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- [00:00]
Stephanie Dannon
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Laura Vinroopool
I'm Laura Vinroopool of capital, and this is what we wore. Stephanie Dannon is a film producer turned fashion designer with a little bit of money and no experience. She designed her collection co that was quickly embraced by her clients and the fashion industry. A lot of these podcasts start this way where I say, I think I met you through Irene, which I think I did. Right.
- [00:34]
Stephanie Dannon
So funny. Of course you did. Of course you did. She's the ultimate connector of this planet.
- [00:42]
Laura Vinroopool
And I can remember, I think that first collection was shown in the Mercer Hotel.
- [00:46]
Stephanie Dannon
Yes.
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Laura Vinroopool
And I think that was it. Maybe Irene was staying there. And you said, oh, I went. She said, I want you to come see my friend who has this amazing collection.
- [00:53]
Stephanie Dannon
That's exactly how it happened. I can't believe what a great memory you have. Her and I would have kale salad in the lobby. And she was either. She was showing there too, right?
- [01:05]
Laura Vinroopool
She. Yeah, she would always stay there and show there.
- [01:07]
Stephanie Dannon
Exactly. That was a long time ago. What are we talking about here, 2015?
- [01:12]
Laura Vinroopool
Yeah. Wow. You're not from Los Angeles. Where did you grow up?
- [01:15]
Stephanie Dannon
No, I am originally from Morocco. Both my parents are Moroccan.
- [01:22]
Laura Vinroopool
From what part?
- [01:23]
Stephanie Dannon
My father from Fez and my mother from Marrakech. And in the 70s, they moved to Montreal, Canada, where I grew up until I went to college in Boston, where I went to film school. And between then and moving to la, I lived in New York, I lived in Paris, and I moved to Los Angeles in 1999.
- [01:51]
Laura Vinroopool
Other than Montreal being the place where the most beautiful people in the world live and one of the most beautiful cities, I think.
- [01:57]
Stephanie Dannon
Isn't it crazy how great Montreal is? I have not been a while, but I just. I. It's true that I. It was a very fashionable city. Very, very cutting edge and very hip and a lot of beautiful people and great restaurants. I know it's a very cosmopolitan city.
- [02:16]
Laura Vinroopool
And the most incredible food. Yes, the bagels are amazing.
- [02:19]
Stephanie Dannon
Best bagels ever.
- [02:20]
Laura Vinroopool
But tell me about growing up in Montreal and also about Morocco. Did y'all go in the summ. Morocco?
- [02:26]
Stephanie Dannon
Yes, every summer in April, we would go for a couple weeks. We would go for Christmas. We would go in the summers. So most of my vacations were spent in Casablanca. Actually, growing up in Montreal was really interesting because you had that sort of francophone, anglophone kind of mix.
- [02:44]
Laura Vinroopool
Yeah.
- [02:45]
Stephanie Dannon
You know, and my parents were in fashion.
- [02:46]
Laura Vinroopool
In what part? Stephanie?
- [02:48]
Stephanie Dannon
My father had a showroom and he distributed brands like Fuchi, Chef Mar. So he had a incredible showroom, and my mother had her own line, which was distributed all over Canada. And, you know, we were part of this sort of small Jewish Moroccan community. Yeah. And we traveled to Morocco every summer, where I have some of my best memories. And then later in life, my father returned to Morocco. He missed it so much. I think the Canada winters were a shock to the system.
- [03:28]
Laura Vinroopool
What did you love about being with your family in Morocco? Was it very different than your life in Montreal?
- [03:33]
Stephanie Dannon
Oh, so different. So different.
- [03:35]
Laura Vinroopool
Yeah.
- [03:35]
Stephanie Dannon
I mean, you know, Moroccans are very funny. They have zero boundaries. It's, you know, a free for all of food. It's so funny because when I. Whenever I've dated American men, they were like, when you're with your family, all you guys do is scream and yell at each other. And I was like, no, we communicate. And for an American that was always like, whoa, whoa, this is nuts. You know, it's a little bit like Italians. You know what I mean? It's very animated. And, you know, our summers in Morocco were just, you know, it was the beach, it was the souk, it was food, it was family, incredible weather, traveling to Marrakesh on the weekends. It was. It was full of life, to be honest with you. And I. I love to go back there, and I hope to have a house there one day. That's kind of my dream.
- [04:26]
Laura Vinroopool
What did you interpret about the fashion industry through your mom and dad in Morocco and also in Montreal?
- [04:32]
Stephanie Dannon
You know, the thing is, in Morocco, even, like, you know, the street urchins have great taste.
- [04:39]
Laura Vinroopool
Yeah.
- [04:40]
Stephanie Dannon
I don't know if it's the nature and the color of the earth and the desert mixing with the mountains and the snow and the landscape and the. The light. But I think we grew up with a real sense of refinement. The color palettes. I mean, we. We grew up with a lot of value in what we wore and the textures and the fabrics. And so it comes kind of in our DNA, I would say. And so my parents, when they arrived in Montreal, they had. They were very glamorous, comparatively. And there was no fashion in the 70s there at all. And so they were very much part. Part of a community of people who really brought a taste level that hadn't been part of the community, you know, And I think that comes from Morocco, to be honest with you. And, you know, when you see, you know, why Yves Saint Laurent had a house there and why. Why so many designers have Riyadhs and why, you know, they all go there for inspiration, it's because when you're in that, you know, level of visceral life, you know, it feels so visceral. And it's, you know, when you're in the souk and you see all the fabrics and the pottery and all of these artisans, it's just. I don't know, it just. It's so inspiring, you know? And so I think I grew up around that. My aunts, my uncles, my cousins, you know, getting well dressed was very important. You know what I mean? You didn't go and sit at the table unless you were dressed. You didn't. You know what I mean? You didn't pay. You had to pay attention to your clothes, you know, you had to pay attention to the elegance and how you presented yourself. It was. It was definitely part of my upbringing. So I would say that it just seeped inside of me very early on.
- [06:27]
Laura Vinroopool
Were there other women outside of your mother that you admired their style?
- [06:31]
Stephanie Dannon
I have an aunt who lives in Paris who is my father's sister, who only wears white. She's only worn white for 50 years. And she has sort of, you know, she's in her 80s now, and she has this long braid, has. I mean, the elegance is off the charts. And I would say that I had incredible admiration for her. The way she cooks, the way her house is put together, the way she. She handles herself. Everything is just impeccable. So I would say that my aunt Perali is definitely one of them. My mother was a great and is a great beauty and always put together. I mean, I feel like some of my aunts, literally, we buried them in Chanel suits, you know what I mean? Like, it. It was like being coquette part of my upbringing, for sure. I've been really lucky to be surrounded with women who. Who had a great sense of style and who were, you know, always elegant and always walked in the room and.
- [07:33]
Laura Vinroopool
Made an impression and always confident. Sounds like very. With all of this fashion and beauty around you, you went into film instead of fashion.
- [07:41]
Stephanie Dannon
Yes. So I sort of rejected the fashion industry later in my adolescence and later in life because, you know, while I admired these, you know, learned to admire all of my aunts and mom and, you know, all these women who are so elegant, you know, there's a lot of pressure in always being put together, you know what I mean? And I. I wanted to rebel a little bit against that. So I said, I'm not interested in this. You know, I. I want to go and actually tell stories about real characters and real people. I don't care about the outside. I want to go and dig deep ins people's Characters and their human nature, you know what I mean? And. And so I decided to go to film school and. And spent, you know, four years in Boston, you know, sort of making student films. And then I met a filmmaker and we made a movie. And I was 21, and Miramax saw the film and they bought the film, which was kind of a. A huge deal for a 21 year old. So that was kind of the beginning of my film career. And I then moved to New York and got mentored by John Sayles and Maggie Renzi, who were great filmmakers, because I had bought the rights to a novel very, very young, and decided to adapt it and wanted to direct it. So that was kind of where I was at in my super, super early twenties. And then I moved to Paris to make the film. The film never got made, but it was a time in my life where I met a lot of filmmakers and actors and artists in Paris. And it was, you know, I went to Cannes, and it was an incredible, incredibly rich time for me. And I really spent a lot of time writing and getting deeper, you know what I mean? Like, not looking at sort of the surface of what you look like and what your clothes look like, but getting really big. And what's interesting is that later, it all comes together, right? Full circle.
- [09:44]
Laura Vinroopool
The film industry seems exciting, but also frustrating because it sounds like a really long process and oftentimes things just, in the end, don't get made.
- [09:53]
Stephanie Dannon
Exactly. So I experienced that a little bit at the beginning of my career and then moved to Los Angeles to start a company with a French filmmaker who I'd met in Paris. The company was very well known for. I bought the rights to plays and books, and I worked with incredible, incredible filmmakers from Gore Vensky to Nicole Holluf Sinner to the Lupus Brothers to, you know, writers like Alan Loeb and Steve Conrad. It was. It was such an incredible time for me, but I was extremely frustrated by the process and how long it took. Even though, you know, I had 20 films at all the studios, all in development, you know, there was a certain amount of frustration, and I'm a very impatient person. So, you know, the patience of development did not suit my personality at all. And so, you know, around 2010, when I think there was a huge transition in the industry and when television started to really, like, you know, it was the Sopranos and Sex and the City, all of these shows had really had an impact on how we, you know, we made content. And so there was a transition from film to television that was pretty radical at that time. And it was at the same time that I met my ex partner and that we decided to create co.
- [11:18]
Laura Vinroopool
Were you increasingly frustrated with not being able to find clothes that, you know, made you feel like you were taken seriously or. There had to have been some things in between that.
- [11:29]
Stephanie Dannon
So it's a lot of different things. Right. So it's very interesting that you bring them up because I would say that as a, you know, I was this young producer in Hollywood. I was coquette coming from, you know, sort of this world that I had come up from. And fashion was always still part of what I love. I love to get dressed, I love to go to Barney's and buy a beautiful dress. I mean, it was, you know, it was still there, you know what I mean? I wasn't like, I rejected it in terms of my career, but I was still, you know, I loved beautiful clothes and getting dressed. But I did notice, speaking of what you just brought up, I did notice that it was hard to be taken seriously as a young woman who was chic and coquette in Hollywood at the time. Yeah, it was like it was a combination of that. And I do think that it did impact getting the films that I had in development made because I think that I would walk into meetings, you know, sort of looking outside, I looked like I was different, you know what I mean, than sort of, you know, all of the other films, you know, producers or agents or, you know, And I think it did have an impact on whether or not the films got made. And I think I did get a little bit judged for that, you know, and I think I didn't get to be taken too seriously. So it was almost that colliding with the business changing so much. Colliding with, you know, meeting my ex partner who is coming more from, you know, he was more in, in the fashion industry at the time and the art world, which at the time Hollywood was super insular. It did not have, you know, running around art galleries. It did not have, you know, I mean, it was literally like all we talked about was film. It was so boring. People did not have a view on the outside world, which is something fashion, fashion always had. Yeah, people who are in fashion and who are curious and, and, and intelligent and worldly are, are interested in all kinds of things. Art, film, you know what I mean? Travel. And Hollywood at the time was not like that interesting. So when I met my ex partner, I was sort of like, wow, there is something more than Hollywood, you know what I mean? And so it was all of these different Things colliding that led to starting co, along with the fact that I did feel like, when I went to Barney's as a young producer who did not want to shop on the contemporary floor, where it's a billion pairs of jeans and a trillion T shirts and, like, just a mass amount of product, who wanted to sort of shop the second floor in the Beverly Hills store that felt more curated, that there was not a luxury brand that spoke to me in terms of, you know, versatility, price point, you know, that spoke to me in terms of, like, what my life looked like and what I could and could not afford and where my interests were. You know, everything was sort of. Sort of overpriced at the time. You couldn't speak about pricing. You know, the word luxury was like, now it's overused. But at the time, word luxury was like this new thing where everybody sort of adopted that word, you know, And I was like, okay, so what is a woman like me who makes a pretty good living, right? But who has a lot of other interests besides fashion, right? And who doesn't want to put all her money in a handbag. What is that? What is this? This girl shop?
- [15:02]
Laura Vinroopool
How challenging was that for your identity to go from being this person that was known for being intelligent and creative and producing films to being a designer? Did your friends and your colleagues all love the way you dressed? I mean, you were sort of your client, right?
- [15:18]
Stephanie Dannon
I was my client. It was funny. In Hollywood, people, you know, people would call me and be like, I'm getting engaged. Where do I get the. Where do I get the wedding dressed? The wedding dress? I'm going to this part, this premiere. What should I wear? You know, And I was like, well, I'm a film producer. I can help you, and I have advice for you, but I'm not, you know. You know, the transition was. At first, people were like, you're crazy. And, you know, and then we got. We got really lucky, you know, sort of at the right time at the, you know, at the right place. I knew how to tell a story because it was what I had done for the last 20 years. And the story was the story of who. Who I really am and that I think that I. I was and still am the reflection of my customer and, you know, which is, again, a woman who just wants a beautiful wardrobe, but who is not fashion obsessed and who has other interests.
- [16:15]
Laura Vinroopool
Did you talk through it with your parents? Did they have advice when you said you wanted to do it? And did you understand sort of what you would need For a first collection that it needed to be 30 pieces, say, or all of the components. I don't even know what the components are. But you probably.
- [16:28]
Stephanie Dannon
I didn't get any advice as far as the components. I definitely went on my instinct with that. But the advice that my mother did give me was, and this is, I think, really good advice for anyone who starts a brand. Your factories and your production are the most important. Like, you really can't. And people tend to ignore that. Right. Because they're all in their design headspace and. And delivering the collections on time. So important. So.
- [17:01]
Laura Vinroopool
Especially if you're dealing with department stores.
- [17:03]
Stephanie Dannon
Exactly, exactly. And because I was a movie producer, I knew how to put a schedule together and I knew how to. You know what I mean? I knew how to do it. I knew make sure that we got from point A of an idea, executing the idea, delivering the idea, marketing the idea. So I kind of used my film production experience and I said, well, I'm just going to use this experience and just pour it into making clothes. And it worked because at the end of the day, it's kind of the same thing. Right.
- [17:39]
Laura Vinroopool
I think, Stephanie, that's the thing that's so interesting is I've never seen in almost 30 years a collection that has been responded to that quickly and that vigorously. And I think it's so funny every single time I walk into my appointment with you, and this is kind of industry speak, but when I talk to Amanda, you know, about the sell through, my sell through, I'm always like, sell through was like 99.9% or something like that. You know, something that really you shouldn't have because it means you're not buying enough.
- [18:10]
Stephanie Dannon
Right. I love that. Are you kidding?
- [18:13]
Laura Vinroopool
No. I've never had a collection like that in the history of my business. I've never. But I mean, did you know that from the beginning? Like, how did. It was crazy how it took off.
- [18:22]
Stephanie Dannon
You know, our first appointment was Barney's. I used a lot. The price point in it as in terms of entry, obviously. Like, there was the. The clothes and. And how I wanted these clothes to just feel like so easy to wear, so easy to put together. So I wanted ease. I want to. I wanted to always service a woman in terms of like, you don't. I don't want you to have to think about it in the morning. We don't want to think about it. Right. Because it's just. It's too much. You know, we don't have those kinds of lives. So that was obviously the first thing. But the second thing was also, I want a woman to feel like she's buying something of. With value. These days, it's like, it's so hard. You go to a restaurant, it's overpriced, you go, you go to buy a bag, it's over. Everything feels like you're like babysitters. Babysitters. Exactly. Everything. Everything. It's like I'm like moving right now and I'm just like, I can't find a move. But I make sense in terms of how much. Everything is so expensive. And I wanted a woman to feel like, wow, this is worth what I'm buying. This is something I'm going to wear all the time. The price is not outrageous. The quality is still good. So they're not giving up on quality and that the overall picture. And you know, the greatest thing that somebody told me one day was I walked into Neiman Marcus and I met the teams and I think we were having clinic or something, and they said, the thing about your, Your clothes is that the women turn the price tag twice because. Can't believe it. You know what I mean?
- [19:49]
Laura Vinroopool
That was the goal.
- [19:50]
Stephanie Dannon
That was the goal. That was the goal. Even though everyone was like, don't talk price point. No one cares. And I was like, I don't know. I care.
- [19:58]
Laura Vinroopool
Yeah, well, and speaking of finances, I think people seem to misperceive that you were given the financial backing to start the company or you had a leg, leg up somehow. How did you initially fund the company?
- [20:11]
Stephanie Dannon
I. I had $30,000 in my bank account and I used it, every bit of it. There was no money. There's no family funding, there's no nothing. I, you know, I used that 30,000, which I had probably gotten from an option of a book I had option to Universal or, or, you know, or something, a script or something like that. I remember it was probably some money that I put aside from a film. You know, my partner and I. The deal was that we would each put in $30,000, which we did, and we. $60,000. No marketing, no nothing. It was really just, you know, we. We lived very humbly the first two years. We had our racks in our kitchen. We had interns coming in and out of our living room. We, you know, it was really like, you know, it's interesting and I think that because, you know, because the imagery was very clean and very well made and I think it was. It came also from the fact that we had. That I had a film background and I was able to, you know, really Bring on a lot of friends who helped us to make our short films at the beginning because we made all these movies around the collections and you know, great photographers who came and helped us. It looked like we had a lot of money, but we really didn't.
- [21:35]
Laura Vinroopool
Was there a moment when you felt like the company had a real Future?
- [21:38]
Stephanie Dannon
Yes. In 2015, Andrew Rosen came to our office downtown. Andrew Rosen is, you know, he's sort of, I mean, what would be a good comparison? I guess he's the American lvmh. I mean he's, you know, he's the, he has a portfolio of incredible brands. He started theory. He has both invested and mentored hundreds of designers. He has an incredible portfolio. And he happened to come to our office, you know, he had heard about us and we sat down with him and within half an hour he said, I'm in.
- [22:19]
Laura Vinroopool
Wow.
- [22:19]
Stephanie Dannon
Okay. Now we're, you know, now it's serious because before then, yeah, sure, we sold to Barney's and, and a few incredible multi brand stores, but you know, we used a bank in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which my partner had worked at when he was in high school and you know, just like packing and shipp out of the living room. And so when Andrew came in, we were like, okay, we need to step this up and make this a serious business. So I think that was the turning point for us. And at, in Andrew, we found not only somebody who helped us financially, he also had great relationships with department stores and he was a great mentor, I would say is, yeah, you know, his, his value is like threefold really.
- [23:03]
Laura Vinroopool
Was becoming an entrepreneur natural for you?
- [23:06]
Stephanie Dannon
I think so. I think it's the Moroccan gene too. You know, I think that we all like, you know, we. I was probably in a, in a past life in the souk, selling carpets.
- [23:20]
Laura Vinroopool
You know, what's the most challenging thing about it?
- [23:24]
Stephanie Dannon
It's hard to go through the ups and downs. You know what I mean? I would say that you just don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. There's very little security. Fashion is very fickle. You have to be very careful and always, you know, as my mother says, stack some cash under the mattress because you just don't know what you know. And I feel like, you know, this, it's like during market, you know, buyers come in and one season it's, the economy is not doing great. One season it's, there's an election year. One season it's, you know, fashion is trending towards, you know, if your aesthetic is different from that trend, you, you know, you have to navigate that. It's. The department stores are not doing well. It's. There's always something I feel, you know, and it doesn't matter how great the collections are or how hard you've worked on the price point or how early you deliver. There's always some challenge to navigate. And so you have to have really thick skin in this business, and it's. Yeah, you know, it moves really fast. So here you are, you know, delivering four collections, and you still feel like. You hear, well, we need some newness. And you're like, you bring.
- [24:39]
Laura Vinroopool
I've done it four times. Yeah.
- [24:41]
Stephanie Dannon
So, you know, and it's like quiet luxury, and you have color, you're doomed. And if you. If it's not quite luxury and you don't have color, you're doomed. So you're just kind of. You have to navigate a lot. And so it's a lot of balls in the air. And I think that, you know, being an entrepreneur is. Is not easy. You have your freedom, which is fantastic, and you get to, you know, control your destiny to a certain extent, but it's. It's. It's. It's not an easy life. The life of an entrepreneur, you know?
- [25:13]
Laura Vinroopool
Yeah, I do know. Talk to me a little bit about moving to Paris and what you expect, what you. What you hope to find there.
- [25:19]
Stephanie Dannon
So basically, we had a designer at the company for a really long time who started as an. Our intern and who ended up being our head designer for about years. And it was this incredible relationship that I really cherish. Just one of the things about having your own business is you really. You really create a family. Right. And it's one of the most satisfying parts, I think, about being an entrepreneur is to lead a family and love a family and take care of a family, you know, with all its ups and downs. Obviously, our. Our designer was starting our family, and it was sort of. You know, we've been together for 10 years, and, you know, Los Angeles is not the hub of fashion in any way. She, shape or form. Certainly not. You know, it's denim and T shirts and sweatshirts. It's great for us. It was. It's. So finding a design team here is challenging. And I thought maybe this is the time where I should go and find someone in Europe. And we did. And this little team started to grow and grow, especially as I, you know, reached out to someone I was a huge fan of even before I started co, which is Samuel Dreara, who has a magazine called Nick Sense, which to me is, you Know, one of the most beautiful fashion magazines and has been a, you know, sort of just an inspiration in terms of styling and silhouettes and volume. And just. I would definitely say that this is a magazine that a lot of designers look at, and it's very small, but anyone in fashion should absolutely pick up this magazine. So I had been a fan for a really long time, and I reached out to him and I said, I really want to work with you. And coincidentally, his partner at his office had said, have you seen this brand, like, maybe two or three days before I reached out. And we. We. We developed a friendship for a few years before we started working together, because I had not yet created my team in Paris. And when I did create my team in Paris, I was like, samuel, it's time. And so all of a sudden, I had Samuel and Jessica and Paola and this. This incredible team who both live in Milan and Paris, and I. And I started to work with them, and the collection started to feel like they were really evolving in, like, you know, and as I was evolving, because a lot of change was happening in my own life. And so as this change was happening both in the collection, in my own personal life, my son was, you know, growing up, I started to feel like I'd spent 25 years in LA and it was time for me to. To go to France, and I got an apartment there, and I started to go back and forth and back and forth because I was waiting for my son to graduate from grade five into grade six. Yeah. And I got really inspired. It was a time for me as I was going back and forth, my. My weeks in Paris were weeks of creativity, healing. They were times for me to find my, you know, find myself again, reinvent myself. As I was turning 50, a lot of change, you know what I mean? And I love those times in your lives, you know what I mean? Like, when you're in transition, I feel like they feel like the hardest times, but when you look back, they are the best of times.
- [28:42]
Laura Vinroopool
You've actually written about this. You've written essays on the site, and what's that been like? I mean, it's so extraordinary to see that and to read that, because people in fashion, everybody acts like everything's fine all the time and everything's perfect. It's so touching to be able to read something real.
- [28:59]
Stephanie Dannon
Oh, thank you. Yeah. Well, I. It. You know, I've always loved writing, and I wanted to write and speak to women like me who go through similar things. Right.
- [29:12]
Laura Vinroopool
And women that wear your clothes. I mean, I Think.
- [29:14]
Stephanie Dannon
And women that wear my clothes is exactly that woman who wears my clothes. She's. She's working. She has a family. She has to, you know, she has to put a home together. She has to struggle with getting older. She has to struggle with difficult relationships. She has to struggle with divorce. She has to struggle with raising children. She has to struggle with her identity. She has to struggle with a world changing and being relevant. She has to struggle with so many of the same things that I have had to struggle with in the last few years. And I wanted to speak to her as a real woman, not just as a designer, but, like, as a woman who was going through a lot of very difficult things. And so speaking to her, and it was kind of my way to dialogue with her, and I was really lucky. I have a friend, Amanda Fortini, who's a fantastic writer and editor, who really wanted to support me through this process. And working with her was the healing of the last two years for me. I would say that being in that Paris apartment, working with an incredible editor who lives in Montana and who, you know, writes for the New York Times, New Yorker, and is just unbelievable. Our phone conversations would last two and three hours, and we would dig deep into what it means to be a woman today and how it even translated into our clothes and, you know, how I was evolving as a woman and how my taste was changing and evolving also, and how transformation is so hard and incredible, and how I was in this little cocoon as this. This, you know, butterfly, trying to break through the cocoon with her as I was writing and wanted to share that with, you know, the. The small community of people who buy our clothes and who, you know, I got a lot of messages who were basically like, me, too.
- [31:04]
Laura Vinroopool
Yeah.
- [31:08]
Stephanie Dannon
And that's the best message you can get you.
- [31:11]
Laura Vinroopool
More than maybe any other designer that I. I know of. You really make your clients feel like everything's okay. You don't wear these clothes and feel like, well, I gotta go lose £100 if I wanna wear this, you know, or, you know, it's just. They're so comforting and respectful almost. I don't know that you know the market as well as maybe I do, just seeing all the collections. But I think your collection, more than any other I can think of does that just is respectful to women and comforting.
- [31:40]
Stephanie Dannon
Oh, that's so incredible to hear, to be honest with you, because that's what I try to do, is to bring humanity in what I do, you know, and it doesn't matter that it's clothes or film or in decor, whatever. You have to bring humanity. And I feel like being vulnerable has. Has been an incredible experience for me. I. I believe in it, and I believe in being real with people. It doesn't matter if they're in fashion, and if they don't like it and they can't respect it or they are afraid of it, then that's not our people. Right.
- [32:17]
Laura Vinroopool
But don't you think that's new for you, Stephanie? I mean, that was this process, wasn't it? Because I think early on, because nobody in fashion does that, shares how they really feel.
- [32:25]
Stephanie Dannon
You know, it's always been my nature to be myself, but I think that this last two to three years, it. I. It really came out. Yeah, I started to feel like, well, if I'm going to be in pain, I don't want to be in pain and pretend I'm not in pain, because that's even more painful. Right. So I'm going to be in pain, and I'm going to be in pain. And you know what? That's going to liberate me.
- [32:57]
Laura Vinroopool
One of the best pieces of advice that you've received, you said, is don't wait until the idea is fully fleshed out before you start executing. Otherwise, you may never do it. Why is this so important for an entrepreneur?
- [33:08]
Stephanie Dannon
I think that we can get caught up in trying to deliver perfection, and in that, we miss the window of execution. So we have to be both very connected to the artistry, but we have to also equally, I would say, be connected to the importance of executing in the right time. Sometimes you don't need perfection in your vision. You need to just start going. It'll come together.
- [33:49]
Laura Vinroopool
I haven't had that many Canadian designers on the podcast. Do you have proms in Canada?
- [33:54]
Stephanie Dannon
What do you mean by proms?
- [33:55]
Laura Vinroopool
The question we always ask our guests is, what did you wear to promote.
- [33:59]
Stephanie Dannon
Oh, a prom. Oh, yes. Oh, my God.
- [34:05]
Laura Vinroopool
Do they have proms in Canada?
- [34:06]
Stephanie Dannon
They do have proms. They do. And I remember mine very clearly. And my mother made my dress.
- [34:15]
Laura Vinroopool
Oh, wow.
- [34:16]
Stephanie Dannon
Yes.
- [34:16]
Laura Vinroopool
And tell me about it.
- [34:18]
Stephanie Dannon
Well, I remember it was. Listen, it was the 80s, so let's.
- [34:21]
Laura Vinroopool
Me too.
- [34:24]
Stephanie Dannon
So I had the hairspray, the whole thing. You know what I mean? I was born in 73, so by the time there was a prom, it was full on the 80s. I had a. It was a sort of boat. It was a mix of velvet and taffeta. It had a sort of a pencil skirt with a bustier top.
- [34:45]
Laura Vinroopool
What color?
- [34:46]
Stephanie Dannon
It was black and burgundy.
- [34:49]
Laura Vinroopool
Oh, the skirt was burgundy and the. The velvet was black mixed because. Oh, wow.
- [34:55]
Stephanie Dannon
That's sort of a drape in the front that was taffeta over a pencil skirt that was velvet. I mean, this is crazy.
- [35:01]
Laura Vinroopool
Amazing.
- [35:01]
Stephanie Dannon
And then I. It was the bestier, you know what I mean? Bustiers were so 80s and it had the bestie, which had sort of. It was a velvet bustier with sort of a taffeta flap over it. And. And then it had a corset. Corset in the back, you know, that you pulled, which was so 80s.
- [35:21]
Laura Vinroopool
Yes. And shoes and accessories.
- [35:24]
Stephanie Dannon
And shoes and accessories. Oh, I do not remember the heels.
- [35:28]
Laura Vinroopool
We remember the hair.
- [35:30]
Stephanie Dannon
The hair had a ton of hairspray.
- [35:31]
Laura Vinroopool
I have to say.
- [35:33]
Stephanie Dannon
And some teasing, too. Do you remember that?
- [35:35]
Laura Vinroopool
Oh, yeah. I love it. Well, Stephanie, what a treat. Thank you so much.
- [35:42]
Stephanie Dannon
Oh, thank you so much for. I love talking to you and I'm so honored that you asked me, really.
- [35:48]
Laura Vinroopool
Likewise. No, it was a treat. Thank you. And I'll see you in Paris soon. What We Wore is produced by Capitol and Balto Creative Media. The original song, someone so Enchanting was compared, composed and performed by Britt Drazda. Please follow us on Instagram at whatwe were podcast for additional content and show updates. QueenCityPodcastNetwork.com.