Q: When was Fashion Indie started?
A: Our company began way before our first blog post. Fashion Indie was started in the summer of 2005 when I was trying to develop a fashion show for a restaurant I was promoting in Chelsea.  The concept was simple: bring five good independent designers together for a midnight fashion show.  I partnered up with a former college buddy, Busie Matsiko, who at the time was developing events for a lounge in the Meatpacking District.  After the event the designers were so happy since there were few opportunities for them to show their collections with out the all out costs of a runway show.  We continued developing events and launched FashionIndie.com as a way to report on our favorite designers and showcase them to an audience broader than those who were at the shows.  Now Fashion Indie is a network of 15 style blogs, a magazine, and video production department that has created content across MySpace, YouTube, and Style.com.

Q: What is the concept behind Fashion Indie?
A: Initially our focus was on local New York fashion designers, but that quickly shifted as we realized that many of our readers were from Los Angeles and London.  We then began talking about international designers available in major cities.  We added some more "flavor" to the site by engaging the indie lifestyle.  Now we feature style advice, music artists, celebrities, and events that are focused around Indies.

Q: What did you do before?
A: I have been in fashion all my life.  My mother was a designer for Norma Kamali and I witnessed first hand the difficulties of making it in the fashion world. My first job was in retail and I quickly rised in the ranks working manager positions at Club Monaco and Joseph Abboud.  I attended Berkeley College in 2000 and graduated with a bachelors in Electronic Commerce, which helped me manage and grow the dotcom aspect of Fashion Indie so quickly.

Q: Do you work anywhere else, and if so, what do you do?
A: In addition to President of Fashion Indie, I am the Managing Editor of Trendible.com, a social network focused around the fashion lifestyle. Currently in
private beta the site is built around the network that Fashion Indie has built.  Right now models, designers, stylists, and fashion editors and bloggers are on the network building and managing their online fashion lives.  The site will launch in February of 2008, right in time for New York fashion week. Once it does everyone will be able to join.

Q: What trends have you seen / do you like / do you hate?
A: I feel the real trend is the death of the trend.  The Internet and more importantly blogging has allowed individual publishers to have a larger audience than traditional magazines.  This has introduced new voices in fashion, each with distict perspectives on what's next. The real trend is individuality and the discovery of one's personal style.  Once someone has found that, they will discover that there are always new designers and ways to build on their look without looking like everybody else, so watch your back Conde Nast, we're coming for ya.

Q:What do you do in your free time and what is a typical day like?
A: What's free time?  I work everyday, all day. Rome wasn't built in a day and if I'm gonna make Entrepreneur's Young Millionaires by 30 I need to hustle.  Because of this my typical day is a little like this:
7:00AM - Wake-up, breakfast, check emails
8:00AM - Write a couple of posts on FashionIndie.com
9:00AM - Write a couple of posts on Trendible.com
10:00AM - Phone calls.  Usually designers we are working with, models, stylists. If we have a show coming up most of my mornings go to our events coordinators.
12:00AM - Network management on Trendible.com which includes contacting members directly for feedback and updating content.
1:00PM - Lunch
2:00PM - Sometimes it's working with sponsors, production meetings for the magazine, development of new partnerships for Trendible and Fashion Indie.
7:00PM - I get a lot of requests for appearances at fashion events and I try to make each one.  Anna Wintour might sit front row during fashion week, but I'm backstage all year. The local design community really loves Fashion Indie since we are one of the last publications that is really dedicated to them.
10:00PM - Research and the occasional Googling of "Daniel Saynt"
12:00AM - Bed

Q: What are you favorite designers, bands, movies, cities?
A: I have so many favorites.  I love Love Brigade, their collection has a real message an a unique design story which is missing from a lot of fashion.  Wrath Arcane, A-Z and Opening Ceremony are some of my favorite mens wear designers.  For women I love what NaturevsFuture does as well as what is happening in Canada with Wonhundred. Wonhundred needs to get their butts over here already.  I also love South African brand Los Cojones del Perro. They are hilarious and extremely inventive.
Favorite movie: Zoolander
Favorite city: (are you kidding?) New Yorker, born and raised

Q: Anything else?
A: Fashion Indie is doing big things in 2008.  We just signed a deal with Maurices, a chain of 700 stores owned by Dress Barn, to find the next great handbag designer.  We are working with Fashionext to bring our designers into virtual worlds like Second Life and Kaneva.  We have already started signing up designers that are looking to get onto these networks.  In September, we will be launching Fashion Indie Week: Brooklyn which will coincide with New York fashion week and feature the very best emerging talent from Williamsburg and beyond.  We are planning to announce a few new acquisitions and partnerships in January. All are hush hush, but once announced we will have the largest network of independent fashion press in the USA, both in print and online.