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Freddie Leiba from Stylelikeu.com from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

Occupation: Fashion Director and Connoisseur

Freddie is one of our reigning sages of understatement and elegance in dressing. His infinite experience traveling the world and in the fashion business as a Fashion Director and as one of the first stylists, where he worked with the most prominent of photographers, models, and publications (there must be 100 French Vogue covers to which he contributed), puts him in a league of his own as an arbiter of taste and vision.
Freddie’s resume is as deep as it is wide, and is highlighted in detail on our 2nd video of him - it is a journey through his seminal experiences in the industry. (Please see below). Among many things, he lived in London in the 60’s, where he saw the first miniskirt, and starved himself to buy the real YSL. In 1970, he moved to NYC, where he worked for Andy Warhol at the beginning of Interview Magazine. Having been surrounded season after season by a barrage of trends and change, Freddie knows what transcends time and how to weed out what’s common. He feels that it comes down to a uniform, where each piece is extraordinary and indispensable, down to the Maasai red Hermes jacket, the only red he approves of. Among the essentials are custom made suits, wing tips, and Levi’s, accented with embroidered vests, colorful button downs, ties, and pocket squares. The paints are there to make the painting, and it always works together in Freddie’s perfect balance. There is nothing average in his wardrobe, each piece is quintessential down to the cashmere socks, and the only time Freddie feels off and not himself is when he goes to the gym.
A few more fascinating facts on Freddie… he was born in Trinidad and was educated at the Royal College of Art in London. In 1990, he worked with the Morgan Hotel owner Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell of Studio 54 and architect Andrea Puttman to design the uniforms for some of the first boutique hotels: Royalton, the Hudson in New York, the Mondrian in LA, the Delano in Miami, Cliff in San Francisco, and Sanderson and St. Martin’s Lane in London. Freddie was made Creative Director of Harper’s Bazaar in the mid-1980’s, and was brought to Conde Nast by Anna Wintour and Alexander Leiberman in the 1990’s. In the late 1990’s, he moved to In Style. His favorite fashion moment was having dinner with Yves St. Laurent. Freddie would love to travel to Russia, one of the few places he hasn’t been.

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Sarah Reifschneider from Stylelikeu.com from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

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Ellen Fisher from Stylelikeu.com from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

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Sonny Groo from Stylelikeu.com from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

occupation: fashion stylist and founder and editor-in-chief of MykroMag

Dutch-born Sonny Groo has perfected the art of assimilating the latest in fashion and making it his own. Never too trendy and always cultured, his style is so refined that you could throw everything up in the air that he owns and however it lands, the combination would work. He is extremely thoughtful and intelligent in his approach to making the changing tides of fashion work for him, without being a slave to the industry’s mecurial and possibly bankrupting temperament. For starters, everything is uncomplicated in black and white. There are the prototypal handmade black boots with the small heel that he wears with almost everything, whose shape is a subtle perfection of classic and cool and that he buys every year. He is a master of recreating the of-the-moment drapey pant for close to pennies, by wrapping obese-sized thrift shop trousers across his body and pinning others to create a sense of cascading folded couture artistry. Sonny is so sensitized to maintaining elegance (always at a small cost), that when he goes for something potentially gender-bending, he keeps it 007 polished, by choosing a black leather skirt, layered over pants, under the quintessential aristocratic trench and accented with shiny driving gloves. Sonny’s signature Lanvin glasses, that are both forward and timeless in their oversized appearance, are probably what tell the most about him, as he always wears them and they always work.

Check out Sonny’s Magazine Mykromag and
Sonny’s Blog

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Euphraise From Stylelikeu.com from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

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Marka from Stylelikeu.com from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

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Akeem from stylelikeu.com from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

I love the moment in Akeem’s video when he describes his coat as “I am here !” Everything about him is show-stopping, and he pushes the boundaries from his Josephine Baker curls to his Shabba Ranks-inspired dancehall braids and hat. He’s from Crown Heights, where his theatrical-like presence garners him a lot of attention, both positive and negative. However, it all bounces off Akeem, his self-possessed style only reflects his great energy. Classic becomes borderline fly in his vintage floor-length kilt, made modern with a Jellie shoe or rich and tribal with a Moroccan slip-on. Predictable becomes extravagant in his striking collection of furs and in his black leather jacket that he makes over-the-top Givenchy-esque by adding grommets. Akeem is heading towards a career in costume design, where I am rooting for his many inventive ideas (like shredding a white button down) to become legend.

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Houman from Stylelikeu.com from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

Looklet = Offset