Guest interviews n° 2: Remy Holwick
Hi Remy, may u describe your job, including the best and the worst aspects?
I’m a lot like a brand in the sense that I do and make a lot of different things, but they all kind of fit together. I own a clothing line, Beg Borrow Steal, that I’m launching with Urban Outfitters next week. It is tees and knitwear featuring my black and white artwork. I also just did a lot of artwork for Fox Riders Co. womens’ line for summer 2009, I draw comics that are on my website, www.remyholwick.com, and I paint. I just had a piece of my art sold in a charity auction at Upper Playground LA, to benefit Stoked, a program that encourages youth mentoring through action sports. I’ve also been a model and continue to work with friends.
I love my job because I am my own boss and get to decide where I will go next and what I will do next, and I get to experiment and try out a lot of ideas, but that is also the scariest part of it. Because I make all my own decisions, I have no excuses if I fail. When I was modeling in New York, it was a wonderful luxury to have an agent make sure you did everything right, and be there to explain things away if you didn’t. Now my direction is all mine, and my successes are all mine, but my failures are all mine too. It’s frightening!
How does music influence your work?
I love music. Growing up, I worked at the only independent record store on our tiny island, so I got exposed to a lot of music that most teenagers from my generation didn’t get to hear– everything from Roxy music to Hank Williams and Johnny Cash to Captain Beefheart’s magic band. It was eclectic! Of course, I also loved the grunge and rock from that era. I always loved Billy Corgan. I love to illustrate songs and lyrics that speak to me, because music affects me really profoundly when I listen to it: lyrics put these really lush pictures into my head, and I love the challenge of communicating them on paper.
Where do you find your inspiration?
So many things!
First, my past. My family was very bohemian– my father was a painter and my mother was his muse– so our family had such wild friends and experiences. I grew up with my mother and sister in Hawaii in this very funky little hippie-style ranch– the bathtub was outside, under the sky!– so my upbringing, thinking back to images of that era and of my parents era, right now inspires me a lot.
My father, Wayne Holwick, was a painter, and his art also inspires me, not just the images, which are beautiful and tragic and incredibly well-made, but also his story. It ties back into my upbringing, and is part of my past, but his story is its own incredible series of events. I hear stories of how he used to hang with Bob Dylan and it makes me so jealous! He was also a very brave artist: he took a lot of risks with his work, and he succeeded, which amazes me, and was a crazy, beautiful individual.
My personal friends also inspire me endlessly, they are all in the arts and fashion. Gary Baseman, Lydia Hearst, and so many other people are all close friends of mine who have these incredible, inspiring drives to succeed personally and also to do good for those around them. I see them all working so hard to do these amazing things, and it makes me want to do the same!
Do you have a past modelling career, isn’it?
Modeling was amazing. I got to work on such wonderful things! The highlights were certainly shooting American Vogue, four covers for D, two incredible campaigns for Calvin Klein, and my first time meeting Mr. Armani before his shows, when he was giving a tour of his building while I was being fitted with an evening gown, and he just kind of gently took me by the shoulder out of my fitting and showed me, in the dress, to whoever it was he was entertaining. Amazing!
Before I was a model, I did art, but I also waited tables. I thought that was what I would be doing for ever, or at least, I never knew really what I could do beyond that. Being a model taught me that I could push myself farther than I ever thought I could, and it made me believe in myself and showed me the value in taking huge mental risks. Fashion and modeling are very glamorous professions, but it was a huge change for me and it was hard work, doing all that traveling and showing up to work in London at ten at night, trying so hard not to be tired even though I’d maybe just finished a job in Paris three hours prior! Also, I am definitely a “personality”. I talk a lot and ask a lot of questions, and I had a kind of punk-rock style, with short hair and tattoos and piercings… I think it made a lot of people take notice, but it also made it hard for me personally, because I was sort of crazy compared to these beautiful gazelle-like girls, with very sweet natures and long legs and long hair, and it took me a long time to understand that I could put on a Chanel dress and still be “me”, and that image had its own valid place in fashion. That was the best lesson of all, though; learning that I did have a place in all that craziness. It was a huge confidence builder, and it allowed me to be more of an adult and less concerned with silly things, and less self-conscious. I also had an amazing agent, Neal Hamil, who taught me that I should be exactly who I was, and that it was better for me to be myself and enjoy it than to try and compare myself to every other girl working and be nervous because I wasn’t them.
Now, I love the fashion industry. I still model for my friends, and of course I have my clothing line. I just directed our first campaign shoot. It was awesome!
Tell us about your mum role?
I hope I can someday be as incredible as she is!
My mother, Debra Morrill, was such a glamorous woman when she was young, beautiful and well-traveled, with incredible style and a real ease of being that somehow was never at odds with her great strength (she is the strongest woman I have ever met). She is an extraordinary parent, she raised my sister and I by herself, and sent us both to university even though she never went. She sacrificed a lot to make sure that we had a better life than she did, she has always been supportive of us, even when we don’t succeed as well as we might have.
Now that I have a son I appreciate how hard that must have been, and it makes what she did seem even more amazing.
You & L.A.?
I was born here, so of course I love it (and LA is such a big place)! I just learned that California is the world’s eighth largest economy, so it almost feels like its own country, and LA is our biggest city. It is sprawling and huge, and some parts are very cosmopolitan while others are very laid back. Because of that, I really find here that I can be exactly who I am and not be boxed in by the limitations of the city… so if I want to go out for dinner with my fashion friends one night in Hollywood, and then the next day take my son out to Echo Park to hang out with our artist friends on the porch, so be it! Silvia Bergomi
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