Melissa Morris: Founder of Métier

This week, Who What Wear Co-Founder Hillary Kerr is chatting with our June cover star, Molly Gordon! You likely know Gordon from playing Claire in FX's The Bear, or from past roles in Booksmart, Theater Camp, Shiva Baby, and many more. In addition to acting, Gordon has approached her career from the angle of multihyphenate since the beginning. In fact, her newest project—a hilarious, genre-bending film called Oh, Hi!, which she co-created, produced, and stars in—comes out on July 25. In this episode, Gordon shares her favorite improvised moments from The Bear season 4, how Oh, Hi! was inspired by a "5% crazier" version of herself, and how she found the confidence to direct. Plus, she gives us the rundown on her press tour looks and her partnership with one of our favorite stylists, Jared Ellner.  If you'd like to watch the best bits of this interview, tune into our YouTube here! Shop our editor’s eBay picks here!

23 Heinä 32min

Amrit Tietz is an international DJ and co-founder of the modern motherhood platform Spread the Jelly. Although she initially set out to study economics, Tietz dropped out of college, unbeknownst to her parents, to pursue a path she was more passionate about: music. She auditioned multiple times for the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, a music conservatory, before being accepted into the musical theater program. During her time there, she collected jazz units and switched to a music performance degree while also learning how to DJ on the side. Tietz moved to New York City after graduating and worked various jobs—from waitressing to retail—while taking DJ gigs to build her network. She eventually landed a full-time role at Starworks Agency, advancing from executive assistant to director of talent and engagement. After nearly six years at the ad agency, Tietz decided to take her DJing career full-time, successfully leaping from managing talent to becoming the talent herself. She has since toured globally, performed for iconic names like Dior and Vogue, and had her original music featured in HBO and Apple TV+ productions. While Tietz continues to DJ—and did so even while seven months pregnant—she recently moved into a new space with Spread the Jelly, an independent online platform redefining the narrative around modern motherhood. She and her co-founder, Lauren Levinger, launched the platform as a space for mothers to tell their diverse stories more authentically, build community, and “embrace the sticky” parts of motherhood together.

21 Heinä 52min

The annual Nordstrom Anniversary Sale is live, and to celebrate, Who What Wear Shopping Director Bobby Schuessler is talking to one of the great curatorial minds behind the sale—Nordstrom Associate Fashion Director Linda Cui Zhang. In this episode, Zhang reveals the product selection process for the sale, the trends her team prioritized, and the new brands she was excited to bring into the fold this year. Plus, she shares the most covetable items to shop before they sell out, her favorite giftable beauty bundles, and the key pieces to prioritize if you’re looking to elevate or refresh your wardrobe but don’t know where to start (think seasonless Frye riding boots and versatile Vince short-sleeve wool tees).

16 Heinä 21min

Sarah Davis is the founder and president of the luxury resale company Fashionphile. Davis was a self-proclaimed “debate nerd” during her teens and had early aspirations of becoming a lawyer. After earning her undergrad, she quickly enrolled in law school at the University of Maryland. Growing up, Davis had become accustomed to taking odd jobs to pay for things like clothing, so she applied that same mentality to putting herself through school. To make money, she cut boys’ hair in the dorms and even started a peer-to-peer used lawbook platform with her brother-in-law called lawswap.com. She also began selling her belongings on eBay for extra cash, and that’s when she realized that there was a largely untapped market for luxury resale. In 1999, she created a storefront on eBay called Fashionphile, focused on reselling luxury handbags, and was soon able to make enough money to pay off her student loans. Although Davis did graduate from law school and even pass the bar, she had found her true passion in growing her resale business and decided to opt out of pursuing a law career. She ran Fashionphile on eBay for the first several years of the business before bringing her brother-in-law into the fold and legitimizing the brand with its own website. Today, over 25 years later, Fashionphile is the largest platform in the country for buying and selling pre-owned, ultra-luxury accessories. The brand now has headquarters in San Diego and New York City, an office in Tokyo, and retail locations all across the country.

14 Heinä 44min

In this episode, Senior Fashion Editor Eliza Huber—Who What Wear’s resident expert on the intersection of sports and fashion—is sitting down with two stylists behind some of the best tunnel fashion we’ve seen in recent months. Brittany Hampton is a seasoned athlete stylist whose client roster includes some of the buzziest women in basketball: Paige Bueckers, Sabrina Ionescu, Cameron Brink, Evan Mobley, and Nika Mühl. She’s also the Golden State Valkyries’ fashion strategist. Manny Jay began his styling career working with musicians like Trippie Redd and Tink, and more recently manifested his way into the sports arena through his work with WNBA tunnel ’fit veteran Skylar Diggins-Smith. Today, Hampton and Jay discuss the WNBA’s unprecedented growth over the last year and how that heightened visibility impacts their clients’ relationships with fashion. They get into the ways that athlete fashion extends beyond aesthetics, influencing fan accessibility, marketing avenues for players, and even their on-court performance.  Check out Eliza’s Go Sports content here!

9 Heinä 36min

Denise Woodard is the founder and CEO of Partake, an allergy-friendly food company. Woodard started her career in pound-the-pavement sales roles at Philip Morris and FedEx, gaining robust experience in winning business by providing genuine solutions to her clients. She then spent the majority of her early career at the Coca-Cola Company, starting in sales and then finding her niche working on the emerging brands that were better aligned with her values, like Honest Tea and Health-Ade. After rising through the ranks and becoming the director of national sales for Coca-Cola’s Venturing and Emerging Brands (VEB), Woodard was proud of the career she had built for herself and didn’t envision she’d ever leave her job. But after having her daughter, Vivienne, and finding out her child suffered from food allergies, she started to realize just how stark the allergy-friendly food landscape was. She couldn’t find any options that were nutritious and delicious, and after some nudging from her nanny, Woodard decided to do something about it. She promptly put together a new business pitch for an allergy-friendly snack brand, entered a pitch competition, and won. She spent the next year building Partake while working her day job before leaping into it full-time. Since then, Woodard has become the first Black woman to raise over $1 million for a packaged food company, and Partake Foods can now be found in over 18,000 retailers, including Target and Whole Foods.

7 Heinä 56min

Ron Robinson is the founder of BeautyStat and the cosmetic chemist behind Hailey Bieber’s skincare line, Rhode. Robinson began his career at Clinique in the ’90s and, over the past two decades, has worked on products for industry giants like Revlon, Avon, L’Oréal, and Lancôme. He launched BeautyStat as an educational platform for beauty enthusiasts in 2009 but ultimately moved into developing his own product line in 2019 with the launch of his groundbreaking, ultra-potent vitamin C formulation. Celebs took notice, and Hailey Bieber quickly reached out to bring him on as a partner in what would become Rhode. In this episode, Robinson chats with Who What Wear Beauty Director Erin Jahns about the science behind successful products and which ingredients are worth the hype.

2 Heinä 19min

Alyssa Wasko Stein is the founder and designer of Los Angeles–based womenswear brand Donni. Stein has had entrepreneurial tendencies since childhood, but she didn’t always know her love of fashion would take her down the designer path. She studied a different part of the fashion industry (retailing and consumer sciences) and secured a coveted internship in Chanel’s visual merchandising department during college. But after her father’s passing at the beginning of her sophomore year, Stein sought out a creative outlet for her grief. She began handmaking and selling scarves, naming the business Donni Charm after her father, Donald. Stein slowly grew her side business while continuing to work at Chanel after graduating, but after some early wholesale success, she decided to focus on Donni Charm full-time. She moved operations to Los Angeles and rebranded to simply Donni. Most significantly, though, she stumbled into designing ready-to-wear clothing, as she wanted specific pieces to style with her scarves. While Stein had no prior clothing design experience, it came naturally to her, and she surprised herself with a full line of 30 SKUs within four weeks, laying the groundwork for the Donni we know and love today.

30 Kesä 59min