Tweet This
“I've learned everything from scratch. I had no idea what I was doing when I started out,” says Leandra Medine, creator of the satirical style site Man Repeller. Today Medine’s name and her signature sense of style are synonymous with the New York fashion scene and her inimitable voice has cemented her status as one of the industry’s most formidable forces.
Medine launched Man Repeller as a junior college in 2010 at a time when blogging was still in its infancy and the term “influencer” had yet to be coined. She quickly generated a cult following by dispensing her daily fashion wisdom on “trends that women love and men hate” coupled with her irreverent social commentary. With an ethos that “an interest in fashion doesn’t minimize one’s intellect,” Medine emerged as a preeminent voice in an industry notoriously difficult to penetrate and long-dominated by legacy status.
“I really do believe that my opinion is worth being heard all the time,” laughs Medine, a lifelong New Yorker. “But I didn’t think Man Repeller was going to become my career until I realized that I had saved enough money and certainly had a smart and strategic enough business mind to start hiring other people. I thought to myself, ‘I have nothing to lose, so why not give it a try?’” she recalls. Medine’s instincts and unapologetic approach has continued to pay off. Coming of age during the “dawn of new media,” she admits it was easy to compare her website to its larger, flashier peers, but credits an unwavering trust in her vision and a resolve to remain entirely bootstrapped with keeping the business on course. “The reason we've been able to grow in this slow, steady, measured pace has been because we've never taken on any financing,” says Medine. “As a result, all of the goals and pressures that we've endured have been completely self-brought-on as motivators.”
Fostering deep, authentic connections with her community lies at the heart of Medine’s brand-building success. Her savvy wit and refreshingly honest point of view on everything from wide-leg trousers to her journey through infertility have endeared her to readers and set Man Repeller apart from the crowd. “We have always been so hell bent on maintaining and developing and perpetuating this community. And if that community is going to consist of a million and a half to two million genuinely loyal, interested, and interesting people, that's much more compelling than 10 million people, just people,” says Medine.
Having collaborated with a long list of fashion brands, including Maje, Michael Kors, Maje and Saks Fifth Avenue, and now with a book and shoe line under her belt, Medine has transcended her original “blogger” moniker and proven a unique staying power. Ultimately, Medine’s hope is that her path will continue to instill confidence in the community she’s cultivated and inspire an embrace of authenticity. “I hope I’ve taught my audience to better talk to themselves. I hope that they are pulling from Man Repeller all of the most important tenets of what it means to like yourself.”
I recently sat down with Medine to discuss her burgeoning lifestyle brand, blocking out criticism, and how motherhood has changed her career for the better. Edited highlights below.
On Finding Her Voice:
“I don't necessarily feel like I found a voice so much as I did find a medium to facilitate the expression of the voice. And certainly it evolves because any voice that is honest and authentic is going to evolve as the beholder of said voice does.”
On Trusting Herself:
On Connecting With Her Audience:
“Because Man Repeller was really one of the first of its kind and the assumption was essentially that it was an open form diary that allowed other people into the inside of your brain, I didn't necessarily feel like it was unusual that I was connecting with people. It was almost like we, together, were generating this sisterhood that was going to exist on the Internet. I didn't set out to create this emotional connection with other people. I just assumed that it would happen.”
On Her Best Hiring Advice:
“ The biggest mistake any founder makes is not recognizing the importance of developing a bomb-ass team. If you have this fire in your belly, a guttural reaction to talking to someone, and more importantly if you feel like they are expanding the horizons of your perspective, that's probably a clue that you should be hiring that person.”
On Letting Go:
“My maternity leave offered a lot of perspective and insight that I wouldn’t have been able to see had I continued in the weeds, which I had been since the launch of Man Repeller. Theoretically, ideally, and romantically, I thought that I was always building toward this wonderful moment when I could finally let go, but I would never actually let myself let go. Even when I really needed to because of complications related to fertility or things going on personally, I always put those things aside to continue running the business because I thought if I didn’t, then it wasn’t going to exist.”
“Maternity leave really forced me to check out. And checking out and seeing my team rise to the occasion and flourish and actually do better without me there was a really, really humbling and unique experience and made me incredibly proud.”
On Silencing Critics:
“It's so easy to harp on the negative comments, but one thing that's been really helpful is to ask whether this negative comment will teach me anything about the way that I'm going to operate moving forward? Has it actually changed my perspective, enlightened me in some way? If it has, it's probably worth acknowledging and absorbing. But if it's just existed to make me feel worse about myself and guilty about my modus operandi, then chances are I can discard it, and should discard it.”
On Success:
On Being The Boss:
“It would be really accurate to say that I'm quite a selfish person who is also constantly needing praise. So to force myself out of that state of existence where it's a one-man show and I'm the one getting praise, and to actually start nurturing and fostering a team of employees has been something that I probably would not have been challenged to do had I not started my own company. But it’s an experience that's been really worthwhile because it's teaching me to be a better mother as well.”
On What She Wishes She Knew Then:
“I would ask myself to relax a little, to just cool it. I took my work so, so seriously. And that's not to say that I would want to take it any less seriously, but I truly did make myself sick. I allowed myself to suffer far more than I should have. Every success was another reason to worry. And I don't know why I have not been living my life as though it is a joyride.
"I've been asking myself a lot lately when I'm confronted with a decision that requires immediate making, ‘Will I regret having made this decision if I die tomorrow?’ And that's been a really interesting way to live every day. Time will tell if that's a good mode of operation, but for now I'm going with it.”
