Who What Wear Podcast: Mandy Lee
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Fashion content creator Mandy Lee, otherwise known by her handle @oldloserinbrooklyn, has become a fashion authority on TikTok with her thoughtful, well-researched trend predictions and commentary. It makes sense that she’d have this unique skill set, as she actually began her career as an analyst in the tech space.
But once the pandemic hit and Lee, like many, became unemployed, she created her TikTok and ventured into content. Today, she has over half a million followers, is the mind behind the viral #75HardStyleChallenge, and hosts an annual Met Gala watch party (last year’s garnered over 70 million views in just 48 hours).
For the latest episode of Who What Wear With Hillary Kerr, Who What Wear’s editor in chief, Kat Collings, sat down with Lee to discuss her start in content creation, the impact of her #75HardStyleChallenge, and more.
For excerpts from their conversation, scroll below.
Many people know you by your TikTok and Instagram handle, which is @oldloserinbrooklyn. And I’m curious how you got into trend forecasting generally and then how you transitioned into content creation.
I always wanted to be a writer. That was like, my dream. I was kind of the cliché millennial obsessing over Devil Wears Prada. But I lived in Boston. So there weren’t many fashion opportunities that I had straight out of my career.
So for my first job, I started working as an analyst at a tech company and eventually got promoted to work on the performance planning team, which had a lot of forecasting elements to it. So we were forecasting a lot of sales and units sold and category upticks.
And then I eventually made my way into the beauty industry and was doing planning and forecasting on a product level as well. So basically, figuring out what things were coming down the pipeline. Production takes usually a year and a half for beauty products. So you’re kind of thinking two years ahead of time.
So you’re doing the forecasting for beauty products, and then you felt inspired to launch your TikTok informed by some of your work?
Yeah, well, actually, I got laid off during the pandemic. So literally, like two days after I got laid off, I joined TikTok. And I really never would have because I loved that job that I got laid off from. I was working for an indie haircare company in Brooklyn.
[TikTok] really started as a passion project and just kind of missing my job. Honestly, when I was unemployed, it felt like really low stakes at the time on TikTok because the niche really didn’t exist. Now, trend forecasting as a niche under the fashion umbrella on social media is pretty popular. But at the time, it was untouched.
And I think that’s always kind of what I attribute my success to is being one of the first to tap into the niche. And being accurate. My content has definitely changed over the years. I’ve taken steps back from trend forecasting, just because it is a skill set I’ve built over my seven-year career, and I save a lot of my insights for my consulting business and paying clients now. But without TikTok, I would not have been able to go off on my own start my own business. It just was completely life-changing for me.
This January, you had a video introducing a style challenge called the #75HardStyleChallenge. For people who haven’t heard of this yet, can you explain a little bit about it?
The #75HardStyleChallenge was launched at the beginning of January to parallel with people’s New Year’s resolutions and getting a fresh start to the year. And it’s essentially a styling challenge where you don’t buy anything for 75 days. You get dressed every day. You document your outfits every day. And that’s about it. You do it for 75 days and reflect at the end.
I thought I was just going to be posting this to my audience because it’s actually something that I’ve been doing for years on a smaller scale and not publicly. I never made a big stink of doing this in the past even though it’s something that I always go back to whenever I feel like [I’m] in a rut, which again, is something that inspired it.
When I first joined TikTok, I was doing trend forecasting stuff, but I was also talking a lot about personal style, and always my piece of advice is stop buying stuff and explore your closet for as long as you can. Because then you’re going to have a better idea of the gaps in your wardrobe and what you gravitate toward naturally.
And this is just more of a formal outline on how to achieve that. And man, it really took off. I’m shocked to this day. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done as a creator.
Because the way that I approach content and my platform is I’m not trying to sell you these shoes that I’m wearing. I’m trying to sell you on ideas and critical thought and thinking about fashion in your own way.
I want to talk about Met Gala. Last year, you made a very accurate prediction where you predicted Doja Cat would dress as Karl Lagerfeld’s cat, Choupette, and lo and behold, I don’t know if some sort of under-the-table deal was made, but this was pretty spot-on. And we’re coming up on this year’s Met Gala. And I’m curious if you have any predictions.
In announcement of the theme, Andrew Bolton said nature would be the through line. This was before the dress code, which is Garden of Time, which is different from the exhibition, which is different from the name of the Met Gala evening. It’s all confusing, but Garden of Time is technically the dress code.
So obviously we’re gonna get a lot of florals. I think there’s going to be a bit of like a decaying element to some looks. I think dresses will get created brand new from scratch in likeness of old iconic garments. And I think those are going to be the main themes you’ll see on the red carpet.
I would love to see some literal interpretations because the exhibition is [titled] Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. And again, probably Jared Leto will do it, showing up in like a sleeping bag with a pillow.
The exhibition also is going to feature a lot of tech and preservation technology, just really, really cool scents and sounds and tactile experiences. And I really wonder if that will somehow translate to some of the looks. I could see some futuristic gardening. The Loewe 3D almost grass print I think would go over so well. If that doesn’t show up in some way, I would be shocked because Loewe is also a sponsor of the Met Gala this year for the first time. It’s going to be obviously a huge, huge showing from Loewe and Jonathan Anderson. I can only imagine the amount of customs he’s doing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Next, check out our interview with celebrity stylist Jamie Mizrahi.
