L ifestyle /C ulture
Jews of Philly Fashion: Rachel Mednick
initially drawn to fashion by
the creative possibilities of
design. Mednick joined the
fight for sustainable clothing
as she gained a greater under-
standing of the waste, pollution
and subpar labor practices
that produce the world’s new
garments. Mednick, who is a member
of the sustainability committee
of the Philadelphia Fashion
& Garment Industry Task
Force and a member of the
Philadelphia Fashion Incubator
Advisory Council, spoke
about good jeans, landfills and
Jackie O.

FASHION JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
It’s the newest edition of Jews
of Philly Fashion, introducing
you to the Chosen few who
dress our city. They might mix
wool and linen, but they’ve got
some strong opinions on mixing
stripes with florals. In this space,
we’ll talk to designers, sellers,
buyers, influencers, models and
more. This week, we spoke to
Rachel Mednick.

FOR ALMOST 10 YEARS,
Rachel Mednick, 33, worked
on selling new clothes to
new parents — her children’s
clothing line, Lucy & Leo, is
still stocked at stores across
the country, including three
in Philadelphia and one in
Kennett Square. But Mednick’s
new project is quite different.

These days, Mednick, an
adjunct instructor at her alma
mater Drexel University, is
trying to convince consumers,
clothing producers and the
budding designers in her
classes to radically rethink
their relationship to new
clothes. Which is to say: buying
Lebowitz Continued from Page 21
her work, especially younger
audiences, will be entertained
by her persona and offered a
fascinating cultural history of
a New York long gone.

Scorsese occasionally lets
Lebowitz’s past interviewers —
Alec Baldwin, Spike Lee, Olivia
Wilde and others — stand in for
himself. The friends’ conver-
sations are interspersed with
clips from Lebowitz’s lectures
and interviews over the years,
footage of celebrities that come
up in conversation, old adver-
tisements and other materials
that create a viewing experi-
ence like thumbing through a
scrapbook. 22
FEBRUARY 4, 2021
and make wearing the same
outfit over and over again
cool. We don’t need so many
clothes, and need to wear what
we already have in our closets.

is going into the landfill every
second, according to the Ellen
MacArthur Foundation. Shop
your own closet and be creative,
learn to see clothing as fabric,
not as “shirt” or “dress.” Can
Dream Shabbat dinner guest? you take your cardigan and put
Michelle Obama.

it on backwards to create an
entirely new look?
What’s something you can’t
believe you used to wear?
What person’s style do you
Those choker necklaces that admire?
look like tattoos. They were
Jackie Onassis. I love a
really cool in the ’90s.

classic vintage look.

much, much less of it.

“We’re making way too
much. And we’re consuming
way too much,” Mednick said.

“And it just gets incinerated or
put in a landfill in a place like
Africa, and I don’t think that’s
right. It’s our trash. It’s our
problem. And we need to deal
with it here.”
The Fishtown resident was
What’s the best quality in a
friend? Honesty and heart. I believe
the good friends tell you the
What’s the last book you read? truth, even if it’s hard to hear,
“The Editor,” by Steven and will be there for you no
Rowley. Jackie O is on the cover, matter what.

which made me grab it immedi-
ately. I am now reading “Such Can any style tip be truly
a Fun Age” by Philadelphian universal?
Jeans and a white T-shirt. A
Kiley Reid.

good pair of jeans that fit well
What clothing trend would can make anyone look good.

you like to see make a
What item of clothing should
comeback? Not so much come back more people be wearing?
The ones already in their
but continue: I would love to
closets. We have a huge
see people continuing to shop
fashion crisis
right now — one
vintage and secondhand as
garbage truckload
of clothing
their main form of shopping,
Who’s an exciting designer
in Philadelphia who people
aren’t talking about enough?
Kim McGlonn
from Grant Blvd. She is one of the
smartest people I have ever
met, and using her brand as
a change agent in both the
fashion industry and in the
Philadelphia community.

One of the best episodes in
the series is “Board of Estimate,”
where Lebowitz offers some of
the most refreshingly candid
commentaries about the links
between money, gender and
art available in contemporary
entertainment. She claims her troubles are a
result of hating money but loving
things. She loved writing until
she got her first paid writing
assignment, when she began to
hate it. She discusses the odd
jobs she took when she moved to
New York, which included cab
driver and cleaning lady.

Many of her friends made
more money as waitresses,
but she refused to work in a
restaurant. “You could not get a shift
in a restaurant unless you
slept with the manager,” she
explained. She also refused to rent an
apartment in the East Village,
though that was where many
of her peers lived at the time,
and opted for a pricier home
uptown because, she said, she
didn’t want to get raped on her
way home.

Lebowitz is not particularly
religious, but she offers her
takes on Judaism’s prohibition
of bacon, her great-grandfa-
ther’s experiences immigrating
through Ellis Island and how
she kissed her Nancy Drew
book when she dropped it on
the ground as a child because
she loved books so much she
thought the Hebrew school
rules about kissing dropped
prayer books applied to secular
volumes as well.

She remembers one particu-
larly nasty encounter when she
presented her driver’s license
to a woman issuing fishing
licenses during a vacation on
the West Coast. At the time,
she said, West Coast IDs had
photographs, but East Coast
ones did not.

“She goes, ‘What’s the
matter, you don’t have photo-
graphs on your license in Jew
York?’ I was really shocked.

I said ‘No.’ ‘Why not?’ I said,
‘Because we can read.’”
The series is generally at its
best when viewers get a glimpse
of the true friendship between
Scorsese and Lebowitz. During
their visit to the New York
Public Library, their aura of
celebrity melts away and they
become two regular old New
Yorkers chatting about their
immigrant heritage amid
stacks of genealogy records.

For all it’s charms, “Pretend
It’s A City” is too long. Lebowitz’s
relentless complaining, though
witty, starts to grate if the
episodes are binged too quickly.

The series would have been a
fantastic documentary, but at
seven episodes it feels endless
— like a visit to an eccentric
relative that drags on for more
time than you bargained for.

It’s worth your time, especially
if you need something diverting
to fill endless days of quaran-
tine, but fair warning: Pace
yourself. l
Rachel Mednick
Photo by Alejandra Buljevich
JEWISH EXPONENT
What talent would you most
like to have?
I would love to be able to
play musical instruments with
ease. I love the idea of it, but just
don’t have the knack for it. l
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