What's in a Wang?
My very first fashion video in 2011 and Behind the Scenes at New York Fashion Week
Diavolina was an iconic Los Angeles shop and Marika starred in my very first 2011 video about the trendy Alexander Wang bags. I was obsessed with them, came up with a fun title and hired a friend of a friend to shoot it that Sunday.
I was nervous because I’d just gotten up the courage to ask Marika two days prior to shooting.
Wang’s bags were breakthrough - and it seemed to also mark a new price point for ‘it girl’ bags: hella expensive, but less than the popular Balenciaga Motorcycle Bags. They hit a new handbag mid-mark, $700-900, that I hadn’t yet witnessed.
She’s also wearing the triangular Rossmore teeth necklace, which I still have and need to polish. This was a time when retail shops reigned. When I walked in, a bunch of hip guys, including Scott Caan, were hanging out on the sofas. There was a communal retail camaraderie that can’t be replicated.
I had created stylespotting.com in 2010 and had a great run as a fashion blogger, made a name for myself in both Los Angeles and New York and my photos had (have) a certain personality. Fashion magazines tracked me down and I was soon published in multiple magazines, from The New York Times (above the fold!)1 to VOGUE Germany, Cosmo2 3and a variety in between.
What you need to understand is - it’s very nerve wracking to approach strangers to take their photos, so shooting in LA had its challenges and this was a big motivator in dipping a toe into NYC’s waters in 2011 and 2012. Aside from streets spilling over with self expressive people, they also hosted New York Fashion Week (NYFW), with best the fashion set on the move. I landed there at the height of the street fashion frenzy and jumped in. People at NYFW, dressed for it, expected it, played into it - and I witnessed mobs of photogs elevating models’ social currency. Models were garnering more attention between shows than on the actual runway.
Here’s an example. I was armed with a fancy Canon 7D, but opted to pull out a simpler Flipcam to record model Ruby Aldridge smoking outside before a fashion show. Do you see what I am saying about that symbiotic relationship with photogs? I edited this on imovie, so it’s tough to watch, but more importantly, I got the moment.
A blogger pilot development deal got me back to LA at the top of 2013 and I would’ve been in the cast if that TV show had moved forward, although I am perfectly happy behind the lens.
See, I had planned to start a fashion channel and Diavolina was my proof of concept video. I got to meet with a big LA incubator team who told me it was a fun idea, but too early. They claimed I was ahead of my time and the market had to catch up. Their parting advice was to “ship.” I needed to ship a product for investors to be interested. The website had e-commerce, but I wanted to test it in advance. I started dabbling with a side resale shop on poshmark (also an early adopter) and I’ve ended up selling about 1,000 things and I just recently hit pause. I proved my point. I can ship. I was able to easily recognize what people wanted and I’ll create a fun shop here instead, with curated finds.
I’ll be relaunching stylespotting.com in 2023 and everything I’m doing here is just working my muscle memory - and populating the universe with raw stories I was worried weren’t good enough, weren’t polished enough, needed high end music or needed glossy edits.
My legacy is to release all my digital time capsules into the wind. I ran my butt off to capture each and every shot and I’m proud of all the sacrifices I made, without giving up.
I personally can’t stomach things that are overly polished or cheesy, although this music was pretty cringeworthy because I can’t commit to a music library subscription, yet. I have it narrowed down to two and will decide after Christmas. I digress.
The truth is, lo-fi is my happy place. It’s quite literally how I see the world. I chase the quirky shots, I see the comedy, I love chipped nail polish, the pensive glances, the sigh before the obligatory smile, the moment in between the moments (and at Bravo, we call that footage “connective tissue”).
Being on the frontlines is fascinating.
The video below is a cultural artifact from 2014, the last fashion week I revisited, after moving back to LA. I noticed that editors Anna Della Russo (left) and Miroslava Duma (in stripes), each seemed to have a woman under her wing that season that they were ‘introducing’ into the fashion week machine (Chiara Totire and Natalia Alaverdian). They spent all week joined at the hip. You won’t see the introductions until until the very end, but I posted two of their tandem walking photos below the video.
The irony is - now I don’t love the idea of investors who would want me to do everything ‘right.’ If you end up easily entertained by my posts or upcoming series, consider signing up free or upgrade to a paid membership to support a very unique vision.
I have a dozen years of iconic stories to share (Anna Wintour, Bill Cunningham) but tomorrow, we’ll pop back into the present with a story that’s really meta for Friday’s series “Weird of the Week.”
Thanks for hanging to the end! If you have any like minded friends, please share this story link.
Related stories: when I was running my resale company mentioned here, Alexander Wang bags still had high resale values, from $100-500 for pre-owned studded Rocco and Diego bags, currently the lowest prices at TheRealReal here and here. To note: the Diego is heavy. I loved the pre-loved Rocco I once owned, but make sure it has a strap.
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