World Of My Own is a NYC based sustainable brand owned by a female entrepreneur Sydney Wekstein. Each item is meticulously crafted by hand using dead-stock and vintage fabrics.

This week for STAR⟡MAIL, Mila Grgas interviews World of My Own designer Sydney Wekstein.

Mila Grgas is a writer, filmmaker, visual artist, and New Yorker. Her articles have been published in Halascope Magazine, Really Magazine, FLASH Magazine, and her poetry appears in Untitled Magazine and Paloma Magazine. She is the founder of Open Mouth Media. She is directed by feminist mythology and art as divinity.

Mila Grgas caught up with Sydney Wekstein to talk about their latest collection.

It’s World of My Own’s World

Mila Grgas - Interview with Sydney Wekstein

Before the line stretched down the block for the Zine Launch party, before piercing-clad girls took to dancing on stage in front of and behind the DJ booth, even before the event got so packed it took ten minutes to cross the dance floor at Heaven Can Wait, the World of My Own’s season began at the casting for their fall/winter ‘25 show. Groups of girls were clustered in a brick lobby on a cold Brooklyn morning, every one an hour early to the open call for models. 

The World of My Own team entered in a blur of fur jackets and colored hair, leaving in their wake branded World of My Own coffee cups and keychains. Though I was there to take in the experience, I couldn't help getting caught up in being a World of My Own girl for a day. It’s open calls like that, the chance to appear featured on their Instagram or Substack, that make the brand so appealing to young girls in the independent fashion scene in NYC. Even when standing before a panel of judges at the casting, thank god going before my more professional model friend, I still felt included in the magic. For independent brands like this, balancing the feeling of inclusion and aspiration is key, and World of My Own has cracked it. 

The brand’s openness clearly works, when I and a small bunch of other press went outside the launch party, passerbys stopped and gawked at the crowd inside and out. The designer and founder of the brand Sydney Wekstein, sat on the curb beside Heaven Can Wait to answer some questions about their upcoming collection. 

MG: Is there a particular person that you are picturing wearing this next collection? 

SW: I don't think so. I think that’s our whole thing, World of My Own, it’s anyone, it's your world. There’s a personality type maybe: someone who's confident, someone who likes to be naked, someone who is eccentric, someone who can just be themselves. That sounds so cliché, but I feel like it's the truth. I think anyone who can see themselves in World of My Own should be in World of My Own. I want you to see yourselves in it. It's your world not just mine. 

MG: How do you use nudity in your designs? Is there a wrong way to do nudity? 

SW: I don't think there’s a wrong way to use it. I think when men overuse it, you see for example Kanye West and Bianca Censori, and how she was the only one naked. It felt like he was parading her around like he should have been naked. You know when men oversexualize it.  Everyone’s naked, at the end of the day we’re all wearing the same clothes underneath the clothes. So I don’t think there’s a wrong way to use it, and I think it’s very prevalent in my designs. I love being naked. I could be naked for the rest of my life if that was socially acceptable. But I think that goes into it again; it doesn't really matter if it's socially acceptable, I don't think nudity should make you uncomfortable because it's very natural. 

Q: What’s your message, what do you want to use with your platform now that you’ve built it?

SW: I want to destroy capitalism, I want to uplift small designers and small artists. This is not something that's just for me, everything that goes into it has a million hands involved. I wanna keep uplifting women artists and queer artists. 

Q: What was your process for finding a strong brand identity and how did you find it? 

SW: I think it's so hard to give you one idea. I think it's so personal to my growth as a teenage girl becoming a woman. This brand has been following me for 5 plus years, it's been my identity and I think it’s grown with me. 

Q: Do you have any advice for young designers? 

SW: Keep failing, keep failing, keep failing, until something works. Keep putting yourself out there and trying things. Be vulnerable and open yourself up. I have a really wonderful community around me and that’s why I feel I can do what I’m doing. People and communities make the world go round. 

Q: What would you say are your next goals and how do you want to evolve? 

SW: I think I’m evolving every single day of my life, knock on wood. I have a fashion show in late April, so that's what's going on right now. I wanna keep creating, I wanna do more performance art and explore other mediums in my own life, I feel like my life is a performance, and I wanna keep performing for the people. I think the world’s been unpredictable for a while, so I think when it comes to goals I always dream big, but I’m always ready to see what comes towards me. I really believe in the law of de-attachment. Attachment is suffering and I don't want to suffer. I read the four agreements when I was 16 and it changed my life. And now I'm studying Buddhism. I think it's a beautiful thing that I can incorporate that into my art. 

World of My Own’s deadstock recycling reminds me of another indie designer show I saw this spring, styled by HALOSCOPE’s own Em Seely-Katz:

I am also reminded of the rag-tag outsiders / unapproachably cool dichotomy of X-Girl's 1994 guerrilla runway show in Soho, as captured in Sofia Coppola and Zoe Cassavetes's short lived MTV show Hi-Octane:

And, lastly, submit to STAR⟡MAIL! Pitch me at [email protected] :)