Jessica Hannan
“I feel lucky that I overcame it (referring to her height). When I see beautiful sixteen year olds and they have the old slouch and you can tell that they don’t want to be in that room with eyes above everyone else. They have the flattest shoes on and they are so self conscious. I just want shake them and be like you are gorgeous and you are beautiful and so what if you get neck aches when you kiss boys and your trousers aren’t long enough? It’s ok! It’s a journey and I would really like to give that to people.”
Jessica Hannan
occupation: writer
It is hard to imagine that someone with the statuesque beauty of Jessica, suffered for being tall with those enviable long legs, when she was 5’10″ at twelve years old. Today she’s a proud 6′ and can carry off anything, including…
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Virginie Sommet
“ My next work is going to be ‘The Urban Tribe.’ Now, we travel with people we feel connected to aesthetically. Next, we are going to travel with people we feel connected to spiritually, because we are going to transcend apprearance.” Virginie Sommet
occupation: artist, writer, curator
Virginie has dedicated her life to art that exposes the rigid and profoundly harmful social boxes (or ghettos) that permeate society everywhere and that most people do not realize exist. Her mixed media sculptures and installations educate the viewer to the truth behind “lobotomized” group thinking, in the hope of creating a bridge to more evolved behavior and to initiate “chaos in a prejudiced or racist brain.” Virginie grew up with extreme norms in Normandy, France, where everyone was conservative, bourgeois, Catholic and dressed in “Brooks Brothers.” Colors were dark green, burgundy, pale pink, sprinkled with some liberty prints, skirts were…
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Leon Bing
On writing Do or Die: “It woke me up in a lot of ways. Consciousness begins to uncoil and the antennae begin to pulse, because you’re seeing things you’re not used to. I wasn’t that far from having been a model, where all you had to bring were your cheekbones. Suddenly, how I looked didn’t matter.” Leon Bing
occupation: author
I love how Leon says, without an ounce of pretension (after a career as a muse for the legendary designer Rudi Gernreich), that she was never trendy. She arrived in New York City to model in jeans and left in jeans. I “found” Leon in jeans when I came to her home in Pasadena do this feature. I discovered Leon when I read a review of Swans and Pistols in the Style section of the New York Times (that captures, among many…
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Shirine Saad
“I think girls with short hair look more feminine and confident. I like this boyish look that I have.” Shirine Saad
occupation: cultural fashion journalist
Shirine loves the quiet scenes, aesthetic beauty, and psychological intensity of Ingmar Bergman movies. Like him, she expresses a similarly subtle elegance in her style that is imbued with a powerful point of view that is both impactful and understated. From the beginning, in her home of Beirut, Lebanon, Shirine had a urban-glamorous role model in her fashion designer mom, whose most dressed-down look consisted of silk saris and tunics, piled with jewels and flowers. “Even as a child, my mom would cut my hair asymmetrically and put me in ties and plaid pants. I would always say, ‘I want a pink dress like everyone else,’ and she would tell me, ‘you are are not like everyone else, Shirine!” So it’s no surprise that…
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Naomi Melati Bishop
“With fashion, there is constant rediscovery and ability to evolve. You can take style through stages of your life, minimizing, expanding as you see fit. Some pieces become personified and imbued with meaning as they are worn and develop a narrative that ties to your personality; other pieces are fun, but fleeting. My most precious items are as much a part of me as my fingers and toes. They’re stuck to me, because they have so many memories attached to them, a certain kind of utility and magic.”
Naomi Bishop
occupation: blogger, writer, student, and entrepreneur
I love how Naomi points out that we are all multifaceted prisms, and that we can choose to see the different sides of a person or reveal the different sides of ourselves – “more power to you” if you can show it all at once. To…
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