I was just in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival and ran in to Nylon Magazine’s Style Director Dani Stahl at Silver Restaurant on Main Street where PlayStation had converted the space into a celebrity game room for downtime during junkets, premieres and parties.
Dani and I were both hanging out in the “Fresh lounge” within the game space where celebrities, VIPs and press could get lip treatments, make-up and other mini services from Fresh (makers of the infamous Sugar Lip Treatment). Dani Stahl was in town to gift jewelry from the new collection of her line lia sophia to silver screen Sundance stars at the festival. Dani had set up shop inside the House of SWAGG, a mobile mall of sorts in a converted level of Park City’s ski lift on Main Street.
“We get all the film stars from LA at Sundance, and then during fashion week we will present the new collection to all the NY fashionistas and media” said lia sophia designer Dani Stahl.
Having boarded a plane at JFK during a blizzard this past January (Dani is a native New Yorker from the Upper East Side who went to The Chapin School and was featured in the WB’s real Gossip Girl’s micro series which aired during the show in 2009 and also featured Faythallegra Coleman, Lara Meiland-Shaw, and Chrissy Miller) and disembarked into a Utah whiteout.
In addition to designing for lia sophia and being the Style Director at Nylon magazine, Dani also has a monthly column for Nylon for the last 4 years called “Factory Girl” where she goes into the factories of top brands to see how they bring their creations to market. In addition to reading and seeing pictures in her monthly layout in Nylon’s “end book” (the glossy publication of a magazine), you can also see the behind-the-scenes footage at Nylon TV. She has visited the Hersey factory to make kisses, the J Brand factory to make jeans, the Nike campus to test sports technology, the Mulberry factory in England to make a bag, the Victoria Secret factory to design wings, the Swarovski factory in Austria, Diesel in Italy, Calvin Klein, UPS and most recently the Express factory to create a “(minus the) leather motorcycle jacket”. **IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF NYLON ON NEWSSTANDS NOW
Dani started out as an art student at NYU majoring in graphic design. She was then an intern at Elle magazine during her junior year. When she graduated she was being groomed to become the assistant Fashion Director at Elle, but took a summer job with stylist Rachel Zoe and then an assistant job at Vogue for several months while waiting for the position to open up. Once in her new digs at Elle, it was only a year before she heard about a new fresh magazine launching out of Los Angeles called Nylon.
That was ten years ago. Today Nylon has developed a long-standing relationship with Express which has led to this collaboration and visit from Factory Girl. Last fall Dani was in L.A. for Nylon’s August Denim Issue party in L.A. at the London hotel hosted by Express which featured Drew Barrymore on the cover. Express approached Dani with the idea to bring the Nylon cameras into their factory and create a “vegan” leather jacket, meaning Express uses a similar looking nylon polymer instead of leather which gives the jacket a kind and progressive appeal. The limited run of 300 jackets were used for select seeding to celebrities and NY VIPs and are available on the Express website for $148.00. A bright pink lining in the motorcycle jacket symbolizes the donation Express will make to Bright Pink, an information charity to educate women with high risk for ovarian and breast cancer, for every jacket purchased. The type of information shared, for instance, are facts like the odds of a any woman getting breast cancer is 12% and ovarian cancer is 1% however the odds are doubled for women with a 1st degree relative (a mother, sister, or daughter) with the disease.
Dani travels to Los Angeles a couple months out of each year to meet with Nylon’s West Coast team at the corporate headquarters in L.A. and historically stayed at the Roosevelt where she use to have her own room and was dubbed the Eloise of the Roosevelt during her tenure. Now she also frequents the Mondrian or the Sunset Towers where she had one of her jewelry launches recently for lia sophia.
Two things The Daily Truffle always asked our interviewees are about their handbags and their animals. Dani told us “I have not taken off my Miu Miu bag for a second that I got at Paris fashion week last fall! It has silver hardware, a braided handle, and is made from that ‘puffy’ leather material they are big on this season. Also, I always go to YSL and look forward to seeing what Burberry will come out with next.”
As for pets, Dani said that while she is too busy for one now, she would love to have a dog and misses her little Shih Tzu from growing up whose name was “Ajax.
