Thurs 10th Nov: StyleLikeU

Fred Butler Closet Interview With StyleLikeU from StyleLikeU on Vimeo.

Here are some of the photos from my feature on the site StyleLikeU which went live yesterday. I first heard of the NY based project via the stylist Masha Orlov and have been hooked ever since. A mother and daughter (ELISA GOODKIND & LILY MANDELBAUM) teamed up to work together documenting their friends wardrobes and asking them about how the garments mapped out and explained their life story. They enjoyed the process so much they continued the work reaching out to individuals that interested them for their presence and style. The roots of the concept have now grown through the ground into a fully fledged opperation branching out with each day, extending out to other cities for new case studies. Its now an incredible archive to scroll through, with many inspiring unique personalities recounting their own twists and turns which in turn relate to their sartorial choices. Their mission is to question looking to magazines for new ways of approaching dressing when there is a wealth of genuine joy d'vivre in the process of putting together outfits in each other's own way........... here it is all being shared via video interview, photos and text ........ I recommend dedicating some decent time to getting lost in these closets ......

"Dressed entirely in monochromes, but multi-faceted, Fred is reminiscent of a bleach-blonde version of one of her ’60s icons, Peggy Moffitt. Despite how loud and vivaciously she dresses, inside, Fred clarifies that she is the polar opposite. She sees with what seems to be a child’s perspective, with a rainbow maker in her studio window that spreads prismatic light through the room, but Fred is as deep as the blue of the first color that she wore head to toe. She makes adults smile like children when they pass her in a yellow eyelet dress with a chunky Judy Blame bauble charm necklace. As if Fred has never left the short-lived time when one is a kid, free of obligations, and your biggest problem is coordinating colors, she doesn’t like or wear shoes, favoring instead her custom multi-hued Nikes. In fact, Fred is so unaffected by what everyone else is wearing that the bulk of her one-of-a-kind wardrobe comes from the one place she shops at that is on the way to her studio. High Street isn’t on her map.

A bout with chickenpox– life-threatening and cripplingly painful in adults– reminded her of the importance of living fully every day. In purple high-waisted trousers, a Peruvian-patterned jacket and a three dimensional, origami-inspired necklace of her own design, Fred feels that life is too short to waste wearing faux-distressed denim, “like everyone else on the Underground.” Fearing that we are heading back to being four-legged primates staring into our cell phones and computers instead of seeing each other, it would definitely be a loss to miss the heartwarming good energy of Fred in a turquoise raw silk dress that she sewed up the middle to make into wide pants or the shoulder decoration she cut out from a dress. “We have learned to stand up, but we’re going back to the old way, of not looking at each other,” Fred laments."