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Join as Noreen mashes it up with Giannie Couji. She is an artist, model and cursor of an awesome art magazine that is published a few times per year. She is very creative and in touch with a series of people that you only know if you are in the scene.
Learn about what brings art alive on the pages of her magazine.
Click the replay and check out the show notes below:
Segment 1
Noreen starts off by explaining that if you have a plan in life, you don’t potentially need to follow that plan. Life is all about experiencing new journeys and in our life she wants people to know that life is not static. We should look at life as your always growing and shifting to achieving new goals. Noreen than gives a background story on how she met Giannie Couji. Noreen and Giannie met through a mutual friend name Phaedra at her dinner party. Phaedra’s dinner party was full of fashionable, artistic and creative friends. Giannie came to New York at the age of 17 and later lived in Paris for a year. Eventually she moved to London where she studied to be an accountant for 3 years.
At first, she wanted to become a dancer, but her mom wanted more for her daughter. Giannie became into fashion through her friend name fefe who introduced her to another friend who is a fashion editor. A fashion editor is a person who studies magazines, which is different from a fashion stylist because a fashion stylist is a person who styles celebrities. She then explains how her mother made her an independent woman and how she later moved out and became a waitress to start her fashion career. She developed an internship in fashion and she was the first in charge to return the clothes from the shoot. This means she was in charge of the room that was full of clothes and returned them to the PR people. She managed clothes roughly around 100 people and she had to return the clothes within 2 weeks.
Segment 2
Giannie then became an apprentice for 6 weeks and later stayed with that career for 3 years. She learned that fashion is not all about beauty, it’s more of labor. Giannie and Noreen talk about the history of fashion and Giannie believes that Europeans have more experience in fashion than Americans. They are less uptight than Americans and Americans spend more money on clothes than Europeans. When she worked in the fashion industry, she noticed that everyone would wear the same clothes, but in America we spend more money on clothes than we need to.
The inspiration for starting her magazine was to be the first black girl to create a magazine full of multicultural topics. Giannie has a wonderful team that helps her create these magazines and it wasn’t hard for her to start her magazine. She knew who she wanted to work with and she knew what she wanted to talk about in her magazines. Giannie creates two magazines a year and she realized in order for her to be successful in her career she needed to overcome her shyness.
Segment 3
Giannie talks about the differences between who she is today and who she was with the early issues of her magazine and how she has grown during the time. She talks about the struggles of functioning a magazine, including getting advertisers. Giannie explains how she finds her artists for her magazine and how she uses Instagram to dofind them. Noreen and Giannie talk about Giannie’s eye for art and how her magazine has helped her to become more detailed. Giannie talks about who she would love to have in the magazine including Cicely Tyson and Nelson Mandela.
Segment 4
Giannie explains how she came up with the name Ubikwist for her magazine. She explains how to find her magazine on ubikwistmag.com and on Instagram and iTunes. Giannie talks about what she looks for in an intern and how people she works with need to have good energy. She talks about how her mother still thinks she’s crazy for pursuing a career in fashion but it overall proud of her. Noreen asks Giannie if she’s happy with her choices and Giannie talks about some of the feedback she gets about the magazine.