Well because the magazine is fashion and travel, I come to Fashion Week for quite a few different reasons.
Simply to see what's happening for next year in terms of how we plan our issue.
It's because I need to see what's been created so I can use it for photo shoots like editorials.
There's always the question of whether the runway shows are really necessary anymore.
A lot of people are really snobbish about going to see them now and they will only go see the top ones.
I really like going this time to see the young designers because it's just a really good space to see these new designs,
what's happening the next year and then be able to discuss them and then engage the public's reaction from cute figures in the industry.
The point of a runway show before was to show the new collections to the buyers and to some of the clients of these buyers and stylists.
And it was very exclusive. I think that Fashion Week needs to rethink itself a little bit because fashion does have a potential to be artistic
and it is a shame to completely strip it bare of that.
And a lot of people say that it's really expensive to do these productions but I think that if they took a space or even were given a space downtown
that they could use the same budget as renting out a Lincoln Center runway and do something really cool and really different.
I wrote this article about a couple weeks ago in Huffington Post about how to be your own boss.
And it was quite contrived but I think it was like 10 steps how to be your own boss and take over the world.
And one of the steps I said was that you need to be able to pivot.
I think being an entrepreneur you have to be able to adapt to your surroundings.
My job is like never the same from day to day.
One day I could have a meeting at like 4am in the fish market in Japan.
And then the next week I could be having a meeting at 1am at a club in Hong Kong with a very weird group of people.
So things are always changing which I really like.
It all happened because I used to travel a lot because my family were kind of from all over the place and no one could quite guess who I'm from.
I always wanted to kind of re-get to know the place I was travelling to and not feel like an outsider.
So I started to ask everyone that I went to visit their favorite restaurant, their favorite shop.
So I started making these huge lists.
They turned out to be a much more accurate guide and much better information than what I could find on the internet and what I could find in guides.
Because to be honest I'd rather spend an hour talking to a local than reading a guide for 4 hours and still not knowing whether someone paid to be in the guide or not.
And then I started sending in to my friends and my friends always told me that I should start a blog.
But the problem with blogs is that it's from this individual perspective.
But I really wanted to create something where I took young influencers or just really cool young people that you'd want to hang out with basically and get their guides to the cities and find out what was happening in them.
I thought that I originally wanted to do it online because it would be a much cheaper and be much easier to target a larger audience.
But then I really wanted to have this kind of something that was a bit more tangible.
We did the surveys and still 97% of people wanted a print magazine which is pretty crazy.
It kind of surprised me.
I have to think about it separately because I've got the online digital component and the print component which are not completely separate.
Like they have to work together but they kind of have different end goals.
For print it's more because it's more of a coffee table book than the magazine.
We want like more permanent content like timeless content rather than like the latest news.
Probably the most unusual person that we have interviewed is a Chinese artist called Yubo Lin.
He basically has all these photos in different settings where he like blends into background and you can't see him until you look at the photo closely.
That was probably one of the most unusual ones.
We've interviewed some really key figures in the industry such as fashion, cream, rock, bells which is incredible.
And like Diane Pernay, everyone that we showcase we end up absolutely loving after we interviewed them.
So I really want people to not just travel somewhere and go see the main sights but be able to take away a little bit of the culture of the place
because you really get to know a place through its culture.
We incorporated fashion because fashion is the easiest access point of any culture
and it's something that you can take away with you and recreate quite easily.
