Madonna, among other things, were windows into “another world” as a child; thus, he painted a larger-than-life portrait of her in his bedroom, which he finds “liberating.”
I admire that Taylor feels so deeply about the people in his life, and that he feels more compelled to wear their things rather than the latest and greatest. He says that he would rather have a hug than a new bag, and he feels that we are heading towards a time where humanity means more to people than consumption. Taylor is clearly not short on depth in his thinking, and

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