Molly Guy started her career as a writer. Now she runs an eclectic bridal shop in New York with its own collection.
Her eclectic, boho aesthetic caught on — and celebrity clients didn't hurt either. Now, 88,000 Instagram followers later, she has a devoted clientele, a book deal, and a second baby on the way. The 37-year-old founder talks to Cosmopolitan.com about shoestring budgets, unexpected career changes, and the joys of doing it yourself.
I grew up in Chicago and was in the public school system, which was rough, until I was 13. Then I transferred to Francis W. Parker School, whose alumni include Billy Zane and David Mamet. It was very airy-fairy and progressive. The motto was "the school should be a model home." I was a grungy stoner and editor in chief of the poetry journal and a member of the AIDS Awareness Action Committee.
I went to Brown University for college and studied English. Brown is like Parker, where you create your own schedule, there's no series of credits, and no required courses. There is something really beautiful about having to develop your own curriculum, but for a person who inherently lacks any sort of structure, it can also be dangerous. I took a lot of amazing English and film courses, but looking back on it now, would it have killed me to take a European history or economics class?
I took a writing class, and I really liked it and wrote fiction and got good feedback. I thought, in that way you do in college, This feels so good and this is going to be what I do. I'm going to be a novelist.
In the summer of 1998, I got an internship at Jane magazine through my sister, who was a publicist at Rogers & Cowan. My sister is super Type A. She's like, "Where's your internship résumé? We have to send it out! Have you made the follow-up call?" The world seemed so big, and I didn't understand you could just call HR. But I got a call from Jane, and they said, "We like your résumé," so I took the Amtrak train to the city and wore a black muslin dress. I thought it was like interviewing to be the First Lady and couldn't believe it when they hired me. That summer, my parents just let me live in the East Village and smoke and drink. It's so crazy to me now, but it was my first coming of age. It was fun and dark and exciting.
I was a fashion intern, worked on editorial stuff, like a story about psychics with Christina Kelly, an editor there. There was picture of me on the editors' page, and I got to write a tiny blurb. I was terrified of Jane Pratt, the editor in chief, and I had articles from Brown waiting in my purse, dying for her to notice me.
I went back to college and graduated and was really scared to leave school. I'm not a bouncy person who gets up with the alarm clock and makes oatmeal, but I moved to New York right away. I faxed out cover letter and résumés blindly to Conde Nast, Interview magazine, and jobs listed on Mediabistro through dial-up at my boyfriend's apartment. The head of HR at Conde Nast called about Vanity Fair. I asked, "Where is your address, and what subway do I take to get there?" Can you believe that? Christina Kelly needed an assistant at YM, but I kept interviewing at a ton of magazines. I thought I needed to work at Vanity Fair. The YM job was on the back burner for six weeks, and then I told my dad that, "Oh yeah, this woman got a job at a teen magazine and needs an assistant." My dad said, "A job is a job, Molly, take the job."
I worked for Christina for two years. I owe so much to her. Within two months I would tell her I needed to fly to Portland tomorrow to interview a homeless girl I just read about in the Times magazine. Right away Christina recognized that I was a good writer and that the more responsibility I had, the more I thrived. She let me research my own stories, and when I found a good one, she signed off on letting me travel to make it happen. I took so much pride in those features, and she knew it.
But I was also jealous of people I knew who were at "cooler" magazines. I was embarrassed to tell friends I worked there and was the last name on the masthead. I was so stupid back then. I would grab vouchers for cars and would steal toilet paper. I was such a little punk. I thought, This is dorky. I want to go to work where the cool kids are.
So I interviewed at Nylon and brought in old Eloise and
Nan Goldin books and said these are my beauty inspirations and was
hired to be the beauty and style editor. It was the craziest seven
months of my life. It was such a big magazine back then. I would call
the publicist for Lancôme and say, "Let's go to Paris Fashion Week." I
was 26 and could not believe my luck. I traveled a lot, worked with
great photographers, smoked in the office, brought my cat to work. It
has been 11 years since I had that job, and I still think about it all
the time. It was the first time I had been trusted to handle the visual
aspect of anything. Suddenly I was art directing photo shoots and page
layouts and writing copy to match. It was beyond cool.But like the young, dumb saboteur I was, I was like, "I'm going to go write my novel, bye, everyone." I was so cocky. I stepped into these amazing jobs. I see it now, it's Icarus, it's not normal to be so young and have such a good job, not having to be on time, climb the ladder, have a boss who's a dick. I was freelancing for ELLEgirl and YM and taking classes for an MFA at the New School. I sold my novel to Grove Press, but essentially I had to rewrite a whole new book. A year went by and another year. In the meantime I got a job at an exercise blog that I don't think exists anymore, then a job as a copywriter with crumbs in the keyboard from people there before me. I was still trying to finish this book.
Meanwhile, I met my husband, Mike, and his journalism career was soaring. He was on the phone with Rachel Maddow during dinner on our first date. My heart was always in my stomach. I thought, I'm not a writer anymore. My heart wasn't in it. All the edits I had done resulted in a manuscript I felt detached from. The writing wasn't good. The story was lackluster. It was a painful decision, but I decided to dissolve my book contract a few months before it was slated to come out. I had been counting on this book to come out, thought it was open some doors for me professionally, get me back on the map. Instead, it felt like a big joke. Growing up, my dad was always like, "Don't quit, Molly. Never give up on anything." But I had given up and I hated myself because of it.
I got engaged, and I quit the copywriting job. I was really bad at it. Give me a hundred pages to fill and I'll do it happily, but having to cram a whole message into one or two sentences was not at all my strength. I wanted to do a good job, but I totally lacked the skill set that the job required.
For the first time I wasn't working. I went to India, had a life coach, pitched stories all the time. I would have done anything. I was so hungry. I have so many emails like, "I don't know if you remember me" that went unreplied to. I really wanted to get back into the freelance magazine writing game, but the whole landscape had become digital. I was underqualified. I felt like my life was over for about a year. I had placed so much importance on ambition and appearance and checking the boxes and gold stars.
When I got married, my vision was to find this beautiful store with a tiny selection of perfect dresses, but it didn't exist. That started another terrible eight months of figuring out how to put that idea into fruition. I read all the business books that didn't make any sense. I borrowed business plans and pitch decks and executive summaries that my friends who owned small businesses had written before they got started. I conceived the vision of the store by pulling pictures out of magazines. I wrote up a business plan and some sample P&L's and talked to a lot of people. I didn't know the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant. I didn't know what Quickbooks was. I didn't know what a profit and loss statement was. Plus, I was pregnant with my first kid and had crippling nausea. I remember having to leave meetings with potential investors to throw up in the other room. I had no idea how to raise money to found a corporation or establish myself as a credible businesswoman when, in fact, I was pretty much a failed novelist and washed-up old writer. I had never worked in fashion before — didn't know the difference between a muslin and a pattern, an atelier and a sewing room, couture and made-to-measure. The learning curve was insane.
Then my brother-in-law Peter, owner of Brooklyn Bowl and Capital Theatre, said, "I guess I'll go to meetings with you." Eventually he became my partner and investor so Stone Fox Bride could open its doors, purchase initial inventory, and hire a small staff. As far as startups go, it wasn't a ton of capital, but it was enough to get us off the ground.
Being a boss did not come easily to me. I think some people thrive by delegating and asserting their vision and authority over a like-minded team. Not me. I'm such a people-pleaser I felt guilty asking my staff to do anything. I would whisper, "Could someone sweep the floor of the showroom, please?" Of course, no one heard me. I had terrible boundaries with my employees, which really bit me in the ass. I have learned over the past three years that the best thing you can do as a boss is be a boss: Tell your employees what you need from them, then give them the room to do it. But the key is to tell them. To be clear, not vague.
We started with a chunk of capital that was supposed to get us through the first three months until we were self-sustaining. Honestly — and this sounds so stupid to say now — it hadn't occurred to me what we would do if or when we ran out of money. It hadn't occurred to me that that was the goal — the goal was to make sales. We had budgeted for a publicist, an assistant, a brand consultant, business cards. I could have done it for so much less.
I quickly learned that I didn't need the things I thought I needed to have a successful business in New York City. It turns out the branding and press stuff came easily to me. I was paying people to tell me what the photo shoots should look like and how the copy on the website should read and how to talk to journalists — it was not an efficient way to spend the existing capital, but it took me awhile to realize what my strengths were. Had I trusted my own instincts in the creative department more, I would have been more efficient from the start. In the retail business, the only thing that really matters is the bottom line: sales, sales, sales. One of the most valuable things anyone ever said to me? Cash is king.
So we opened a wedding store and didn't have a blog and this was pre-Instagram, but the brand and our voice took off. We were carrying a lot of wacky and purple dresses at first, but I had been sitting in appointments and women were still looking for white, fitted, lace dresses. So we made one with a pattern maker and that dress, called the Polly, started to sell. Then there was the Luisa, this lace sheath. And then we made a collection, and the photographer Cass Bird shot it with the jewelry designer Pamela Love and the actress Jemima Kirke kissing, and the photo got picked up everywhere. And then we became a design company. So now we're the dresses and the brick and mortar shop.
These days I spend my time writing my book. The next big project is the Stone Fox Bride book, which is coming out in January 2016. It will be the awesome bible for every cool girl getting married and who needs emotional support but also needs to figure out cake and flowers and manage her hysterical mother-in-law and figure out what a cummerbund is. I'm also developing the business through strategic partnerships with like-minded brands, poring over our numbers, and working with my team to make smart decisions to stay lean and grow at the same time. Of course, I wish I could stare at the clouds all day and dream up dress designs. But the creative aspect of my job is completely contingent on whether or not the business is in a strong place, and can handle risk and growth.
My great challenge ahead is to really learn how to build a profitable, sustainable business. And then obviously, there's the dreamy goals: I would love to write five more books, I would love to have a four-day workweek, I would love to design my own line of maternity dresses. But that's all icing on the cake.
In this day and age, when everyone is so obsessed with building their brand and building their name and getting their message out on social media channels, the actual product or the process of getting that product out can become an afterthought. It's really dangerous to consider the brand before the product or before the actual business model. If your product is strong or your business idea is strong, the brand will come. It's very depleting financially to put the brand before the business. I see that a lot with kids. How could they not? My advice is don't worry about whether or not you're going to be the next Mark Zuckerberg and whether or not you're going to fit into the modern-day entrepreneur role but rather, can you deal with the nuts and bolts of developing your own business? Because it's not all about wearing sweatshirts and sneakers and bossing people around from your pajamas on your couch. It really takes a certain amount of fortitude to be able to persevere through the challenges and remain flexible at the same time.
Get That Life is a weekly series that reveals how successful, talented, creative women got to where they are now. Check back each Monday for the latest interview.
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