There has been a lot of connectivity as the community of people on this site increases, but this story is worth telling. I met Victoria in the Mac store in the Meat Packing District, immediately drawn to her rainbow hair, who wouldn’t be? Shaun, was referred to me by my new web designer, for tech support for Stylelikeu. He broke my stereotype of techies, by the daily eye candy of a guy who dons clothes in a very unique combination of ways, and has an almost singular fetish for the genius of Prada. Victoria, open and warm as could be when I approached her at Mac, told me that she lived on a boat on the Hudson. Shaun, not too far into our many days together working, started to tell me about how he lived with this astounding woman, on a boat on the Hudson. It turns out, they live on the same boat, Shaun rents a room from Victoria and her husband, Richard (who is himself, so stylish, including his full Scottish regalia).
Not only are Shaun and Victoria individuals in very different ways style-wise, but I have never been in a living environment as aesthetically enchanting and while floating on the water. Shaun is all about the high quality pieces, each thing he owns is critical and indispensible. He hunts down what most men don’t end up buying from Prada because of what a “stretch” it is in the realm of what’s “acceptable” for them, like the button down shirt backwards or the Thom Browne shirt/jacket that Shaun refers to as the “anti-suit”.
Victoria on the other hand, couldn’t name a designer. She is about as unlabel conscious as a person in this culture could be. Victoria makes all of her own clothes from fabric swatches laying around or anything that she has that is not being used. Her designs garner her a lot of attention, on the rare occasion that she wanders into a store like Bergdorfs, the sales people chase her asking her “who” she is wearing. The fact is she is wearing all “Victoria”. Her clothes are literally pinned together or hand sewn, usually done in the middle of the night or while on the road with her very successful china company. Victoria is so filled with a purity of life force and positive energy, that she can find herself in the most dangerous places and her freshness will quell anything negative, she claims to have resolved many a dangerous situation with her presence. It’s as if her colorful curls and clothes are the mere surface reflection of how completely unpolluted and unfiltered she is. I was expecting something wonderful, out of this world when I went to film them, but it was more like out of this universe.
