Elisa Goodkind, a former fashion editor, and her daughter Lily Mandelbaum began a video blog in 2009 with the idea of shining a light on interesting, creatively minded people outside the media’s usual bounds of coverage. Their approach was through their subjects’ closets. They broadcast intimate explorations through the wardrobes of octogenarian ballerinas, male artists who wore dresses, cool downtown kids and aging punks, and, later, more recognizable figures: Tavi Gevinson, Erin O’Connor, Michele Lamy. While eccentric outfits were the initial lure, what’s always animated StyleLikeU is the anti status quo attitudes of its subjects. The platform wasn’t ever about clothes, it’s about selfhood.
In 2014, Goodkind and Mandelbaum took that idea a step further, by removing clothes from the equation altogether. The “What’s Underneath” video project, for which they ask subjects to strip down garment by garment while discussing their path to self-acceptance, became a viral sensation. A video of actress Jemima Kirke opening up about motherhood and her body currently has over half a million views on YouTube. Model Melanie Gaydos’s video, in which she describes overcoming Ectodermal Dysplasia to disrupt the fashion industry, has over two million.
But it wasn’t until last year, when Goodkind and Mandelbaum began assembling material for their second StyleLikeU book, that they sat down to try and define their mission statement. “We came at it backwards,” says Mandelbaum. The project, she explains, began simply as a gut feeling and has since developed into a passionate crusade for body positivity with its own powerful momentum. True Style Is What’s Underneath, the duo’s new book with Rizzoli, is the first official manifesto for a movement Goodkind and Mandelbaum have dubbed “the self-acceptance revolution.”
Why did this feel like the right time to collect everything into a book?
Elisa Goodkind: We just felt the need to print our thoughts. We wanted to create something that explained why we are doing this, how it has influenced our lives, and how it can inspire other people. The videos all deliver that message but they don’t give the context and explain our journey, which the book does.
Did going through the editing process encourage you to think about your message in different ways?
Yes a lot. We created seven chapters to express seven manifesto points, which come from our journey of self-acceptance and understanding — what we have learned from these interviews and how they have inspired us. So as you move through the chapters, it’s literally like a journey. The first four are closets and the last three are What’s Underneath.
What was your mission statement when you began the site?
We’ve always struggled with putting all of this into words. This project has always been a huge passion for Lily and I. We didn’t come at it with a business plan. We just had this real feeling that this needed to be done. We’ve had a couple different taglines. One was “freedom of expression through personal style,” the idea of exploring what’s behind style and people who exude it.
What was the turning point from the closet series to “What’s Underneath”?
I used to say that you can be naked and still have style. I go to the Russian Baths regularly and I can look at people in those baggy navy shorts and rubber slippers, with towels on their heads, and tell who has that comfort in their skin that resonates. The What’s Underneath project came from that concept.
We asked our community of people to sit on the stool in my loft and we just made up questions. There is a lot of trust involved. They didn’t know what we were doing but they just came and did it. Right away we knew it was magic. So much more came out.
With the closet stories too, we shine a light on people that are generally not part of the media. That’s changed with social media, but eight years ago, these were people that you didn’t see in magazines, and we were just giving them a chance to speak and listening to them.
The “What’s Underneath” videos feel powerful partly because you can tell your subjects are reacting spontaneously. How much planning goes into filming an interview?
They are very spontaneous. We don’t like to know too much about anybody before we do it. We sort of just let them unfold. There isn’t an agenda other than to get them to open up
When you initially came up with the idea, did you have any concerns about how you’d actually make it happen? It’s kind of a radical idea, asking people to strip down so openly on camera.
It’s been a process to get the people that we want to do it to do it. Yes, it was radical, but we also know it was very possible. We knew it was pure and honest and had a certain power. In the very first closet video we shot, the subject talks about her chest and how she loves being flat chested, it just came out of her mouth. We knew right away there was something that needed to be said, something golden and out of the box. Something liberating. We thought if we could get everyone to do this it would completely change the world.
Amazingly, the project has evolved alongside a wider, global movement of body positivity.
Exactly, we always felt this movement was beyond us. We both felt so deeply and unanimously that we are doing the right thing and we are very happy and lucky that it’s happened. Eight years ago everyone was looking at us cross-eyed, people in the fashion industry were looking at us like, “What are you doing?” Now, I really believe that we are on the cusp of a revolution. It is almost like a complete starting over in terms of fashion and beauty, an exploration of individuality.
What’s the next step for StyleLikeU?
We’re planning to take the book on tour and focus on open casting calls. They are so democratizing and give a much larger voice to the movement. We’re also going to do college and high school workshops. Then, we are finishing a documentary which will come out this year.
‘True Style Is What’s Underneath‘ is out now through Rizzoli.
Credits
Text Alice Newell-Hanson
All images courtesy of StyleLikeU