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You guys started Who What Wear Daily in 2006. Correct. How did you guys meet?
Um, we actually met on the set of Project Runway season two
We were both working for Elle magazine. I was an editor in New York
and Katherine was the West Coast editor for both Elle and Elle Girl.
So, I was actually out in LA covering the casting
and because Katherine was West Coast editor for both magazines
she was judging open calls.
So you guys
met from there and then... Yes we met there, we became friends for a while um... I was
on the West Coast at Elle and I was pretty much all by myself so it was kind of
nice to have someone who
had at least worked in the New York office and could kind of
fill me in on a lot of the things there, and so... We would basically gossip.
(laughter)
That.... exactly so we just saw that Elle Girl,
may it rest in peace, sadly folded
And we saw that a number of magazines were folding around that time, and we saw that
people were going to the Internet.
Yeah, so I think you know
on one hand we didn't want to worry about our jobs, like you know losing a
job at some point, and on the other hand, there was no place where
people could go to see "of the moment" photos and "of the moment" outfits without
going to a gossip site. Gossip is awesome and enjoyable, for sure
but we were actually looking at it and looking at Wired Image, Wire Image every day
just to see the outfits. And we felt like, why... you wouldn't see that outfit like
say Mary-Kate Olsen
showed up one day wearing the most amazing bag,
you wouldn't have any idea what bag was until, if you were lucky, three months
later
that came out in Elle or in Vogue, and if fingers crossed
they ID-ed the bag in the picture... it was just so frustrating
Yeah.
And also we wanted to give people magazine quality content that was shopable
you know, from the Internet. So, you guys
found a niche in the market that was lacking and filled it.
I think we just did it for ourselves, though, you know? In the beginning, yeah...
Just like for us, for our friends, and we knew that
if we felt that way, there must be a lot of people (that felt that way too).. and it turned out we were right.
I have a lot of blogger friends
that would die to be on your site. How did you guys get that following?
I think from the beginning we really wanted to show women in a positive light women in a positive light if we have
If we have something bad to say, we would never say it, we would just probably wouldn't feature
that person on our site. We really sort of like highlight all these girls
on our site and
you know, to the point where if you know we send a photo that we're gonna run to a
celebrity for her to ID her outfit and she doesn't like that photo, we'll choose a
different one, you know, or we'll
give them a little airbrushing. Give them a little retouching if we need to. Was it hard, when you guys first started in 06
compared to like now like
did you guys find that... cause like right now I can't like let go
of like certain things, you know, and when it comes to my channel and stuff - You'll get there - Did you guys get there? How long did that take?
in ways that i'm not so I had to learn a lot from from seeing how organized she is
but i think the number one thing, too... is like you just you get to a point where
if you don't relinquish some of that control...
then you cannot, you can't move forward as quickly, um, but I really think
it's just about hiring the right people
to be on your team and to support you. Choosing the right kind of business partners
or people to collaborate with, because I think once you trust someone else,
their taste level, it's becomes a lot easier. Exactly, and when you know someone's
going to work as hard, or put everything into it, and who's
really detail-oriented... like, we look for all of these things in our employees and
you know, having the right staff makes
all the difference in the world.
You're guys' series,
Yes, um, it actually, um, is called What to Wear, Where
it's based on our second book, which is basically a reference guide for any
social situation - everything from, you know, a casual first date to a black tie
wedding. You can look it up and you can see what to wear, what not to wear
and then we show you what we would wear. You can see on our site, um if you click on
the video tab. Yeah, the first episode is all about weddings. So we talk
about a daytime wedding, a black tie, and a cocktail wedding.
Ok and then everything is shoppable, too. Oh, it is?
That's the best part.
Still to this day, I'm a stylist, but still to this day, I'm like every wedding that I go to
I'm just like
what am I going to wear? Yeah, I know. I think the thing that always drives me crazy is people making
inappropriate fabric choices
Like, to me that's the number one thing that is like, regardless of the color
the style, the whatever it is, it's like obviously stay away from white, you know, we say
stay away from red, generally speaking, just because it puts a little too much
spotlight on you on someone else's day.
But I think that (laughing) ... well we're not at a wedding, so you're ok. Exactly