Spelade
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We were so excited to be back in the same room as Jacob Tobia that we could barely contain our finger snaps. This author, producer, and gender-fabulous gem talked to us about pets, pencil skirts, and nail polish alongside urgent issues around gender and style politics. Far from binary, this nonconformist has compared gender to a multifaceted diamond with endless and infinite refractions and permutations, different gradations of radiance and existence. Yes. Yes. Yes. More. Please. “Any strategy for getting yourself more space, or acknowledging that others need more space even if you don't is a strategy that I support. Broadening what masculinity means, making the ‘man’ box bigger, giving men more room to move around and stay within a box...if we widen both of the boxes so much that they come together they may just fall apart on their own. There is such beauty in broadening masculinity and femininity. There's equal beauty in... pushing with all of your might against the edge of that identity from within it, and in jumping out and saying ‘I'm not in any box.’ One is a riskier position. When you're not within a box you're much more at risk of being hurt in the world and experiencing violence but pushing from within the box to broaden it is so vital.”
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Having graced us with both a Closet and a What's Underneath video, Molly Rosen Guy is no stranger to StyleLikeU so we are honored to be sitting down with her again for a very real talk about death, divorce, finding inner sanctuary during her darkest hour, and the comfort of knowing she was a rock for her father during the last weeks of his life. We have always been enamored with Molly’s piercing presence and vivid honesty, something that is startlingly evident from the writing on her Instagram account (@mollyrosenguy), an open-ended, heart-opening letter to her father who died from leukemia earlier this year. Molly is also the Founder and Creative Director of Stone Fox Bride, lifting the veil off of the wedding industry to make it an unpretentious, un-intimidating space that is far from superficial. Molly doesn’t do anything superficial which is one of the many reasons we love her so much. “I connected with you guys first because you came into my closet, we talked about my style. And back then it was about my style and my business and those dresses. And then it was about my body, I was pregnant in that video. And now it's about the insides and so much of what this past year was about with my dad is learning about what the body is really about. When my dad began to do chemotherapy and his body began to break down it really made me reconsider and question: what is the body? What am I doing? What is this thing that we consider healthy and beautiful?”
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We greatly admire New York-based fashion designer, Mara Hoffman. Her designs and principles stand out in a sea of homogeneity and “buy more” culture. The former dancer studied at Parsons School of Design in New York and London’s Central Saint Martins College. She was “discovered” by Sex and the City stylist, Patricia Field, who sold Mara’s samples in her shop. We sat down with Mara in her 6th Avenue studio to talk getting comfortable with change by facing our mortality, not being too attached to the identities we create for ourselves, and how we have to work for our happiness. We discovered why she’s not actually that passionate about the fashion industry because “it can make people feel kind of lousy...it's completely warped our sense of consuming, in that we ‘need’ all this stuff that we don't need.” Ultimately, Mara’s message is to “let it go to let it grow...Imagine holding a seed in a clenched fist...It's really hard to let things go but that's where the growth is; it's on that other side.”
