The clothes make the man… cringe.
Leandra Medine’s out-there sense of style turned the upper East Side native into one of the fashion world’s leading writers — but it didn’t win her the right kind of attention from the opposite gender.
Not that that was the 24-year-old’s intention when she started the blog The Man Repeller or penned her first book, “Man Repeller: Seeking Love, Finding Overalls,” which hits shelves Sept. 10.
“Man Repeller isn’t about driving away men,” says Medine. “It’s a process of elimination. If a guy is actually consumed by the way you dress, then he is not looking for the right things in you, like charisma or sensitivity. He’s just seeing the exterior.”
The offbeat fashionista has a swag bag brimming with successes, including the recent title of most influential style blogger by Fashionista.com. She’ll be sitting front row at New York Fashion Week again, covering as many as 15 shows per day and providing instant gratification to her 155,151 followers on Twitter and 379,608 on Instagram.
That’s a big change from 2010, when Medine, then 21, started the blog on a whim after a revelation at Topshop. Moaning to a pal about the trifecta of elusive men in her life, she demanded to know: “What’s wrong with me?”
Her friend slapped a pile of clothes in Medine’s arms that included a sequined blazer, Tencel harem shorts, a crocheted dress, acid wash harem jeans and a white muscle tee emblazoned with the word “Mom.”
“This is what’s wrong with you,” the shopping buddy said. “How can you possibly like those shorts? You’re a man repeller, a bona fide man repeller.”
Paul Zimmerman/WireImage
Leandra Medine and Katharine McPhee at the Rebecca Taylor show during Spring Fashion Week
The truth didn’t hurt at all. She borrowed $10 from her mother to establish the domain name and started blogging about her signature style.
Medine soon became an online celebrity, featured in Forbes’ “Top 30 Under 30” in 2012 and topping Adweek’s “Fashion Power 25.” The Man Repeller was also named one of the top 25 blogs by Time magazine.
Her fashion opportunities increased exponentially.
Earlier this year she launched a capsule collection of clothes, Man Repeller x PJK, at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills. She has a collection of Superga sneakers and her design credits include jewelry for Danijo, slippers for Del Toro and a trenchcoat for Gryphon.
The comparisons to “Sex and the City” protagonist Carrie Bradshaw were inevitable. In her book — a collection of wry essays, each pegged to an item of clothing — she writes about one encounter after another in which someone dropped the Carrie comment.
For instance, there was the time at Saks when she was shelling out a significant portion of her first check as a freelance writer to pick up a pair of leopard-print Miu Miu strappy sandals she had coveted for two months.
“They’re perfect! I’ll take them!” Medine remembers exclaiming over her first pair of designer shoes.
“You’re a regular Carrie Bradshaw,” said the sales assistant.
Leandra Medine’s new book arrives next week.
“At first I had a difficult time with it, but I’m perfectly okay now,” says Medine. “She was a writer and loved fashion. I write and love fashion. And shoes. But what woman doesn’t love shoes?”
Today she’s got plenty of designer items — but her style is all about the disconnect.
“Marrying two different trends is key. Say, wearing a pair of ripped jeans with a Carolina Herrera blouse that looks as if it’s intended for a mother of a bride.”
At her wedding in 2012 to UBS executive Abie Cohen in front of 450 guests at the St. Regis Hotel, she wore an off-the-rack Marchesa gown with a custom-made organza moto jacket, a removable tulle peplum and platform Superga sneakers adorned with blue crystals.
When she announced her engagement with a post she hadn’t meant to publish on the site, some got riled. She took it back immediately, but commentators on other websites ridiculed her and demanded to know what kind of Man Repeller gets married.
“The reaction was something I was definitely sensitive to, but it was more a problem in my head,” she says now. “People just weren’t expecting me to get engaged because of my site.”
Besides, she’s now living happily ever after in the East Village with the man who kept trying to get away. She and Cohen had been on and off since she was a teenager because he kept opting out of the relationship. In the book, she recounts the night she insisted he take her virginity even though they were broken up.
Medine says her husband takes such personal revelations in stride.
“I certainly did not try to trick him into thinking he was marrying an introvert,” she points out. “So he knew precisely what to expect from my tales.”
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