“I grew up in Yonkers. I was not that aware of the fashion world or the magazine world until I started looking through magazines in the library. I got really into learning the names of the designers, and this was also during the time when magazines were very big on covering socialites, so I was aware of them, too. But I never really made the connection that this was a world that I could exist in because I didn’t know anyone who had done that.
CAREER
I knew I wanted to do something with fashion and writing after I graduated college, but I didn’t know how to combine those things. I emailed Nandini D’Souza Wolfe, who had interviewed me a little while before for Women’s Wear Daily’s college issue. I was asking for advice, but she told me they actually had an editorial assistant job opening up. I interviewed and got it. This was when WWD and W were still sister publications and were run out of the same office, so I got to write stories for W, as well.
From there, I went to Harper’s Bazaar. I started out indexing articles, just translating stories from print to web, and that grew into writing for the blog. Then I ended up getting hired as Laura Brown’s assistant. At the time she was the Special Projects Director, and so I was doing features and writing about fashion, but I was also writing a lot about culture. Actually, this was around the time that Emily Weiss started Into The Gloss, and I wrote one of the first articles about it.
After that, I went to Elle as the fashion news editor, then to New York Magazine’s The Cut, and then boomeranged back to Elle, where I am now the Fashion Features Director. I basically oversee any text in the magazine that relates to fashion, so everything from the display copy on an accessories page to the features in my section, which is called Front Row.
Looking back, I think that being naive was actually a real asset going into this industry because I didn’t know how out of place I was sometimes, so I just was proceeding in this almost delusional way. I was living with my parents because I couldn’t afford my own apartment. Without understanding all of the generational and spousal wealth in this industry, I thought there was something wrong with me and that I just wasn’t working hard enough because everyone else seemed to be making it happen.
I wrote in my book Dress Code, which is a collection of 15 essays about fashion and all of the things that it intersects with, about how I felt bad because I used to rely on fast fashion because I felt like I needed to keep up. I am surrounded by people in designer clothing—there is this sense of having to always fit in. There were just a lot of things that weren’t clicking for me until a couple of years ago, when I talked to enough people and started to be honest about how hard it was, and then learned that it was hard for them too and that we were all sort of pretending to live this lifestyle that we didn’t have.
BEAUTY
I didn’t really grow up with a ton of beauty, and I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup for a long time. Honestly, I felt more comfortable with fashion than with beauty because I felt like beauty had a set of standards that I was never going to measure up to—and it wasn’t just me thinking that. I was trying to audition for acting jobs when I was in my early twenties—and again, being naive really worked here because I didn’t know what they were trying to say to me until it clicked years later—and I got a lot of feedback that was like, ‘Maybe you should write your own material.’ I would go, ‘Oh. They must know that I’m a writer,’ whereas it really meant, ‘You’re not going to play the romantic lead of this project.’ It wasn’t until, again, relatively recently, that I realized I want to use beauty in my own way, have fun with it, and not worry about looking perfect.
SKINCARE
My routine is mostly cleanser, moisturizer, and sunscreen—I love La Roche Posay’s Anthelios, Supergoop’s Play Everyday Lotion, and Vacation’s Classic Lotion–and every once in a while, I’ll try a few things that I get from the beauty department at work. When it comes to cleansers, sometimes I’ll use Darphin’s Baume Nettoyant for a double cleanse, or Santa Maria Novella’s Acqua di Rose Micellar Water to take off my makeup. If I’m not wearing makeup, I just use Cetaphil’s Gentle Skin Cleanser.
I’m very into rich moisturizers, and I love Belif’s True Cream Aqua Bomb, but if I want something lighter, I go for Versed’s Dew Point. Also, Weleda’s Skin Foodis the cure for what ails you. I’ve used it on everything from a heat rash to my elbows. Also, I love anything with that kind of medicinal scent where you feel like it’s working.
My big thing is my under eye area. I don’t exactly have dark circles, but I always wonder how much I want to embrace that my eyes are always going to have this sort of sunken look. I’ve been using the Cold Brew under eye serum from Good Weird. It’s the first eye cream I used that actually gives me an instant difference, especially if I don’t get a lot of sleep. It also has a cooling applicator.
I also like products that target hyperpigmentation because it is a bit of an issue for me. I’ve tried BeautyStat’s Universal C Skin Refiner and Saturday Skin’s Yuzu Vitamin C toner, and Victoria Beckham sent me the Cell Rejuvenating Power Serum that she did with Augustinus Bader, and it has helped, too. It’s expensive, and that’s the thing about working in this industry: You get sent something, you love it, you want to re-buy it, but then it’s so expensive.
I like all of Tatcha’s products. Everything they have is non-irritating for me. I should probably use their Indigo Soothing Rice Enzyme Powder more, but I just use it once every couple of weeks around my nose right now. I love their essence and Indigo Calming Face Cream, too.
I just got The Pleasing Spritz from Harry Styles’s line, and I use it as a refresher, especially when it’s hot out. And In the winter, I use the KNC lip masks, or Laneige’s Lip Sleeping Mask, when my lips are really chapped. Plus, the packaging is really cute.
HAIR
For a couple of years, I was losing my hair because of an illness, but thanks to an absolutely over-the-top regimen—shoutout Elle’s Beauty Director Kathleen Hou—I’ve been able to grow maybe 80-percent of it back. I couldn’t use a lot of the treatments I initially looked into because they would have bad side effects, or the fine print would say something like, ‘This will not help if you have illness-related hair loss.’ I consulted every beauty-adjacent person I knew and got very into trichology, even following trichologists on what I’m calling #TrichTok, to figure out what I could do to make things a little better. From there, it was a matter of being really religious about it. That means I’m almost never using heat; I’m emulsifying the Davines Love Smoothing Shampoo in my hands; I’m using a Briogeo massager; and if I’m going in the pool, I’m putting a spray or conditioner on for protection. I also use a lot of masks—Davines’s Nounou has been the best one, and I like Sachajuan’s Hair After the Sun, too.
Dianna Cohen, the founder of Crown Affair, has an air drying method that I’ve gotten down to a science. Basically, it involves taking the front pieces of your hair, clipping them back, and then clipping the rest under your chin. It looks kind of goofy, but it actually does work. So I put a little bit of the Bread Everyday Gloss and a bit of the Ouai Leave In Conditioner, scrunch it up a bit, and then do Dianna’s air drying method. My regular conditioner is Philip B’s Everyday Beautiful Conditioner.
I color my hair—I see Sara Scholtus, who is a delight, at Cutler—and the K18 Leave-in Hair Mask has really helped with color-related breakage. It took me a bit to understand how to use it, but it’s the best bond repair product I’ve tried.
I also went to hairstylist Michaela Ellis-Schreck at Joon Drop—fun fact, she also cuts Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s hair. Joon Drop specializes in hair loss and extensions, but they also do cuts. I was not sure what to expect, but Michaela did an unbelievable job of camouflaging the loss using layers. She also told me I had a lot of baby hairs coming in, so whatever I was doing was working. At that point, I’d been using the Vegamour system—the GRO Hair Serum, the HYDR-8 Leave-In Conditioner, and HYDR-8 Deep Moisture Repair Mask—so I was encouraged to hear that.
Hair loss is a topic that people have a lot of shame around. I mean, hair is so associated with femininity. I always think about Little Women when Jo cuts off her hair and everybody says, ‘That was your one beauty.’ I never felt great about my hair before—I was always trying to flat iron it into submission—but hair loss can be demoralizing. But then it’s the kind of thing that so many people are experiencing, either postpartum or because of stress, or a lot of people report it post-COVID now. I’m in a better place than I was. The thing is that stress contributes to everything, so the big piece of advice is that you need to not stress—but then no one tells you how to not be stressed.
MAKEUP
I almost never wear foundation—I’ve never found one that looks good on me. If I want more color on my face, I’ll just use a little of the Victoria Beckham Golden Cell Rejuvenating Priming Moisturizer, which has a slight golden tint.
I do, however, like a strong brow, so I brush up mine to emphasize them. I’ve been using Glossier’s Boy Brow in Clear because any kind of pigment would be too much on me. I was taking a break from mascara for a really long time because I could not find one that did not run all over my face. Also, I wasn’t sure if I needed it because I already have dark lashes, but I just started testing Merit’s Clean Lash, and so far, it’s working so I might be back on the mascara train. And then I use very little of Rare Beauty’s Soft Pinch blush in Bliss because it’s very pigmented. And honestly, I feel like I’m naturally blushing most of the time anyway.
If I’m going for a glossy, sheer lip, I’ll use Dior’s lip oil in Cherry. If I’m doing more of a strong lip, I’ll use either Hermès’s matte lipstick in Rouge Casaque, a red shade, or Tarte’s Liquid Lip in Forget Me Not, a pink shade.
FRAGRANCE
I usually go for fruity scents, but I have a bunch of perfumes that rotate. I love Arizona from Proenza Schouler [discontinued]. I literally bought multiple bottles of it because it’s a good everyday fragrance. I’m also a big Chanel person—I have Coco Mademoiselle—and love Georgette from Yasmin Sewell’s Vyrao. Remember the Demeter perfumes, where one would smell like a candy apple or something? Maison Margiela is kind of doing the high-end version of that with their Replica collection. I love that each one smells like an experience. Beach Walk is my favorite. Lost Cherry from Tom Ford is also so good, and it’s not super recognizable. There’s a couple of things that everybody wears, so it’s nice to have something different.
I now have my own perfume, which was not something I ever expected to say. My friend Tom Bloom, who works for indie perfume company Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, suggested I make a Millennial Pink perfume to go alone with Dress Code. The centerpiece of the book is an essay about how I coined ‘millennial pink’—and came to regret it. When I was at The Cut, we were talking about how this color was in a lot of branding. It was a very denatured pink that had more brown in it, and I wrote a quick piece that basically asked, ‘Why is this happening now? Why are people looking back at girlhood and childhood? And what does this mean that our generation feels a certain way about this?’ The story got away from me: ‘Millennial pink’ became its own term, and all of a sudden, I was getting pitched things like ‘the best millennial pink decor for your home’ and ‘the best millennial pink makeup’ and ‘millennial pink clothes.’
When I first started working on the perfume, I thought, ‘Whatever is fine.’ But then I got all of these little test bottles in the mail from the lab, and I realized I had strong feelings about every part of the process. What I wanted to do was get to the essence of the essay, so I wanted the scent to have this slightly sour sweetness initially and then have it settle into more musky notes. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab really delivered on it with notes of ruby chocolate and white musk.”
— As told to Daise Bedolla
Photographed by Alexandra Genova in New York on May 11, 2024