THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR - EPISODES

June Ambrose is an award-winning creative director, stylist, costume designer, and entrepreneur who has built a career creating culture-shifting moments through fashion and style. From designing costumes for Hype Williams’ Belly to styling videos for hip hop heavyweights like Missy Elliott, P Diddy, and Jay Z, June has left an indelible mark on fashion and created the blueprint for many of the trends we see today. June has also changed the industry itself through her fearlessness and willingness to challenge the status quo—whether she was creating opportunities for other stylists of color, building bridges between luxury European fashion houses and hip hop artists, or pioneering the celebrity brand collaboration, she has shaped the industry and created opportunity when there was none.

Eugene Rabkin, the founder of the publication, rightfully titled StyleZeitgeist was born in the Soviet Union, but has been a New Yorker for the last 25 plus years, is an educator, a tastemaker and journalist. He has a way of capturing the spirit of the times, synthesizing it in a critical & intelligent way, that shines a light on our culture and establishes distinct signal amidst all the noise of fashion media today. There was the piece about how political correctness is suffocating freedom of expression. Or the one about how fashion has totally lost its meaning. Or a favorite, the HighSnobiety piece that made the case for the link between Streetwear and Narcissism. Today we talk about, you guessed it: The zeitgeist. The spirit of the times. Consumerism, Entitlement, Victimhood, Morality, Mediocrity, Narcissism, Celebrity Culture, Mass Culture and everything in between.

Faran Krentcil founded Fashionista.com, she’s a writer and she’s a dreamer. A lot of us who got into fashion are dreamers. We are seduced by fantasy. She needs no introduction, really; I just feel like people should hear from her. So let’s get into it. This is Faran Krentcil for The Cutting Room Floor.

Marcelo Gaia, the designer of the brand Mirror Palais. It's what one would call an “Instagram Brand,”. The episode recorded in his apartment, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Marcelo doesn't do fashion week. Everything is made to order and he designs everything himself. Before starting Mirror Palais, only two years ago, mind you, he had another fashion brand that he founded with a best friend. The relationship went sour, and he took the money owed to him from the last brand to launch this brand. And it's grown significantly in that short time. I mean, Kylie Jenner just announced her second pregnancy to Instagram wearing a Mirror Palais dress. So I assume he's doing something right. Today we're talking about his 10 years of experience as a stylist, the back end of influencer marketing and his love for Sailor Moon

Today we talk to Brian Phillips, the founder of Black Frame. The former PR company that closed only recently, just last year at the top of 2020 after operating for 15 years. Black Frame was like a boutique PR agency that had a reputation for having the best clients. And it was different from most fashion PR companies because they didn’t just represent fashion brands. The roster was editorialized: they represented art galleries and worked with film and had great brands from Nike to Rodarte. But it was niche. Black Frame was the fresh, cool company that had the street cred and clout that the big powerhouse machines could never really have. If you were a young talent with new ideas, you’d wanna be signed to Black Frame because you knew they would know what to do with you.

Leandra Medine Cohen is an American author, blogger, and humor writer best known for Man Repeller, an independent fashion and lifestyle website. After public controversy over its lack of diversity and inclusion, the brand made several changes in its final months. In June of 2020, Medine Cohen stepped back from her operational duties, and in September, the brand changed its name, Then in October of 2020 Leandra announced that the influential fashion site had shut down.

Christopher John Rogers known on Twitter As Cjr The Person. Living in New York but hailing all the way from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. If you’re not familiar with Cjr get into it. He has a very unique relationship with the electromagnetic visual spectrum of light, otherwise known as the colors of the rainbow. The man knows how to cut a dress, Okay? Savannah College Of Art And Design alumni. Winner of the 2019 Vogue/Cfda Fashion Fund. A pattern maker by trade, and the freshest young black and gifted talent that New York City has seen in a long time.

Ibrahim Hasan was a Senior Creative Director at Nike, where he stayed for 8 years in total. We’ve talked a bit about creative directors in the past. Check out Season 1 Episode 6 titled, “What’s A Creative Director?” It’s a word that’s thrown around a lot, especially recently. When you hear about celebrities endorsing products. Or in other words, these personalities with a lot of visibility, they’re meant to communicate a product to the masses.A company like Nike has multiple creative directors but today we really dive into what Nike is like as an organization. How is it organized? How many categories are there? What are their functions? Who’s in charge of what and how does Ibrahem, a Senior Creative Director of Brand Design fit into this giant moving machine?

Shira Carmi who among many things was the president of Mansur Gavriel. In January of 2020 she was appointed CEO of Altuzarra and most of you probably know the Mansur Gavriel because of their hit product: the leather bucket bag which really captured the market in the early 2010s. Shira is a business person. She truly has a knack for supporting design talent. And so a lot of this episode is really good business advice. Some of which, in fact, feels kind of obvious but yet still is not being amplified at large across fashion media and through fashion education. So, today we talk about the illusion of being over distributed among retail partners, the role that venture capital has played in the fashion industry and why the CFDA, VOGUE, Barney’s trifecta doesn’t necessarily guarantee that a brand will succeed.

To know Peter Do is to know the whole family. Though his name is on the door, Peter makes clear that this is not a one man show. Humble and soft spoken, Peter leads from behind. Denying a public profile and encouraging the team to take center stage. Here’s the interesting anomaly: though based deep in Brooklyn, this is a true American Atelier. With most of the sample making done in house, and while Peter maintains a very intimate relationship between the designers, pattern makers and sewers. In other words, this studio is comprised of real craftsmen. Today Recho sits down with the founders of Peter Do. As they tell the story of how a group of friends came together to build a company.

James is one of the most prominent casting directors in the industry. He spent a bulk of his career working in PR; more specifically fashion show production, when he joined Kevin Krier in 93’. He went on to become the bookings editor at Harper’s Bazaar for sometime and then returned to casting full time at the request of Tom Ford. We’ll get into the Tom Ford story later. He’s since taken a break from casting but Recho came across James when she heard him speak at Business of Fashion’s annual Voices Conference in 2016, where he spoke passionately about the unethical treatment of models within the industry and how the stylist eventually became too powerful.

Recho Omondi speaks to Mara Hoffman. The woman behind the womenswear label Mara Hoffman. Mara’s clothes are the kind of clothes that fly under the radar. They don’t scream, they don’t shout. They’re just good clothes. Good fabrics, good cuts, unobtrusive yet interesting silhouettes, good color theory. They’re made well, they last long, I mean what else do you really want from your clothes? Based in New York City Mara has been in business for 20 years, all the while staying quietly and consistently true to herself. Moving at her own pace and learning her lessons on her own time. Recho and Mara talk about the nature of running an independent, personal brand. The courage that it takes to be terrifyingly honest with yourself, and the humbling surrender to recognizing when it’s time for change.

Today On the Cutting Room Floor we are talking about the business of licensing. But to understand licensing, Recho dives in deep with our guest Allison Zamora because there is so much you need to understand about intellectual property; IP. What is IP? In short, it is legal ownership of your idea. A fancy word for ownership is ‘proprietary’. In other words; proprietary rights, ownership rights, legal rights to your creative work. Your manifestation. “I manifested this”, “I thought it up”, “I brought it to life”. “It’s mine”. Examples of intellectual property: patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

Teri is the author of the book, The End of Fashion. She is a CFDA award-winning journalist who single-handedly covered fashion at The Wall Street Journal for over 20 years. According to Teri fashion is dead of course, and it dies over and over and over. The question more so is about who will become the ones to revive it? As Teri puts it, “Those who will survive the end of fashion will reinvent themselves enough times and with enough flexibility to anticipate, not manipulate the 21st century customer.

THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR - EPISODES

The Cutting Room Floor is an investigative fashion podcast where the host, Recho Omondi interviews members of the industry for an intimate look into their expertise. Starting from season 3, I edit the audio and create the adjacent promotional assets for the rollout of each episode ensuring the highest quality of sound & entertainment.

SEASON 3