Loading summary
Transcript112 lines
- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker 1
Where'd you get those shoes?
- [00:02]
Lauren Sherman
Easy.
- [00:02]
Unknown Speaker 1
They're from dsw. Because DSW has the exact right shoes for whatever you're into right now. You know, like the sneakers that make office hours feel like happy hour, the boots that turn grocery aisles into runways, and all the styles that show off the many sides of you, from daydreamer to multitasker and everything in between. Because you do it all in really great shoes. Find a shoe for every you at your DSW store or dsw.com this episode.
- [00:32]
Unknown Speaker 2
Is brought to you by Amazon. Sometimes the most painful part of getting sick is the getting better part. Waiting on hold for an appointment, sitting in crowded waiting rooms, standing in line at the pharmacy. That's painful. Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy remove those painful parts of getting better with things like 247 virtual visits and prescriptions delivered to your door. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical Healthcare just got less painful.
- [00:57]
Lauren Sherman
Foreign hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's Fashion and Beauty Memo line sheet. And today with me on the show is Sarah Hoover, author of the Mother Load Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood. She's here to discuss the book the Art World versus the Fashion World and all the fashion news of the day. Let's get started. Hi everyone. Hope you are doing well this week. I am back in Los Angeles. I'm planning to stay here for now. Still very scary, but it feels like those of us who are lucky enough to be in our homes are ready to help others out. So need some help? Message me. This is a unique Tuesday episode, not only because of what's happening around us, but because Sarah, our guest, is not only here to discuss the news of the week, more of which you can read online sheet, but also because she's here to talk about a book that really has nothing to do with fashion. We kind of get into some mom stuff, so if you're not interested in that, you might want to fast forward over that part. But it's all. Everything's connected and it was really one of my favorite interviews that I've done for the podcast so far. And I hope to have Sarah back on a on another day and I wish her the best of luck promoting this book which publishes today. I hope that you buy it because it's really interesting if you're a mom, if you're not a mom, all that. It's just she's lived a very unique life and so that part of it is fascinating as well. But let's get going and thank you all for all the nice notes and things you sent to me. It really means a lot and I hope you are okay wherever you are.
- [02:53]
Sarah Hoover
Sarah Hoover.
- [02:54]
Lauren Sherman
Welcome to Fashion People.
- [02:56]
Sarah Hoover
Truly an honor to be here. Don't quite consider myself a fashion person, so I'm excited. This is my chance to prove myself.
- [03:03]
Lauren Sherman
I think you have great style and you understand ecosystems and the way worlds operate. And so the fact that you are an art world person who also likes fashion and you mix with fashion people, I consider you a fashion person.
- [03:25]
Sarah Hoover
Oh, thank God. You might be the only one. You and my mom, but. Okay, great. I'm glad I'm allowed to be here because this is really exciting for me. You know, I'm your number one fan and a huge fan of Buck News.
- [03:34]
Lauren Sherman
Well, I just want to tell you that after reading your book, I think I might be your number one fan and also absolutely need to meet your mother.
- [03:44]
Sarah Hoover
Thank you. I hope you do meet my mom. We gotta get that together. That would be. She's really. Because she's a former prosecutor, you would have interviewing skills on par with one another. You know, I'm sure she.
- [03:56]
Lauren Sherman
She could beat me any day. But how are you doing with all this? I mean, we're recording on Monday morning at noon Eastern, 9am Pacific, and we were just talking offline about everything that's happening here in LA with the fires and, and pretty much anyone who lives on the coast or, or there's probably almost everyone in this country knows someone who was affected by this. And we, we both know multiple people who have lost their homes. And it's. Yeah, it's. It's really heavy stuff.
- [04:31]
Sarah Hoover
It's a terrible time. I mean, it's such a reminder, like, when you doing something like I'm doing, putting a book out, which my book comes out tomorrow. Like, you're constantly faced with rejection and reasons to, like, feel sad and bad about yourself, but the events in LA are like, really good at putting everything into incredible perspective because just nothing compares to that level of pretty senseless destruction and loss. It's rough.
- [04:58]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah. We were talking about how people in the city are reacting to this, and you asked me whether it was similar to Hurricane Sandy, where if you were affected, you were affected, and if you weren't, it was business as usual. And I would say that. And I mentioned that, like, I think the difference with this is a, the way it. It really affected Altadena and the Palisades in Malibu, and there are winds picking up. So who knows when this publishes on Tuesday morning, what will happen? But that's entire neighborhoods that I live pretty close to Altadena. I go to dinner in Altadena once a week. We have lots of friends that live over there. And Palisades, I know tons of people who live there. Don't go there as much because it takes about an hour and a half for me to drive there sometimes. But because the smoke, especially when it first happened, it was so smoky. You. You just know that it's going on. And so I think that was the biggest difference. Like, everything got canceled, all meetings got canceled. And there is this sense of, okay, these are. This isn't just individual homes or like little areas without power. These, this is. And also just the health, your health. When with the AQI stuff, it does feel like the city. It's interesting as a city that's so isolated. You feel so isolated here. People don't really leave their neighborhoods. You don't got to eat as much. People have people in their homes. Like, one of the reasons I like living here is because I'm so detached. Whereas in New York, I'm out to four things every single night. It does feel like everybody is trying to help each other out. And because there is a little more time than there normally is and there are less meetings and all that stuff, people are mobilizing and spending that time organizing things and getting stuff. Like, I just got a text from a friend who's friend of a friend who lost their house and just asking me, is there a list of brands that are sending to individual homes, that sort of thing.
- [07:19]
Sarah Hoover
So which There is. I've seen that list and it's so generous and wonderful. I mean, that's a silver lining. And like we were saying earlier, the reality is this is going to be the new normal. There will be catastrophic climate events that happen more and more often. So to kind of set the precedent for the kind of politeness and care that we are expected to show our neighbors I think is really important. And I'm heartened to hear that LA is doing it so beautifully, which I had no doubt about because everyone I've ever met in that city I love. It's such a special, beautiful, haunted, incredible place. All those old trees and old homes. It's such a special, special spot.
- [07:55]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah. And you write about it beautifully in your book, which we're gonna talk about immediately. I have one more little thing to say and that is that I wrote this in line sheet. I don't know if it's going to end up getting edited because we're all very emotional right now, but I have no reason to live here. I should live in Paris if I was focused on work. And honestly, it's a great place to raise kids. I should live in Paris. I lived in New York for 15 years. It'd be easier for me to live in New York. Last year I think I flew. It was a little bit crazy year because of book promotion, too, but I think I flew to New York eight times and spent. It's not like I go there for two days. It's like two weeks. And we moved here during COVID trying to escape another natural disaster. And I loved it here. And that was one of the reasons we moved here. But now I just can't imagine leaving. And I'm not the person to describe why. That's for Susan Orlean wrote a really nice thing in her newsletter this week about it. And everyone can read the Joan Didion essay about the Santa Ana, if you haven't already.
- [09:14]
Sarah Hoover
Stephanie Danler also writes beautifully about whether in the opening passages of her memoir Stray, it always reminded me of the Didion. But yet other people can do the literature part.
- [09:26]
Lauren Sherman
Yes, yes. But there is just something about this.
- [09:29]
Sarah Hoover
Place that it's haunted, it has ghosts. It's old Hollywood. It's got it all.
- [09:33]
Lauren Sherman
You believe in ghosts?
- [09:34]
Sarah Hoover
Okay, so. Of course I do. It's the edge of Western civilization. Crazy things happen out there.
- [09:39]
Lauren Sherman
That is true. So I still wanted to have you on today because you do have this book coming out tomorrow. I really, really love the book.
- [09:48]
Sarah Hoover
Thank you.
- [09:49]
Lauren Sherman
We were talking at the W party the other night, but the thing. I finished it finally this weekend. The thing I would say that you have is an ability to write about things and be open and not. It does. It feels like you're not super worried about what people think about you. And even if you are, that's not going to stop you from being honest.
- [10:16]
Sarah Hoover
I mean, I think no one likes getting their feelings hurt, so you have to be careful about reading the comments. But at the end of the day, the urgency I felt towards these topics surpassed what strangers think of me on the Internet.
- [10:31]
Lauren Sherman
So tell me, you. You're a lifelong journal writer, so it makes sense that your first book would be a memoir. But tell me how you decided to write the Motherlode and what your sort of mission was in getting it out there.
- [10:48]
Sarah Hoover
I did toy, by the way, with turning it into fiction at one point because I thought it would allow me to, like, go harder at these people who I had felt sort of wronged me and that it would offer a layer of protection. But I ended up deciding to make it memoir because I wanted people. I didn't want anyone to be able to say, yeah, this girl had postpartum depression, and her birth was kind of traumatic, and men were dicks to her and whatever, but it's fiction, so she probably exaggerated. Like, I wanted people to know that this is a really standard occurrence for women, and it's sort of the status quo, and that, like, none of that is hyperbolic.
- [11:22]
Lauren Sherman
Right.
- [11:24]
Sarah Hoover
The book is essentially about, like, the. My year of terrible postpartum depression after I had my firstborn and the identity rupture that it caused. And I had gone through that in real life. And in order to emerge from it, I'd gone through a lot of therapy and a lot of different kinds of therapy, and I'd gone on SSRIs and, like, you know, done the whole runaround to sort of get my shit together. And one of the therapeutic practices that I've used a lot in my life is journaling every morning. And so I had just, like, pages and pages of writing about postpartum and going through postpartum. And when I decided to start writing a book, I wrote it like, I couldn't stop myself. Like, it was gonna come out one way or another. The writing was so easy. It just, like, poured out of me in a way that felt really natural. So I sort of didn't have a choice. Like, the book, in a way, wrote itself. But I always say that I wrote the book that I wished I had had when I was going through it, because I was so desperately searching for answers and searching for ways to make myself happy and searching for a light at the end of the tunnel and someone who could prove to me that my. For the rest of my life was not just going to be living in this, like, darkness and that there was going to be joy for me on the other side. And I couldn't find a narrative that made sense. I tried to read every book I could find and reach the end of the Internet in any corner that discussed, like, postpartum depression or anxiety or anything. And I just. I never felt, like, spoken to, and I never felt like it was explained or described in the way that it was happening to me. And I thought that to provide even one person with a narrative that made sense for them and made them feel seen would, like, make it all worthwhile. So I wrote the book that I wished I'd had.
- [13:09]
Lauren Sherman
It's a great example of how specific space become universal. And I would say coming out of this book, like, my impression is that you've had an extraordinary life and you're an extraordinary person, and it's. I can't wait for the sequel. Whatever you're compelled to write about in 10 years or 5 years or 20 years and how the rest of your life unfolds, because it's fascinating. And also, it is so relatable. You know, I. I didn't have postpartum depression. I've struggled with that stuff. I have generalized anxiety disorder. I'm sure.
- [13:47]
Sarah Hoover
Who among us doesn't?
- [13:49]
Lauren Sherman
Who does? Like, that's the thing I don't understand. I was talking about it with someone. I was like, doesn't everyone have really bad anxiety? You just learn how to manage it. But anyway, the point being that even though a lot of your experiences were the complete opposite of mine, like, there are small things. Like, the thing that I found after having a baby is that no one explains what it's like, and it's different for everybody, but no one talks about it. Like, I had trouble. I have a low milk supply. And I thought this breastfeeding stuff, I really connected with because I enjoyed it and my kid liked it and all that, but I couldn't give him all the milk. And that was. I didn't know that was a thing. But no one talks about this stuff. And what I think you did was you put it in the context of your greater life and showing that, like, you have this rich life, but you've also had a lot of traumatizing things happen. And as a whole, it's still extraordinary, but you can't act like the bad things didn't happen. Whereas most, I think, our culture, the tendency is to not share those things because it makes other people uncomfortable. And you share them in a way that there was never once where I felt like, I can't. I need to stop, that it was too much or anything like that.
- [15:22]
Sarah Hoover
I mean, what I've experienced is that a lot of those things in that book, at the time when they were happening to me, I felt incredible shame about. Like, I was deeply embarrassed that it wasn't natural for me to be a mother and that I couldn't, like, access my maternal instincts, if they even existed. I was horrified by myself that I didn't love my child. When he came out of my body, I judged myself for not breastfeeding. I, like, had help at home, which is not, you know, it's not how I was necessarily raised. Like my mom. I didn't grow up with nannies. There were all these reasons that I felt like an absolute failure of a woman. And what I realized in the writing of it was that the more I, like, came out with those embarrassments and told them to other women, there was always a moment of that wasn't exactly my story, but I was embarrassed about X, Y and Z. I'm like, thank you for saying it so I could say mine. And it just helped me, like, engage with people and relate to them so much and feel so much less alone that it felt worth it to me to like, put it all on the table. Because there is not a single woman on this earth who hasn't felt judged and like, she doesn't measure up to some standard that she didn't get to make for herself that, like, the culture around her made. And I think who can't relate to that, you know, and if I could just, like, change one person's trajectory and allow them to feel like they can judge themselves less. Like we're all flawed and we all have difficulties matching up to cultural narratives. Like, that's so worth it. To me, that was the most important part.
- [16:54]
Lauren Sherman
A lot of this book, it's your personal story. It's about motherhood, it's about going through all that stuff. But it's also cultural commentary about, like, where our society is right now. And that part of it is, I thought, was it just. I think that it will stand the test of time capturing a moment in the way we live as well.
- [17:20]
Sarah Hoover
Oh, I hope so. I mean, it's like dark, you know, but you're right. When you're in a industry that's so all consuming and you're at the center of it because you work somewhere like Puck or you live in New York City and everything's so fast paced, you get really myopic. Like, you just. You can only see what's right in front of you. It's hard to, like, pull back and look at a really a macro picture. But there's so much, like, pernicious, I don't know, like Instagram and reality tv. It's like, it's such a small slice of how people actually, like, live and feel and look. And I know no one, not even part of a percentage of the people who watch the Kardashians, will read my book. But I do try every day to, like, build the world that I want to live in. And I really believe in honesty of emotion. I probably got like dates and times and stuff wrong in my book, but I know that every feeling I wrote about in there, I absolutely felt. And I felt it. Other people feel it. And I Just, like, don't want to be embarrassed about any of that. I just feel like it's a nice antidote to the world's that we operate in on the other side, which are so, like, anesthetized and CGI'd and AI'd.
- [18:39]
Lauren Sherman
Yes. And it's easy to forget how much they are. I do want to talk to you a little bit about art and fashion and all of that stuff, but before we get started on that, the book doesn't come out until Tuesday, which is when this is publishing. You should all order it. But I assume you've started to get feedback. You had an amazing Style section cover story this past weekend, I believe, or I don't know if it was Thursday or Sunday, but. And also, I just know a lot of people. You were really good about sending it out to people. You sent a handwritten note which, sorry, I did not do that when I had my book. I just sent, like, four to people who blurbed it six months later. But you've been great about that. What has the feedback been so far? And what. What are you feeling about the sort of way people are going to react to it?
- [19:39]
Sarah Hoover
You know, in my typical, like, paranoid anxiety brain, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I haven't gotten, like, a review yet. You know, it's only been sent to, you know, friends and journalists and that I know and who I had an ability to connect with and be like, what's your address? So it's not in the hands of, like, total, total strangers very much. And I await a negative review and I await trolls on the Internet, of course. But in this moment, which I'm sure is fleeting and brief, I have received such wonderful feedback from people who feel really seen and, like, acknowledged. And it's just highlighted for me how much women deserve to be seen and how rarely they are. And, like, I've become a repository for other people's stories of birth trauma and trauma as a woman existing in the world, which I do not mind at all because it's, like, my great fascination and hopefully can become, you know, my life's work from now on. But I am mostly receiving feedback from women who are just like, oh, my God, thank you for saying the thing that I couldn't, which is a total dream for me. And I don't know how, like, a smart literati will review it. I have no idea if I'm, like, a good writer or whatever. I don't necessarily even care about that. I want, like, real women who live real lives and raise Children, I want it to make their world like a tiny percent better and make them feel like, acknowledged. That's all that matters to me. And so far I feel like I've been doing that and that that's been like the best possible feeling. Because by the way, publishing a memoir is so scary. Like you have my diary.
- [21:17]
Lauren Sherman
It really is. Like, it feels so honest. And I, I'd say that one thing is good writing is extremely subjective. So some people, if someone says they're a good writer, I'd never listen to anyone because it's very difficult to, to objectively say that. The second thing is you are a good writer. And the thing that you are, it doesn't feel put on at all. Like that was the thing that was amazing to me was as a first time book writer and also it's not like you've been what it kind of reminded me of. It felt like you had been writing a personal blog or a newsletter for 15 years. Like I was like, I can't believe she never. Did you ever have a blog or anything?
- [22:07]
Sarah Hoover
No, I never considered myself a writer at all. I mean, I have such imposter syndrome. I still don't consider myself a writer. I'm just like a girl who worked in art who also wrote a book, you know, But I never, I had only written like art history texts and press releases and academic things and industry things. I had never written anything for other people to read that was even close to literature.
- [22:25]
Lauren Sherman
What people tend to do if they feel what you say you feel, imposter syndrome or whatever, is to make the writing increase the sort of floweriness or the. They want to try to make it sound sophisticated. And there wasn't one moment in the book where I felt that from you. It felt extremely natural and it felt like your voice, it, it felt like it was coming from you. It didn't feel like you tried to use big words or, or descriptions that didn't make sense.
- [22:59]
Sarah Hoover
I mean, I don't have any big words in this brain.
- [23:02]
Lauren Sherman
Me neither.
- [23:02]
Sarah Hoover
I have an 8 month old. Like my brain's just cheese. But I also, like, I really wanted my favorite books that I've ever read. I have the sense that the voice is the voice of the writer in real life. Like they write how they talk. And I was like, I just want to do that. Turns out that is so hard to do. It's not like it doesn't come out of your brain the way it sounds in your brain, no matter kind of how hard you try. And it was like I had to force myself. It was a real learning curve to learn how to do that, but it was my ultimate goal. So thank you. I just wanted it to sound like me. I'm like, all I have at the end of the day is my own story and the way my own brain works at my own voice. And there are going to be people who hate it and people who judge it, but it's mine. And, like, I can't change that. But I don't know how to. I don't know how these fiction writers who write in other people's voices do it. Like, I'm not that skilled. I'm not. That's a prodigy level thing to me. I'm not one of those people. I just wrote the way I talk. That's all I could do.
- [23:57]
Lauren Sherman
Well, you did good.
- [23:59]
Sarah Hoover
Thanks.
- [23:59]
Lauren Sherman
So congratulations.
- [24:00]
Sarah Hoover
Thank you so much.
- [24:04]
Ben Stiller
Hey, I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott, and we make a TV show called Severance. Severance is back for season two on Apple tv. Before the premiere, Ben and I are going to be binging season one and putting out daily recaps beginning January 7th. Be dropping an episode featuring amazing special guests from the cast and crew. After that, we're gonna keep going as we recap every episode of season two. The Severance podcast with Ben and Adam. Listen and follow now on Apple Podcasts, the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [24:37]
Lauren Sherman
It feels a little weird to transition to less serious stuff than fires and motherhood.
- [24:43]
Sarah Hoover
There's room for both.
- [24:44]
Lauren Sherman
So one thing in the book that I thought was really interesting is you. You kind of, by telling the details of your life, you talk about the art world and your work, your experience, and you worked at Gagosian. It's Gagosian, correct? Not Gagosian or I hear both, but.
- [25:03]
Sarah Hoover
Larry himself says Gagosian. So.
- [25:05]
Lauren Sherman
Okay, thank you. What Larry says, yeah, you worked there for 14 years. You climbed up the ranks, and essentially your gig, it sounded like, was you were an art advisor, so you had clients and you would tell them, like, which pieces to buy, that type of thing.
- [25:24]
Sarah Hoover
I sold works to clients. I also managed artists.
- [25:27]
Lauren Sherman
Okay.
- [25:28]
Sarah Hoover
And so I worked on kind of both sides of the fence. There are some galleries in the world where you can only do one or the other. That's what the corporate structure details. But when I worked for Larry, I did both of those things, and it was incredibly dynamic and fun and exciting.
- [25:42]
Lauren Sherman
So because of that job and because of the kind of person you are, that means that you were sort of in New York culture and in. And around in the mix, going to parties, meeting different types of people. And that means that you were interacting with a lot of people in the fashion industry as well. And obviously art and fashion are very closely connected, and especially Gagosian, a lot of the clients and all of that are fashion industry people. It's just very, very closely connected in terms of how the two worlds operate. Because I don't know much about the art world. How is it the same and how is it different?
- [26:26]
Sarah Hoover
The art world is much smaller, especially, like, I haven't been at Gagosian for, you know, several years, so. Because I left when I started writing my book. But I. And the art world has grown in that time because of the Internet and Instagram and the way trends work. And there are more artists collaborating with fashion brands, and their names are becoming more mainstream household names. But especially when I started there. I mean, I started in 2007, so it was before Instagram and Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince had made collections with Louis Vuitton, but that was not now. Every fashion house has done a brand collab with an artist, if not 20. So, but that wasn't de rigueur at the time. And the art world felt tiny. There's a list that's published every year, I think it still is published, of the top 200 collectors in the art world. And I remember I made flashcards of them so I could identify them when I worked at the front desk, which like any front desk girl in any gallery has probably did in that time period, because, like, we had Facebook, but we didn't have Instagram. So you wanted to be able to identify Eli Broad when he walked in the room. But, you know, so I remember, like making flashcards so I could remember their name, their face, the city they lived in, the industry, they made their fortune in the types of art that they collected, et cetera. But the world was small. There were those top 200 collectors. There were, you know, 30 or 40 curators at the world's top museums. There were 10 gallerists that worked at the really, you know, highest end internationally. And then there were artists. There were four critics that we cared about. But you can't. You're not allowed to give critics catalogs or anything when they come to visit the gallery because they have their code of conduct for whatever journalist, you know, whatever paper they work for.
- [28:12]
Lauren Sherman
So what is. Can we talk about that really quickly?
- [28:15]
Sarah Hoover
They.
- [28:16]
Lauren Sherman
They can't see the catalog because they don't want to know how much the stuff costs.
- [28:20]
Sarah Hoover
They can look at catalogs but you can't gift them things because, you know, normally, like, if a collector comes into a gallery and is looking at an exhibition that a catalog has been made for, you would say, like, oh, please take this catalog home with you. Like, you know, flip through it if you, you know, change your mind about a painting. Now you have all of them illustrated in one place. But often critics can't accept gifts because they have codes of conduct at different publications.
- [28:42]
Lauren Sherman
They would consider the catalog a gift. That's so interesting.
- [28:46]
Sarah Hoover
Yeah, I mean, I think you just want to be, like, very careful with those things. Of course, you know, and I like, Revere. I mean, one of my favorite writers in general in this world is Jerry Saltz, who is the art critic at New York Magazine. And he has, like, such an incredible viewpoint on life and culture and such an interesting personal history, and he's just like one of my favorites. But if you're looking for other art world writing like that, like the Calvin Tompkins Life of the Artist books is so. The was so amazing, all of those essays. But yeah, I would never give catalogs out to. To critics when they came in.
- [29:20]
Lauren Sherman
Oh, that's so interesting. So, so what are your observations of the fashion industry as you. Your profile increased and you started interacting with those people more and you start. I don't know, are you a Chanel ambassador?
- [29:38]
Sarah Hoover
No, I'm not like, formally involved in any way. I don't even know if they. How they. How that works. But so my thing was like, I. When I. The thing about the art world is in fashion because it's so corporate, because the corporate companies are so massive. There's this entire, like, level of people that do PR and marketing and communications. And until like, very, very recently, none of those jobs existed in the art world. Like, there was probably a PR person who worked at a gallery who wrote press releases and made sure the New York Times knew when a show was opening, but there wasn't a machine behind it. And even a small fashion brand now has pr, you know, and has some version of a machine behind it. So there are just hundreds more people involved in fashion than there are in art. Because there. There's never, like, that layer of infrastructure. There's the art dealers and the artist liaisons, and some of them have assistants. And you might have like a PR person and an HR person and someone who works in accounting. But, like, that's the gallery structure. There's just not that. There's not that many bodies. And in terms of, like, galleries that matter, whatever that means worldwide galleries that, you know, alter art markets and nurture artists and make them big and support their careers. There's what, like a hundred of them that. So it's just, it's a very small world. That of course changed a lot more when Instagram, you know, became the huge behemoth that it is. And also during COVID for the first time, collectors couldn't, and viewers in general couldn't see art in person for a while and became much more familiar and comfortable with buying stuff over JPEG or online. And most of the galleries developed like online viewing platforms to support those sorts of transactions. So through that there just the access to even just seeing things became much greater and a lot less opaque. I knew people, I mean, I had gone to college in New York, so like, I had a pretty entrenched network already. I knew people in college who had interned at Vogue or interned at different fashion houses. So I had like assistant level friends at a lot of places. And that's one of, I think the great things about going to school here is you like have that four year leg up on people who come here after school where you kind of like already have buddies everywhere. You know, I took art history with 101 at NYU and like when I would walk down 24th street to my job in the mornings at Gagosian, I would know the front desk girl at almost every gallery on the street because we had gone to school together. And so I had people in the fashion world that I knew who had those kinds of jobs. And we would hook each other up. They would come to gallery openings and I'd get to bring a plus one to the dinner. And when they had some little article that was in front of book about who people voted for or what they wore, whatever, they would ask me to give a quote. And it felt really symbiotic. We got to participate in each other's worlds in a little bit, in little ways. And then just like as my circle grew in New York, I revere artists so much and I loved, you know, your version of that as a, as a designer. And I loved getting to meet like designers and getting to support their work and see their shows long before there was Instagram or, you know, party pictures or anything like that were so important. It was just really cool to me to see how the sausage was made. And I felt like I got such a front row seat from being here. But I'm a curious person. And I was saying to a friend earlier, like, I feel like New York rewards the curious because there's so much to see here. And I am like, I have such a voracious appetite for understanding at a high level how all of these different industries work. I think it's fascinating.
- [33:22]
Lauren Sherman
Did you observe, obviously Marc Jacobs is a big art collector and has been forever beautiful collection. Did you observe as the years went on in the last 15, had more designers become bigger collectors? Do you think that? And also just generally people overall. Do you think there's a priority in collecting that used to not exist?
- [33:47]
Sarah Hoover
It seems to me that there are more rich people that have more money. So the collector base is broader. There are, I think designers get paid more now than they ever have before in my experience, at least at the top. So I think if you're, you know, whoever making $15 million a year, you have probably more budget to spend on. Art is at the end of the day right now a luxury item. So yeah, there are more ways, market based ways that the art world and the fashion world seem to interact to me now. I do also sense that the two worlds use each other in a way because I think there's a sort of. I don't know if virtue signaling is the right word, but it's definitely cool and buys you a certain level of clout to have a fashion brand that collaborates with an artist. And on the flip side, I think that there can be a lot of opportunity for artists who have historically been in this opaque, tiny little bubble to have more mainstream success and get their name out there in a way that could never happen before. I mean, the mechanism of a fashion brand is so vast and huge compared to, to any art gallery. There's no way that like kids in Ohio are going to know who some of these artists are until they like slap their name on a T shirt or whatever for, you know, supreme.
- [35:09]
Lauren Sherman
Well, I feel like Loewe, which is one of the sort of things that's in the news this week, is a great example of Jonathan Anderson. I have a friend who texted me the other day and said, oh, you should check out my friend Jonathan Anderson. And one of the guys from Challengers just bought a bunch of his art. Like it's a young artist who's on the east side of la. I hope he's okay, his family's okay. But a lot of the artists Jonathan Anderson has collaborated with during that period I knew about. But some of them I didn't like that ceramic studio he just did a big thing with. I'd never heard of them. And that is. And I'm a person who I go to galleries and try to keep up with stuff. But there is just so much.
- [35:55]
Sarah Hoover
So there's also. This is probably the same in the fashion world, and this is almost cliche at this point to say in the art world, but there are many art worlds. Like, there are. I mean, I'm as well versed as probably anyone regarding artists and galleries. And there's always people and artists in places that I'm not aware of. You know, there's like, the more street art. There's, you know, super blue chip art. There's like all these different worlds within the world. And just because you know one really well doesn't necessarily mean you know the other. And like, I'm not a snob about it. I think all of those worlds are really valid and really exciting. But there is, like, internally in the art world, a level of pretension about the other little microcosms. You know, you fashion people, you've had Loewe news this week, right?
- [36:48]
Lauren Sherman
We did, we did. So the big. And whether or not it'll be announced by the time this drops. It's supposed to be after couture, but who knows? But there is a lot of speculation that the designers of proenza schooler, Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez are going to be signed to be the next designers of Loewe. And that Jonathan Anderson, his appointment at Dior, is finally going to be announced. I mean, there's. I first heard that Jack and Lazaro were interviewing for this job all the way back during the October Fashion Week. I waited and didn't publish anything. But this past week, it sounds like it. It's for sure. I'm curious what you think. I'm sure you've interacted with these people. I don't know, of course, friends with them, but, oh, I love them.
- [37:41]
Sarah Hoover
I think that they are like real cultural pillars in New York. You know, that's extremely exciting for them. I think that they deserve an opportunity like that. They've been, like, hard at work in New York City making collection after collection for so many years and doing such a great job of capturing a sort of. Sort of minimalist. But like, when I look at their work, when I look at their clothes, I think, like, that is made to wear in gritty New York City, if you are also cool and smart. And it captures that really well. And I think that they have probably. I don't know anything about their business, but I think that likely, due to the structure of having their own brand, have not been able to lean in and explore intellectual radicalism the way that Jonathan Anderson has done so well at Loewe. I think having a. Not that their brand is small, but having a brand that isn't backed by a gajillion dollars likely makes it so that you have to, like, pander to the market in many ways. And, I mean, they have done that beautifully because they make clothes that real women want to wear on the streets of a city like New York, which is no small feat. But I. I hope that this gives them the opportunity to, like, be avant garde and, like, explore ideas that they maybe didn't have the support to do within their own brands. I mean, that would be so cool. And, like, Jonathan, I think, has really set the tone there for doing something like that. That's what's so exciting about his work. Like, he makes jokes, he can be kitsch when he wants. He can, like, play with visual language, and that seems like, really fun for them, and they deserve to be able to do that. To me, at this stage in their career, they've, like, nailed it season after season. They're really hardworking. Like, they should be able to really get to have fun with their designs.
- [39:30]
Lauren Sherman
Right.
- [39:31]
Sarah Hoover
So that seems exciting to me.
- [39:33]
Lauren Sherman
Yeah. I've been covering their business for 15 years, and every single point, the highs and lows, all the different investors, we've done so many stories together. And it's nice to see after working for all those years and, you know, years ago, probably 10 years ago, before RAF went to Dior, they. I think they talked to LVMH about Dior, and that was sort of. When that didn't happen, it kind of felt like, oh, maybe they'll just never do a big house and they'll do their own thing. And you're right. Like, the thing that I've observed about their brand over the last five years or so especially, is that a lot of my friends who don't work in fashion, who are interested in fashion and just want to look beautiful. Beautiful and cool, buy a lot of pro and a schooler. And there I was. You know, I go to all these independent boutiques all over the country and talk to people, and they're often the number one or number two brand there because it's like real clothing, but it's.
- [40:35]
Sarah Hoover
Their clothing makes sense. It's, like, rational. It's smart clothing, you know, But I just think, let them go off, like, let them use that big money and have fun and dive into stuff. They are smart men. Like, they're going to do something intellectual and exciting and fun and just get to upgrade all of the ideas that they've already been working with, I would imagine let them go off for sure. Put it on a T shirt.
- [41:00]
Lauren Sherman
Speaking of another brand that there seems to be a little bit of movement at, there's this guy, Dario Vitali, who worked at Miu Miu forever, and it was announced at the end of last year that he was leaving in January. But everyone's been like, where's Dario going? Where's Dario going? And the other reporting I've done this week is that he has talked or is in talks with Versace for some kind of role. Whether that would be with Donatella, under Donatella, replacing Donatella, I have no idea. And I think, honestly, I'm not sure if they know because the company's for sale right now and they're trying to find a buyer. It may be the Prada group, which would be ideal. It probably won't happen, but it would be interesting. But bigger picture, Versace, what do you think about that brand and its potential in the current culture as an Italian brand? As a brand with so much history and just an observer of this type of thing? Like, what do you think of Versace and what it could be?
- [42:01]
Sarah Hoover
I, like, historically love the brand. I love the archives of the brand. I find pieces of it to wear because I like to look a little slutty.
- [42:10]
Lauren Sherman
And, you know, these days, same, right?
- [42:13]
Sarah Hoover
Like, let's go home. How did this happen? I don't know, but I'm. I'm, like, really interested in they. I mean, Donatella and before her, Johnny, like, fundamentally understand a woman's body, and there's a lot to work with there. I love their prints, and I love, like, what else are you gonna wear when you go to Miami for the week or you go to. I don't know if you're lucky enough to go to, like, Positano. Like, it just seems perfect situationally for certain places. My problem with Versace is that it's hard to buy because it's hard to find. Like, you go into the boutique at Saks or you go into one of their brick and mortars, and there's, like, seven things, and there's just, like, not. It's hard to get critical mass when, like, there's not enough stuff. And also, they and every other brand on the planet has, like, leaned into streetwear. And I don't need, like, a legging workout set and a Versace print. I just want a beautifully made dress that makes my boobs look great. And I think that, like, you know, they're all chasing the market and like trying to get on what is no longer even a trend, but it's just its own sort of streetwear world. But I don't personally have interest in clothes that look like that.
- [43:26]
Lauren Sherman
I agree. I think they need to look at how Dolce and Gabbana, which none of these businesses are perfect, but how they've managed their business.
- [43:34]
Sarah Hoover
Absolutely.
- [43:35]
Lauren Sherman
It's like every year those women buy the same dress in a different fabric.
- [43:41]
Sarah Hoover
Totally.
- [43:41]
Lauren Sherman
Again and again and again.
- [43:43]
Sarah Hoover
And guess what? Like, it makes them feel good. It's a flattering cut. The prints are really pretty. You get seduced by them. It's like picking out wallpaper and you know what to expect. There's a lot of choice. I mean, that brand is like indestructible. Those dudes do totally messed up stuff all the time. And yet people flock to it because it's wearable and feels really luxe and you can find it and buy it. Like when you look on the website, it's all there. And you know what you're gonna get when you go into a boutique. When you look on the Versace website, you see something like gorgeous and then you try and hunt it down and it's non existent out in the world and you're left with like a sports bra that says Versace on it. And like that's not gonna. That's not going to scratch the itch.
- [44:24]
Lauren Sherman
Everybody needs to hire you to consult.
- [44:26]
Sarah Hoover
Oh my God. Do I know anything about anything? I have no idea.
- [44:29]
Lauren Sherman
I mean, you know everything about everything. So the, the final question for you, and I bet you've been on here a lot because of the book. So this whole tick tock thing, I. We had a little thing in line. She from Tara Palmeri, who is one of Puck's political correspondents. She has, she's like, has amazing reporting on Trump and she said he's trying to make sure that TikTok survives because TikTok is good, good to him. But I'm curious what you think about it. Do you spend time on there? Do you care if it. If it gets banned? What's your, what's your take at this moment?
- [45:04]
Sarah Hoover
Well, I am pro. Anything that supports like expression, obviously. And I think it's a. I spend no time on TikTok because I am not smart enough and I do not have the brain capacity to add another social media addiction into my life. I think it would actually ruin me. So I avoid TikTok. People send me them and I watch the ones my friends send me and I'm Always like, God, this is so smart. And like, how did anyone learn to use this app? I've tried to edit on there and it's like, so not user friendly and I'm so confused by it. I'm sorry.
- [45:39]
Lauren Sherman
So old.
- [45:40]
Sarah Hoover
But I think it's rad. All the stuff I see on there, I don't understand enough. The political implications, the ability of the Chinese government to, you know, utilize it to mess with America. Like, I'm not well versed enough to comment on that at all, but I feel like it's an important venue for expression for, especially for Gen Z and younger people. And like, I don't believe in cutting off any of that. I also don't understand how it's fundamentally different than any other social media platform that offers video. Like, what's the difference between that and Instagram? Instagram stories.
- [46:13]
Lauren Sherman
I don't know.
- [46:14]
Sarah Hoover
Okay, great. All right. Same page? Yeah.
- [46:16]
Lauren Sherman
I mean, I, I tend to agree, but I would say that, like, if you want to follow. Sapna at the New York Times is doing really good reporting on this. I agree. I, I think they're gonna have to figure it out. And if they don't figure it out, there will be another opportunity. But. And I also don't spend any time on there except if I'm researching something for work. I just can't, I can't get sucked in. No. And the thing is, I've tried and it's so difficult for me. I. From a consumer perspective, I think with Instagram, I still use it as a consumer as well. Like, I, I look, I find interesting things. It's not purely for work. And I think from a consumer perspective, I just don't find it that interesting. And I do think. I'm 42. It may be an age thing. Like, possibly it's not polished enough for me. Like, I don't want to look at something that raw, so. And it made. It may not even be age, it may just be like personality. But I do agree with you.
- [47:20]
Sarah Hoover
TikTok's so weird. Like, the way that people utilize it. Like, when a video goes viral, if you look at that person's TikTok, they will have often posted a version of that video 15 or 20 times, like, hoping that one of them hits. And like, I don't have time in my life or energy or brain power to, like, game the system in that way. Like, that's not. It's just not for me. Wait, I, I feel like we're gonna be out of time and I'm very worried we're not gonna talk about Chanel and talk about the news there?
- [47:52]
Lauren Sherman
Well, yeah, let's do it.
- [47:54]
Sarah Hoover
Can we do it for two seconds? How do you feel?
- [47:55]
Lauren Sherman
How do you feel?
- [47:56]
Sarah Hoover
Well, I read all of your coverage. It, like, gave me such joy. You know, you're my favorite writer. But the thing is, I know that they wanted someone young, like you said, that could stay with the brand for a long time. I mean, it's so impossible, such impossible shoes. Because Karl Lagerfeld was an utter prodigy in 20 different ways. Like a language savant, an incredible research mind, an encyclopedic understanding of things. I was an intern at the Met Museum, and when I was in college for one of the exhibitions that was about Chanel, and I sat and watched him one day give interviews for like eight straight hours, alternating between the languages that he spoke in a way that was. I felt like I was watching, like, Einstein solve a math problem. It was so cool. He was just so special. So, like, I don't know. Filling those shoes is obviously hard, but one of the, like, legacies that I think he left the brand with is, I believe under his tenure, they purchased a lot of the metier that make, like the lace and the pleats and whatever, the gloves, the hats. And so they have this, like, these incredible resources and this sort of knowledge of how things craftsmanship that what other brands has 200-year-old glove maker company at their beck and call, Right? And each of those techniques is a lesage. Each of those techniques, someone could spend their life learning them. They're often, I think, passed down generationally. They're just these lost arts. One of the reasons that I adore Chanel and have so much respect for it as a brand is because, I mean, that to me, is also a sort of performance art. Being able to pull all of those incredible techniques, those historic methods of craftsmanship together and make a coherent collection is spectacular to me. I feel like you're just supporting cultural history in an amazing way. And I was a bit surprised because I don't know the. You will have to tell me. Does. Does the incoming designer have experience in handling all of those different kinds of craftsmanship? Is that something you learn on the job?
- [50:14]
Lauren Sherman
I think he is unique because he worked at Margiela and he worked under Raf Simmons and Peter Mueller for years. I think he does have unique experience that most people his age don't. And he is a traditional designer who is young and can think in a modern way. So.
- [50:42]
Sarah Hoover
He'S kind of perfect in that sense.
- [50:44]
Lauren Sherman
Then it's A calculated risk. Like, who knows if he can make the thing they don't know is, is he gonna make everyone dream? What he did at Bottega I loved. But it is different than what Chanel represents.
- [51:03]
Sarah Hoover
And so you just said that so poetically and perfectly. It is a dreamscape. When you see a show or when you see someone in one of those dresses, it's above trend. It's never what you expect. It's timeless because it belongs to no time period. And it is dreamy. Like you leave. Like a fever dream, you know?
- [51:22]
Lauren Sherman
So my hope is yes. And I think, honestly, he doesn't come with baggage. And everyone else would have as much as, like. I think from a business perspective, Eddie would have been really good. From. From my heart perspective, Marc Jacobs would have been amazing. There's so many people, and, you know, if it doesn't work, they would never say this, but, like, they could try, try again. It's not like you go to. People are still buying Chanel because it's such. All the things you just said. It's such a. There is so much there. You don't. They could. They could technically not have someone and it would still feel good.
- [52:03]
Sarah Hoover
It did work. The last show worked. Only there, with that incredible archive and history and precedence, could something like that be made by a committee, by a team of people? No good design is ever made by committee. And somehow they did it.
- [52:16]
Lauren Sherman
Exactly. Exactly. Sarah, I hope you're wearing a lot of Chanel on your book tour and that you are able to get going again. I know you're supposed to be in LA this week. I was so excited to attend everything, but we'll see.
- [52:30]
Sarah Hoover
Well, I hope you'll be there when I come back. And LA has only brighter days ahead of them. I just hope. I hope so much. It's a city I love so dearly. I hope so, too. Thank you for having me.
- [52:41]
Lauren Sherman
Thank you for being here. And everyone, please, I'll say this at the top too, but just to end, please buy Sarah's book, the Mother Load Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood. If you're not a mother, if you are a mother, I'm telling you, it's. If you're not a woman, it doesn't matter. You will like this. It's a really special book, and it just captures a moment of time and also will make you feel like you're not alone. So thank you for being here and thank you for writing this, and congratulations. I can't wait to see what you write next.
- [53:16]
Sarah Hoover
Thank you so much.
- [53:18]
Lauren Sherman
Fashion People is a presentation of Odyssey in part partnership with Puck. This show was produced and edited by Molly Nugent. Special thanks to our executive producers, Puck co founder John Kelly, executive editor Ben Landy and director of editorial operations, Gabby Grossman. An additional thanks to the team at Odyssey, JD Crowley, Jenna Weiss Berman and Bob Tabador.