The Good Buy is a new podcast from Harper’s Bazaar in which editors Leah Chernikoff and Lynette Nylander invite celebrities, designers, models, and tastemakers to talk shop: what they buy, where they got it, and why it matters. Come down the fashion rabbit hole and take a peek inside the closets and shopping carts of the world’s most stylish people. Learn how they use style to tell their stories.
In this week’s episode of The Good Buy, we are joined by Dara, the stylist, model, and fashion director of Interview Magazine who is known for her daring looks that toy the line between fantasy and old Hollywood glamour. “I realized when I was growing up, taking pictures of my friends that the whole room could look like a mess but in this little square, it's perfect.” For Dara, the power of creating an image—from the clothes pieced together to the set—is like magic. “It's like the fairy tale that you always dreamed could be in that little frame even if the world's a mess outside.” Below, Dara shares her approach to putting together a red-carpet worthy look, her all-time favorite heels and her the only time she’s regretted a purchase.
On her less is more approach:
"Elegance is restraint. To me, amazing fashion and good design is sort of thinking about it at its core and bare bones and then you can decorate if you need to [but] it's not necessary to get a point across."
On styling:
"I was trying to articulate how I dress or how I approach clothes to my friend and I was like it's sort of like avant-garde next door. I love the bizarre, I love the challenging, I love the extreme, but I never want it to be something that no one can understand. I love that even my mom could love it, even though it's a little weird to her."
SHOP DARA'S GOOD BUYS
HER FIRST DESIGNER BUY:
"The first type of designer purchase that I kind of really remember was like— I guess it would have been like 2012-ish? 2013? And it was this little Jill Sander Raf Simons pouch. It was a wallet but it was worn on a lanyard. It was like a black patent leather with a blue string. And it had a clear window so you could put in an ID."
HER "I MADE IT" BUY:
"I bought two pairs of heels. I bought a white pair from Bottega and then a red, patent leather pair from Manolo Blahnik. Shoes are kind of the thing that I want to buy all the time. That's my weakness. I really wanted a pair of white shoes, white heels, and then the red shoes were just, I really wanted the ‘Carrie Bradshaw urban shoe myth’ shoe. Like, I went into Manolo looking for the black Campari. I wanted the black ones but they didn't have them. So I got the red ones."
HER REGRET BUY:
"Most of the time it's not even necessarily like one specific thing, but it's always something I bought to prove to some other people that I was a certain way or am a certain way. It's like if I bought something, cause I really wanted to look cool, hyperfeminine and pretty to people. It's mostly that, really. And that's so not in line with how I approach and see clothes. To me, these are extensions of a creative impulse. And if I'm buying it so that someone else thinks I'm valid or something…it goes against that."
HER REPEAT BUY:
Calzedonia really do the job. I like a sheer pair, like 20 denier, you know.
HER LATEST BUY:
"I actually bought some Junya [Watanabe]. I bought the striped t-shirt with the big circle pattern. And then there was a black one. I bought both of them because I don't know which one I'll like and I'll probably keep both."
Michella Oré is the fashion commerce editor at Harper's Bazaar. Previously, she was the style commerce writer at GQ and associate producer at Vogue. Her writing has been published in i-D, 10 Magazine, and WWD.
