Isaac Mizrahi goes deep with StyleLikeU’s Elisa Goodkind and Lily Mandelbaum about what it’s like to work as a mother/daughter team, embracing your body and who you are, how they retaliated when their idea was stolen and more.
Follow Hello Isaac on @helloisaacpodcast on Instagram and TikTok, Isaac @imisaacmizrahi on Instagram and TikTok and StyleLikeU on Instagram @stylelikeu.
(Recorded on August 24, 2023)
She starts talking about how she loves her flat chest and fourteen years ago like she loved having no cleavage.
Versus trying to hide it.
It was like the first time we got exposed to the idea that if you kind of embrace the thing that society has told you and maybe is a flaw about you or that you should be ashamed of, if you actually embrace it, it can become like your greatest assets.
This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about the idea of success and how failure affects it. I'm Isaac Msrahi, and in this episode I talked to the mother daughter team behind the revolutionary and empowering media company Style Like You, Alisa Goodkind and Lily Mandelbaum.
Hello, Isaac, It's Lily Mandelbaum and this is my mom, Alisa.
Good time, and we are so excited to speak to you.
So right now I'm about to speak to Alisa Goodkind and Lily Mandelbaum, who runs this incredible media company called Style Like You. And if you haven't, darlings, you have to look at their videos on YouTube and on Instagram. They're fabulous. They're kind of about empowerment and individual style and just kind of fabulous, fabulous people who have found their inner style. And what I'm really excited about is what I can learn from them. One thing that people know about me is that I am really adaptable, I am really suggestible and so like I look at their work and I think this is stuff I don't exactly understand, but I love. And now what I'm excited about is maybe getting a bigger, broader understanding of something that I love this much. So let's get into it. Alisa Goodkind and Lily Mandelbaum, you women are such an inspiration and to me, I can't believe we're talking. Alisa and I know each other a little bit right from a thousand years ago. Lily, this is the first we're meeting, and I've been big fans of yours for a minute. I love your website. It's called Style Like You, and I think it really is this kind of groundbreaking thing. I want to ask you a question first off, before we start in the actual interview. Do you live together?
No?
No, no, okay, thank you? Thank you? Okay, because I'm thinking about a mom and a daughter like working together. Is that difficult ever? Or what do you kind of get along or what we.
Definitely get along have ten hours.
Yeah, oh yeah, exactly.
Okay, we definitely get along, and it's difficult. It's both all.
I'm glad to hear this because you don't get a whiff of it on the site or any of the interviews you do or any of the stuff that you do. I never get that. There's this mother daughter kind of dynamic. It's this I think you. I think you women get along very very well. Am I wrong?
We do?
No, you're right, You're right.
It's something that has had to be very intentional. Mm hmmm, because of the nature of how close we are and how long we've been doing this, and our very extreme passion for what we're doing and dedication to what we're doing something that's very mutual. I think a large part of what makes it work is that we're both doing this fully from our soul's purpose and alignment, and it's something that we know we're supposed to be doing separately, and so that sense of purpose and everything is very core and very there.
Okay, but wait, I get other siblings or are you an only daughter?
Yeah? I have an older brother.
Okay, is he involved with this.
That's not involved with the venture?
Rather than moral support he's never had, has been and never wanted to be.
Right. Well, I admire you both. It's really something else for me to see a mother and a daughter working together. Because listen, darlings, you know, I remember when I was twenty something, I took my mother to Europe. When I got back from that trip, I thought, I can never be in the same room as this woman for more than you know, seven or ten minutes, maybe an hour, you know. So I really admire I really do think it's beautiful.
I feel that way about my mother.
So do you wow, Well, you see, maybe it's generational, maybe because you were a different kind of mom to Lily Right than your mother was to you Right. Tell me what you think, Just quickly, tell me what you think it is the difference, Alisa, what do you think is the difference?
Well?
I was determined to do everything the opposite.
Ah, Okay, I.
Had it so hard, and I had to rebel so hard to be my own whole person, to be an autonomous, free human. And I was determined to allow my kids that opportunity because it was so it was so hard for.
Me because you came from a what like a very religious background. Now, what was its structure or what it was.
On the surface, it was like the perfect Jewish Kennedy's. I had no idea anything was wrong. Everything on the outside was like it was hard for me to see or understand. But it then took my being this wild, passionate spirit way outside of the box, completely misunderstood by them and refusing to give into that that you know, created that tension and that rebellion, and that you know, to really really to survive, to be able to breathe, and to be able to figure out that I have to be myself and I can't be what they want me to be, you know, and they didn't like that.
Right, And so you really counteracted all of that, And race, Lily, is that it. You really made a concerted effort. And sometimes I think, you know, in your case, luckily like you you did that because sometimes I look at parents and I'm with them and their kids, and I go, do you hear what you're saying? Like of course your kid is crazy or of course your kid hates you because you just said that and you didn't even know you were saying that. You know, But I want to talk to you because how old do you can I ask you that is that a crazy question? Tell me how old you are, Alisa?
How old I'm sixty five?
Okay? And how old are you Lily?
Thirty four?
Thirty four? All right? And how did this get started? How? I know a little bit about your background a Lisa, but why don't you tell us and then bring Lily into the story.
Yeah.
So, basically, I was in the fashion industry in my twenties, in the eighties and the early nineties, and it had such a huge impression on me at that time because it was such a utopian, bottom up culture world condye nast, downtown New yorktivity, authenticity. You could come from nowhere. You didn't have to have a resume, you didn't have to have anything, and you could just explode because of your talent and your passion for doing something. And it opened my eyes so wide to what it was to be an authentic person, like actually an authentic person, not like fake karaoke version, but like really someone who was living their inner beliefs and their dreams. And it had such a big impression on me, and I dropped out for a while when my kids were little, taught yoga and meditation, went back as a freelance stylist and was appalled at the world that I came back to. It was just a total marketing machine. It was completely commodified, completely commercialized, completely formula exploiting insecurities, had nothing to do with creativity. All the soul had been sucked out of it. And I was devastated. And I was literally devastated. And Lily at the time was and Lily can tell her part of it. At the same time, she was a senior in high school going into college. Yeah.
Yeah.
We started Style like You when I was a freshman in college, and I had just struggled a lot in my teenage years with my body image. I'd always been like a you know, plus size or you know, I don't know what the right term is for it, because it's all kind of made up, but girl, and I just wanted to look like, you know, Kate Moss and Sienna Miller and like the people that were on the covers of every magazine when I was growing up, and felt like there was something inherently wrong with me that I didn't look like them, that I couldn't fit into the skinny jeans, that they couldn't be like in fashion.
In this way, so I was really struggling with.
That and had like, you know, THEO yo dieted my whole life and like borderline anorexia and just all of that trying to be that person. And also my mom also like happened to fit into that standard more physically, and so I also envied her and how it was for her in clothing and like just wanted that for myself. And I also really had not a great feeling about like the fashion business as someone that was like around it with my mom, because I'm just consuming it. People used to say, would you ever work in the fashion business like your mom? It's so cool, And I'd be like, no, it's mean, it's mean, mean, it's mean, superficial, exclusive, pretentio exclusive, commoditizing, pretension.
I didn't want to be part of that.
But at the same time, I was so drawn to closing, and I was so drawn to style, and I was so drawn to people that we knew that were not necessarily being shown in media that really like marched to the beat of their own drum in the way they dressed and how their style was so clearly like this reflection of something deeper inside of them and not just this sort of like way to be quote unquote in fashion, like the magazines and media was telling us at the time. Basically, the two of us just felt this mutual disempowerment that was coming. Like her within the industry as a person working in it and as a creator of the imagery, and me as a consumer of the imagery. We were both feeling disempowered by it. And we both were like, wait, we know all these people not in media that are kind of not following these norms but are so cool and have such style and inspire us to want to find ourselves and express that authenticity through our style. And well, we just picked up a home video what camera one day and just started to document go into the homes of like a handful of friends that we knew that we thought were really cool and just asked them.
Why, how long ago?
Fourteen years ago?
Okay, all right, yeah, and that's when you founded style, like you.
Yeah, it was a completely different thing then. It was literally a home video camera. Literally we didn't know what we were doing with, like how to make us a video, but they're the best.
They're amazing. The very first one we did, this incredibly amazing girl who we knew came out and you know, talking about her tomboy style and bring out all of her sneakers and her short shorts and her boyfriend's sweaters, and we felt like we were in this kind of race to stop this further, thinking that you had to be like this robot, this empty, caffeinated robot, and that that had nothing to do with style and had nothing to do with beauty, had nothing to do with being empowered. And she starts talking about how she loves her flat chest beautiful and fourteen years ago, like she loved having no cleavage. We both turned and looked at each other and said, oh my.
And like accentuated it through her style like yeah, versus trying to hide it like we You know, it was like the first time we got exposed to the idea that if you kind of embrace the thing that society has told you and maybe is a flaw about you or that you should be ashamed of, if you actually embrace it, it can become like your greatest asset. That was like our first swelt taste of that, and we were addicted because it was like we were healing.
You know. What's so funny to me is that when I was in my twenties and my early twenties, in my early thirties doing clothes, like if you had boobies, you couldn't work, Like nobody wanted to book you for a show if you had boobies. So it's funny, like you're talking about a kind of an anti style. I think that's what I love about your website is that it isn't about what's going on. It's about what's going on with the actual subjects that you are portraying, right, Like you're making these little beautiful videos about people as opposed to because I feel like that's what has changed so much. Like you were talking about when we were kids and what fashion was like, right, Alisa, Like I remember Darling, I would have fashion shows and Madonna would come because she wanted to come, not because I invited her apaid or to sit in the front or anything. She she would come and stand in the back. She didn't want attention, you know, like.
No hierarchy, no pr no.
No no no. It's all about the good clothes, the good clothes and creativity, right, and so now there's nothing in between. It's either this kind of like you know, four million dollar show in Paris, right, or it's this little kind of back lot somewhere where you have kids kind of showing off what they do.
You know, Well, that series that Lily was talking about that we first started to do, Yeah, we call Closets and we were exploring what was it that made someone have this immeasurable magnetic personal style that was just something was intangible. No matter their age, race, gender, sexuality, body, it didn't matter, none of it mattered. They had this intangible magnetic quality and they exuded so much style, actual style, not this bought, souled marketed type of style, which is not style like, which is what it's become where everyone looks exactly the same as this was all changing. I used to say to both of my kids, Oh, it's Saturday in New York downtown, and everybody looks good and has no style. There's nothing that makes them singular. Everybody has the same sort of rolled up you know whatever this is.
Now wait a minute, they have no personal style. But sometimes you know, it's like now you have to distinguish because I will say, like, I love your site because of all of these intensely kind of original personalities and these original perspectives on the subject of style. But you know, for all those people in wherever in the meatpacking district having brunch and they all look alike and they but listen to them. They pay a lot of money for that. They want to be in that look, you know, And I'm not angry at them so much because it's like I understand that I do. That's the history of fashion, Darling. Somebody goes do a skirt to there, and everybody wants that skirt, and everybody wants to look like that, you know. And then you have people like Lily for instance, Darling, Like, what do you think it was about the way you looked in the mirror and went like, oh, I can't. I have to break out of this. I have to find something original. Tell me what that journey was like for you, where you found your authentic personal style? You know. Did you try to be a cheerleader? Did you try to wear a boyfriend jacket and a thing the way everybody else was doing? Did you try that? Tell me about it.
I did not get accepted to the Hudson Ets. We didn't have cheerleaders. We had like our little version of like the Rockets, kind of like for the football team.
I was rejected, which was traumatizing you.
But in high school, yeah, it was just like literally my goal was just skinny jeans, like.
That was what I wanted because that was the trend.
And so my mom and I would show to like Havana Jeans, which was like a jean store and some strip mall and it was like seventeen like all the designer jeans there.
That was everything back then.
And when I was eating like three or four hundred calories a day for like months on end, in exercising like a maniac, which is like what I would do to lose weight, I was still like one hundred and sixty pounds, which is like a for a girl. Like you still think of that as like kind of whatever, it's arbitrary and stupid.
It wasn't healthy for me. I would lose my.
Period at that weight like it was, and I wasn't eating really, so it just shows you that like there's not actually like one weight that's correlated to health. But anyway, the thirty two was the biggest size and they still would give me like that like muffin top sort of like thing, and my mom was just like sliding and sliding and sliding in and we would always end in tears, and that was like what my pursuit was, how can I look like what that trend was as a child, which was like the skinny jeans, be like a little tank top and like that wafy sort of yeah, as my mom felt like caffeinated.
I fought the way thing, darling, how yeah, the fucking way thing, you know, just listening to your whole gene thing. I'm almost choking up because I was the same when I was in high school and I was in grade school. I was constantly trying to lose it. I was really fat, by the way. I like the word fat. I don't know if you like the word fat. I find it's the most like honest, kind of like real word to describe it. But do you remember at what point you went like, Okay, hell no, I'm not into this anymore. Now I'm going to Yeah, I.
Remember I started having like a liberating I remember my mom started taking me to flea markets and like Chelsea, and like I started to discover like just wearing like an embroidered dress, I don't know, just things that weren't in the sort of trend that I was actually drawn to, and that felt a little bit more like just my personality and also just the shape sat on my body in a way that didn't make me want to cry and like feel oppressed. And so there was that, But I think really like the journey of like finding my style happened in tandem with doing style Like it wasn't until later when I was in my twenties and we were actually doing this work together that I think my style just naturally took form as I was like unlearning all the cultural conditioning that I had been taught about, you know, bodies and beauty and everything. Like, I think a lot of it came from like throwing out all of the things that didn't make me feel good like and then it just through interviewing all these people that were dressing for themselves and as an expression of themselves, it started to help me realize just a reprogram my brain that there's not like one goal of what is cool, like, it's just what you are drawn to. And everybody that we were interviewing was so inspiring to me and cool, but they didn't really make me want to be them. They maybe want to be me, and that was just the gist.
It's like, oh, I want a huge difference.
I want to find out who who and which is obviously a hard thing to put into words like who am I? But yeah, so I just started finding that I loved colors, and so I wear a ton of bright colors that I like, you know, like feminine shapes, and so let's feel better on my body.
Things like that. That's how you solved the kind of body thing you found your styling?
Would you say, yeah, I guess it was like a tandem thing of accepting my body more and reprogramming my brain as far as was beautiful physically helped me just have more of a sense of ease with just gravitating towards things that like actually accentuate my body versus hiding it or just feel.
Good on my body, and then just.
Just feel like a genuine expression of my personality.
I remember as a designer, you know, every season, I would take it upon myself to like, you know, go ah, what's transgressive, what's you know, kind of naughty? What is what's a little dirty? I want to bring that into this because you know, listen, it was a design or customer, and I wanted it to be bigger than that. I wanted it to be more inclusive than that, and so every season I would think, you know, one season I did a thing about S and M because it was you know, very very early on, and I brought in all these kind of S and M things. So when I look at fashion today, especially like your Instagram page, I wonder, like, what's edgy and naughty to you?
To you women, I hardly care at all anymore, which is so sad for me about fashion because I literally can't find anything that I like almost. Yeah, compared to the days when you were designing and in those that era when it was so creative and you know, as you were saying, like Madonna would just come and be in the back, or the designers would have a show like anywhere in a garage, you know, whatever was inspiring them. Ever, it was just completely inspiration. And because now it's so much about selling and money and formula, you know, for me, I just can't find I can't find anything that you know, hardly. There's a few things, So I mainly still shop a lot of vintage, but i'd say, what I find, you know, naughty or like edgy, it really just goes to the person that that's what we're really saying. Over and over again with all of our videos that really, you could wear a paper bag and have style. You could wear a white T shirt every day and have style. You could wear a ten million dollar gown every day and have style. It has nothing to do with the outside. It has to do with your being this complete, full version of yourself. So for me, that's what gets me the most excited. Like I you know, it's it's someone at any age, it's someone you know with anybody type, who just lives in their body and fully is unapologetic with it. And that's what inspires me.
But you know what I have to say. I look at people like Lily and people that are, you know, somewhat younger than Lily, and I feel like a crazy person. I'm like, is she like? Is that really? Is that? And then I go no, but it's a surprise. It's adorable, it's funny, she's having fun. I love her. And then I go, wait a minute, this is my favorite thing. It always takes me a minute. I'm not kidding. And when I work with like young stylists or something, I go, are you I am not? And then I go, actually give her a second because she's making a lot of sense in a very new way that I did not expect. I love that when I look at like red carpet shit that I see like at the met Ball or the Oscars or whatever, I usually I go to my really, all that trouble and all that and all that money and all those glam squads and all that, and that's what they come up with. But then like sometimes one or two things like it seeps in, I go, that's actually really fucked up. I love that. You know, like, seriously, Lily, what motivates you in the morning to put things together?
Oh?
I don't.
I don't know that my process is as creative. My mom's process is truly like art every day. I feel like I mostly wear things from like lately, it's been more like designers that I'm drawn to for yeah, like that are like more like smaller designers that I like what they're doing and relate to their like aesthetic. But yeah, I kind of get in like phases sort of like right now I'm just wearing like these high waisted skirts that accentuate my sort of there's always like a body thing like so for me, I think I feel good in clothes that like kind of accentuate my waist because it's I like my sort of hourglass shape.
So I have a lot of skirts.
Right now that are kind of like tight there and then kind of flowy out into my knees, and so I'm wearing a lot of those with like little heels, and I wear a lot of like crop tops or like it's kind of a shape thing right for me.
And then color, it's always color gorgeous.
I love that.
I love bright colors. I love jewel tones.
Like I feel like my spirit is like fusia and orange, Like I think that that's like the warmth.
I'm just really drawn to.
Fusia orange and maybe like this like weird neon green that's in my headband.
But I was going to say, what possessed you to throw on a knee green scarf in your hair because it looks good?
I don't know.
I was actually thinking, like is this really what I want to be recording in today? I mean, right now my hair is at a length where I probably need a haircut. So then I start wearing headbands a lot, but I'm usually in like some combination of like a deep pink or an orange and greens and.
Short You've been wearing like mini mini skriks.
Yeah, I mean you're starting to wear more mini skirts lately, which is like new because showing my sighe has always been like maybe a little bit of an insecurity.
So I like to challenge myself in little ways just to break free of that.
Well, you know what, because you just started talking about minis and I'm thinking myself, is there anything that's wrong now? Like is there a mini skirt that's too short, or a maxi skirt that's too low, or a midi skirt that sees something or anything that's too No. I mean we wear everything now, right, so like.
For a few days.
Fine, Yeah, it's about owning it totally. That's what it is. I think that's the most disruptive edgy thing.
That's a good answer.
I mean it.
And I'm glad you thought of the word disruptive even though it's like that word right, except you're.
Right, it's comfort in your skin.
I have to say today I saw the most exquisite person and again flat tiny, tall trans for sure, in this gorgeous dress, and I thought that they were so beautiful. I was like literally following them on the street, you know, just because it was such an inspiring vision, you know. And by the way, not a whole bunch of makeup, not a whole bunch, not a giant heel, it was some kind of like little heel and this like gorgeous body fitting dress with this kind of cutouty kind of neckline. It had a little sparkle to it. It was so good. No hair, just hair in a fucked up little mess, and they looked amazing.
I think that that would be my answer. My answer is, it's like the opposites like I love love love a male body or a female identifying, a non binary.
Person, me too in love it, or a.
Gender non conforming person or anyone that you wouldn't typically see or expect to see in something feminine, and then the reverse. I love that.
So I promised myself that I wasn't going to talk to you women so much about fashion, and I was going to talk to you about what I think is really like an important thing to talk about because I have both theas both THEA is here, I have mom and daughter social media. Okay, that is a huge and you know, listen, Alisa, you're talking about like, you know, how it's so boring and it's so corporate and blah blah blah. Meantime, we are in social media right now and that is a really scary place. Can we talk about that for a minute, Like, first of all, I would consider you influencers? Am I wrong? There's another word that It's like, oh really, oh, we're really going to use the word influencer. But there's not a better word to describe what you are? Is there? Are you influencers?
We don't know, We have no idea.
It's like horrible, we don't know.
We just don't know.
I mean, for us, we have to, like, because our work is about everybody else and putting other people in the forefront, we do have to like force ourselves to put ourselves forward and not hide. We've had to step into that more and more because we want to walk the walk of the people that we highlight in their sort of unapologetic self expression. And my mom's I think doing better than I am at it because I have like a shyness. But we've had to do it, thank you. We've had to do it actively, put ourselves out there. Yeah, just to really like walk the walk of trying to be like in our self expression because.
Wait a minute, here's the thing. You do it because you're your age. Your mom like does it extra more because she has to figure it out, like she's more close to my age. The two of us are going like, what the fuck, and let me just get my breath here and here we go, and I'm gonna make the effort. You just do it because you're living in the world today much easier because it's your generation. You understand it better. And my off and my off point and Releasta stop.
Now you have to think a little harder to like get the the new trend or the new way to use the tool.
Or even the question I'm asking you about influencer versus you know, social media, because I remember I was angry at fashion magazines when I was a kid. I was like, I was like, really, this is the best you could do, blah blah blah. And now I'm kind of angry at the Internet, or I'm angry at you know, like Instagram and certain sites and certain ways that they try to manipulate young women, Okay, young women and young men and young people and old people. Darling, where's that go fundme page? Old queens who were hurt by like I am an old queen who is oftentimes hurt by by stuff I see online, you know, But talk to me about this idea of the responsibility. Do you feel that you have some kind of responsibility as internet stars?
We definitely do. We've been living all of this time, this fourteen years of doing this with this very overwhelming feeling of how many people need to see this and to understand and to get relief, to see something positive on social media and understand that they really can be liberated and they can feel good about themselves and don't have to hate themselves for what they're seeing. And it's just recent, you know, it's recently that we've seen it. We have hundreds of thousands of messages and letters and emails over all these years, and meeting people you know who literally will stand online if there's an event or something telling us how much these videos have changed their lives, and they've watched them over and over again for ten years. At this point, there's a generation in a way that's grown up with them and it's really affected them lot. And so every time we're told it, I think both of us in a certain way we don't even know how to process it completely. Or it's overwhelming because to be able to keep this going has been hard, and because it is so disruptive, it has not been easy. It's been a really big struggle. We have been tested, both of us in every way imaginable, every way imaginable. So many times we've almost broken to pieces, each of us in different ways in different times, and hit rock bottoms over and over and over again, and we've come back over and over and over again.
Well, that's the subject of this podcast, is this idea of success and how failure affects it. Right, Are you talking about some kind of massive failure? Was there a point at which.
We've had plenty of them.
Tell me about one specific one that really sticks in your head. Where you went, you know what, basta or you know what, here we go or something?
Yeah, I mean, so the biggest one that comes to mind, and is so we were about five years into the journey of our style. Like you, it's always been this struggle, Like the sort of financial side of things has been it's.
Always been creatively easy.
And then it's always been very hard to sustain from the financial side. And we were at a point where we were really like struggling to break out. We had just been doing our Closet series that we were speaking of, and we were very passionate about it. It had really struck a chord among a certain group, but it was still in this sort of like the New York LA like city people and didn't feel like it had really broken out yet, and we were frustrated with that. So we were financially really struggling.
But then also we were getting copied a lot. We were getting.
Copied a lot where like brands were taking a lot of the concepts from our videos and turning them into the agad campaigns or the people, and we weren't really getting any you know, help from that, and it was like a frustrating recurring experience. The series that were the most known for now is called What's Underneath. That's a docu series where as we're interviewing someone very intimately about their relationship to their bodies and their identity and their style, they're slowly taking off their clothes until they're in their underwear.
Beautiful, Yeah, thank you, thank you.
It's in a symbol of self, you know, claiming self acceptance, removing all the layers of conditioning about how we're supposed to look and be et cetera. So we had not started that series at that time. We had just done like this test episode of it that we were trying to find sponsorship for so that we could actually build out the whole series.
So we had like filmed test episode. It was locked on Vimeo.
We had like sent a deck around with the test video to some brands to see if they would sponsor like the first season of this show, and we kind of knew we were sitting on gold. We were like, this is this is definitely magical. This is nothing like the next level of anything we've done. This is but we had not released one episode and no one was responding to our emails to sponsor it, and so we were thinking, we're in the spring right now. The earliest we were thinking it would come out as the fall, and basically one.
Day we yeah, we we.
Had this idea that was going to come out during fashion week as like anti fashion. I don't know, we had some idea. We thought it was just going to be like a one on one season of it. It's now been eight years and two hundred plus episodes. But basically so we're we're kind of struggling. I'm not sure how we're going to get this off the ground. And we get an email one day from from this casting director who had periodically called us to help her cast ad campaigns that needed like real people or quote unquote. She was one of the rare ones that actually came to us to hire us to help her versus just taking our stuff kind of. And so she she called us and she was like, I have the perfect thing for you to cast.
It's called The Naked Project.
It's this ad.
Campaign for a huge fast fashion company. And she's like, here's the deck's it's our deck, Reworld, it's our deck that we had sent out to potential sponsors for our new series. What's underneath completely re worked by the same people. They put the person on stool, because everyone's on a stool in front of her brick, the break undressed, covering the boob.
Her braid was covering her boob in the picture.
Like they had totally taken our whole deck and our whole video and like the same questions, et cetera. And it was going to be this multimillion dollar ad campaign called The Naked Project.
And they were hiring models. They were they actually they were well they were hired.
No, they were hiring models and quote unquote real people, so this cast characture was totally innocent. She didn't know that they had done this, that they was ripping us off. So we politely declined helping her cast the campaign. She was so confused, she was like why, like why would you decline this?
We were like, we can't really explain it right now. And though I fell on the floor.
I mean I was devastated because at the time, we hadn't released any of it, so the world didn't know that this was ours yet, and so I was I like, was at my wits end.
I was like, this is too hard.
But this was going to be our big break, this series, and now they're beating us to it. It was supposed to come out in like May. They're spending millions of dollars on it.
We can't collee you exact dollars, which have no problem doing.
Yeah, we can't compete with that. We have like no money in the bank, Like, how are we going to do this?
I'm like sobbing on the floor, like catatonic, Like truly, I guess We've done this for each other at time, at different times, at different moments. You've been the one on the floor and I've gotten you up and I've been like different moments like that, but I was the one on the floor this time, and my mom was like get up, like she was like, I was like her like Scorpio.
Like kind of never gives up. Senseful side came up and she was like, we are not letting them like get us down here. Are going to beat them to it. And so we called everybody we knew.
We called everyone we had done one of these like closet videos on and we were like, we need you to do us a favor, like you need to come do an episode of this other thing for us, Like you're gonna have to take.
Your clothes off.
It's gonna be like we had already had all this and everybody came. Everybody came.
That is incredible.
We had all this trust from everyone.
Shut up.
And we called all these video editors that we knew, and we were like, we don't have money.
You need to edit for free or like for like a hundred dollars or like maybe one hundred dollars for like it was like and everybody like just because they like had trusted us from what we were and how pure the intention was we just we literally just hauled ass and we shot, you know, like ten episodes of it in like a week and or just beat them and we released the first. Wow, we released the first episode of the series on the day that they shot the ad campaign, and then what was our Our videos just started going viral. We had never experienced what it felt like for a video to go viral because they hadn't before and viral and by the time, by the time that they were going to release theirs, I don't think they ever really could because ours they didn't.
Yeah, they never released it.
Great story, Well, that is an inspiring story.
You'll love this part of it, Isaac. Like, so we heard from the casting director, but then a couple of other places, like I was walking through Nolita bumped into Frederic. She's is a friend I had done one of our closets like and got us and got this and was very supportive, and she stops me and she goes, I have to tell you they're doing this campaign and they reached out to me about it, and you need to know about it as there was a couple of different people.
Wow.
So in the end it ended up being like a total gift that this casting director told us about it, because we may not.
Have we may be and you you would have languished until it was too late. Speaking of Frederica, speaking of those models right like, there is a series coming out on Apple TV about the Supermodels, a documentary that's coming out, you know, Linda Christy, Naomi, Cindy, Kate Veronica. Speaking of the influencer moment that we were talking about earlier, I always thought like those women were kind of groundbreaking influencers in a way.
You know.
It was before the Internet, and it was outside of the realm of fashion magazines who they were as people, you know what I mean, like traveling around the world. I used to say to Naomi, I was like, Darling, why don't you style the fucking show? Because you know so much more right now than I do. And of course it was a joke, you know, but I did feel like those women were groundbreaking in some way. Do you have anything to say about that?
I think, looking back and framing it that way, I see what you're saying, because it was about them as people. They were people. It was their personalities and their individuality that made them what they were. They weren't just these like mannequins, you know, and.
They were able to see every single thing in the world and it went through the funnel of who they were and it came out as some kind of a statement. And you know, I have to tell you, it's like what I always admired about those women was the flexibility. You know. They could be one woman at one moment and another woman at another moment, and radical in one moment and just kind of like really like some rich lady one moment. They were very adaptable, you know. Do you find that you adapt lot to the situation, like when you work with the subject or when you work on a video. Tell me about your process a little bit.
Well, I do the pre interview, I do the casting, and I mostly I mean Lily comes in and she's the boss, you know, but I service her by doing the initial casting. And it's immediate on those zooms because it's so sensitive and what we're looking for is something so unique in a person in ability, you know, to be on a certain side of a struggle where they can tell a story, be very honest, be you know, shameless about their story, be willing to talk about the messiness of their journey, but be on a certain part of it where they are empowered and they've learned and they're sort of not at the rock bottom. They're kind of on the other side of the rock bottom. And so it's a very sensitive situation both in the you know, it's that preliminary moment and then when we actually do the interview, and I have to be very malleable and adaptable and sensitive to where they're at, to understanding that they're being held, that they're being seen, that they're being heard, that they're safe. I share a lot, and we share in the interviews together with them our own struggles. What gets cut out of the interview a lot is our side of it. But what's happening, and the reason we're able to land it with these great videos at the end of the day and get people to be so vulnerable is because we're sharing a lot of ourselves and there's a lot of conversation going back and forth.
And I have to say, like, for me, like I can't believe how you get them to share. I can't believe that because when I think of the virtual world, I mean, listen, darling, this is not real. This is like a fake fucking thing, right, But like a lot of people are seeing this, right, I.
Think there are really beautiful things about social media. Like I do think that it has created like a lot of incredible connection between people that would never have ever like found each other, and like a way for you to find like you're kind of like niche communities and seeing representation from people that you wouldn't have where there used to be such a middleman of like you know, who's being shown. Like, I think there's a lot of a lot of progresses happened because of everybody being able to have their own platform and to find like minds in that way, and so like even if you're in like a town in the middle of nowhere, like you can find someone that you want to.
Under Totally incredible.
That's incredible.
You know, I'm using the tool to create hopefully a positive change for people.
So this is an incredible thing for me to hear you say, darling. It freaks me out a little bit. I gotta tell you, all right, I'm going to go to my last question. I ask about people's obituaries, what they are going to say, what's the headline? What do you want it to say about you when you're gone? At one hundred and two, Elisa, what's it going to say?
I think about this a lot.
Actually me too, thank you.
Yeah, I would like it to say that I was told all of my life, the imprint as a child was, uh, these limited beliefs that I couldn't change the world, that I couldn't be that person. That it's other people that are in museums, it's other people that, uh that do these radical revolutionary things and actually change the world. And that I was always told that, and I resisted that, and I thought that, and I did. I did it, and I made an impact. I made an impact, and I made people feel freer and happier and have more fulfilling lives.
Wow, that's a beautiful thing. And what about you, Lily lay mandelbaumb Comma one hundred and three but one hundred and.
Three, oh, thank you.
Oh.
Actually, hopefully the world's not too scary at that age, Like maybe.
Maybe that's right occurring to the apocalypse.
But yeah, I would like to just be known for like making people feel seen and safe to be who they are and not judged for anything, even their dark stuff. They're darker, shadowy parts. I I think that it's one of my my favorite things about myself is that I love people for their like whole messy selves and I like to make them feel okay in that that's incredible.
I prefer it to the perfect facade, right.
And and and ultimately that goes back to everything that we're doing together and everything that we care about, which is that style and that's beauty and that's power and that's power, right because beauty and style is power, and it's it's that feeling of your own self empowerment. And then when you feel that, you want to empower others, and that's what's going to make you know the world a different place when when we feel that way, when the way to change the world is to change yourself and to love yourself like radically and.
When you conclude your darker sides and your hearder I agree with that one hundred Love your dark side, Darling.
I love my heart. It's where I get all of my funniest jokes and my best ideas.
Oh I love here.
Yeah, Hey listen, what do you want to promote on this podcast, Darling, Well.
We would love people to check out our videos on our YouTube channel, which is just style like you with just the letter you, and we have a book, True Style is What's underneath the Self Acceptance Revolution, which is based on our videos.
So it's like photos and stories from.
The videos and the all the amazing people in a coffee table book. So we'd love people to check that out, and just to stay tuned. We have a lot of like really exciting expansions in the work. We have an really amazing new series dropping in November that we can't really talk about yet that's going to be a very cool new twist on what we've been doing. And we have a documentary film that we're finishing and in the works, and you so so just stay tuned.
Things are expanding and.
I adore me. This is so inspiring to me. I can't even tell you to think that you just do this and that you do it yourselves, and really it's like you have your own studio and you have your own sort of distribution channel. It's divine. You are really an inspiration. Thank you, Thank you.
Where the feeling is mutual, Thank you so much.
We're honored to be here.
Okay, y'all. Another amazing example of like a recurring theme in this podcast that isn't necessarily about success and how failure affects it. This is a story of a mother and a daughter working together and I think the most unbelievably harmonious way. And you can tell they have issues, and you can tell each other's throats occasionally, but really what comes through is the love and the respect they have for each other. And I have to tell you it is inspiring to me, as someone who has worked in the fashion and style business extensively, to see, you know, two people who have found themselves through the subject of style. Hopefully you are as inspired as I am, and you're going to take it further and look at their work and get into it. It's a whole new world, darlings. Get into it, darlings. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favorite and tell someone, Tell a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin, tell everyone you know. Okay, and be sure to rate the show. I love rating stuff. Go on and rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts so more people can hear about it. It makes such a gigantic difference, and like it takes a second, so go on and do it. And if you want more fun content videos and posts of all kinds, follow the show on Instagram and TikTok At Hello Isaac podcast and by the way, check me out on Instagram and TikTok at I Am Isaac Msrahi. This is Isaac Msrahi. Thank you, I love you and I never thought I'd say this, but goodbye Isaac. Hello Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio, Awfully Nice and I AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by Me Isaac Msrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by Robin Gelfenbein. The senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti. Vis Executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Karl Welker, and Nathan Cloke at Imagined Audio, Production management from Katie Hodges, Sound design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed by Ben Waltzon. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and Sarah Katanak at I AM Entertainment.