Today we’d like to introduce you to Isabella David

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

I started creating content for socials for a few different reasons. I had a blog about sustainability back when blogs were still a thing, and I noticed my thrifted outfit posts received far more attention than anything else I was posting at that time. I’ve always loved fashion, but it was following the collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013 that I became more aware of the people creating the clothes I loved to wear and their terrible working conditions they created them in. While I love having fun with fashion, I became very aware that there is a dark side to the fashion world. I wanted to share this reality but show you can still be stylish by wearing secondhand or sustainably made clothes and still have fun with fashion while reducing your carbon footprint and caring about the (mostly) women who make your clothes. 80% of textile workers are women, actually. While textile workers in the United States can make around $30,ooo a year, abroad they are making around a dollar an hour and often working in dangerous conditions. Sadly, little has changed since that tragedy in 2013, when 1,134 people lost their lives in the collapse of Rana Plaza, but I’m proud to be part of a community working to change that reality, and I’ve met so many wonderful people along the way.

I originally started posting, though, because I had written a book of poetry called “The Voices of Women” that was about my ambition to become a character actress in NYC. It was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016, but they didn’t have a budget for marketing, and so I turned to Instagram to try to market myself. And then everything else took off, and so many wonderful opportunities have come my way since then!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

It’s been really challenging to keep up the good fight despite what feels like witnessing the birth of an ever-expanding army of Amazon creators preaching the exact opposite of a sustainability message and being rewarded with huge followings to boot. I’m friends with Paula Mugabi, the author of “Sustainable Fashion for Dummies” and we often commiserate over how sustainable fashion is being viewed as a (passe) trend rather than a message of dire importance for the planet. On a positive note, I really love how social media has allowed me to connect with like-minded and brilliantly talented people like Paula. Seriously, go follow her! She’s an absolute star! Meeting people like Paula and so many others who really, truly care has been by far the absolute highlight of my time using social media.

I’ve had to re-evaluate many times what it is I’m hoping to get out of my work online and what I can realistically accomplish while raising two young kids and a small petting zoo of cats and dogs. My children are starting to get older and spending more time at school and clubs and time is freeing up, so I’ve been re-evaluating what I would like my focus and work to be. I have another friend in the slow fashion space (Sarah Chuck, whom I also met on Instagram) whose children are older than mine and who has recently gone back to teaching at an elementary school after taking 15 years away to raise her own children. I find her incredibly inspiring. Meanwhile, Paula managed to write a book while caring for her kids! I myself find child-rearing to be a little more challenging than that– or more likely I struggle with time management– but I am so inspired by so many women, and rather than giving up, I’m trying to be kind and patient with myself and trying to realize that as my children get older I will be able to do the work I long to do again. Right now, creating content around sustainable fashion is something I’m able to manage while raising small kids, but I would like to begin writing and publishing short pieces again the way I did when I only had one child. I actually turned in my manuscript for my poetry book to my publisher on the same day that I had my son (my second)! I used to be an actor as well, and I had to realize that a person only has so much time and energy, so I have given up that pursuit. I was surprised by how relieved and happy that decision made me. People change and so do our priorities! Who knows? Maybe some day when my children are older, I’ll go back to community theater. That was always my favorite part about acting. Since having my second child, I’ve only managed to write a handful of short stories and poems– there’s a fantastic poetry community in Philly, actually, largely organized by Larry Robin at Moonstone Arts Center, but I. would love to work on a book.

I did begin a Substack this year to help me find the discipline to start writing regularly again. It’s called “The Conscious Closet”. I haven’t posted there in a little while, mostly because my kids were home over the summer, but now that my children are back in school, I’m hoping to start posting again regularly. It’s free to subscribe, but anyone who wants to support my work through paying is always appreciated, although never, ever required! I think Substack needs to find a solution to this issue, honestly. There are too many Substacks I’d love to support, and I can’t afford them all, so there’s no way I’d be a hypocrite charge for my content. (I think a flat-fee that allows you to subscribe to 5 or so Substacks might be a solution?) I would love to find a sponsor, the way I have a few (mostly) ethical brands on Instagram that I work with regularly, but then that might affect the integrity of my work. Honestly, I am being paid by Meta right now to write content for Threads, and to my surprise, I have to say that is not affecting the content of my writing at all. All that seems to matter to them at this moment is that my work generates views, so I’ve felt pretty free to say whatever. I do tend to write at least a few posts based on whatever’s trending, but I’ve learned to have fun with that and treat the trending term like a writing prompt.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

I’m currently in an in-between place in my career, but I don’t mind that sensation this time. I’ve been here before and I recognize the signs. Growth is uncomfortable but preferable to the opposite. When I first started off in New York City around 2007, I dreamed of being an actor and a writer, although, while in New York City, I definitely leaned a lot more towards acting than writing. Having a child in 2013 forced me to rearrange my priorities. I decided I wanted to stay home with her, and I feel fortunate I was able to do so! Because of my background in teaching and writing, I was also able to keep editing for literary magazines and writing for them as well, and I was even able to perform in one really beautiful production of a community theater play at the Ridgefield Theater Barn a few months before I became pregnant with my second child. By the second child, I realized I had to rethink my priorities again. I could edit and write from home, but I couldn’t act any longer. Or it wasn’t beause I “couldn’t”– I no longer wanted to. There was this one weekend, I remember I went to New York City for a couple auditions, and I missed my children more than I wanted to be in a city I had always loved– my mother is from New York and my French father worked there before retiring back to France, so it’s a city that has always felt like home to me. That weekend, it didn’t. Home was now Philadelphia and my children, and I realized things had changed again. Then, during 2020, I tried to research and write a book paralleling how my mother’s immigrant family, my father, and I were all drawn to New York City in different timelines and for different reasons, but I was also home with two very small children and had to abandon that project. I’d love to revisit it some day! I still have my research and notes. For now, now that my children are getting older and I have mornings and some afternoons to myself when they’re in school, I’m trying to get back into the daily discipline of writing and researching topics and figuring out how to fit that into a social media presence that has largely revolved around sustainable fashion. I enjoy both things. I enjoy following the style of women around the world and sharing our outfits together, and I enjoy telling stories. I always kept those worlds very separate, and I think it’s time to bring them together. There’s an author I adore, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, known for her style, although to a lesser degree of course than for her incredible writing talent, but I think it can be done. It’s a challenge for so many women especially, because in my experience people want women to put themselves in a very specific niche. Anyway, that’s something I’m trying to figure out. I watched “Under the Tuscan Sun” recently on a recommendation from a friend, and I really enjoyed character actress Lindsay Duncan’s performance even more than the main character Diane Lane whose plotline I felt didn’t age as well. She was very much one of those neurotic heroines from the 90s who needs a man to complete her despite having a beautiful home and beautiful friendships. One of those friendships was with the character played by the remarkable Lindsay Duncan, and she had several great monologues about living your life– not an easy task to pull off as an actor without coming off as saccharine, but she pulls it off. At one point, she says something along the lines of that in order to be happy you need “to learn to live spherically”. I’m not 100% sure what that means, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I do think that living spherically is the opposite of confining ourselves to niches for easier brand packaging online. I also like that those spheres are kind of mysterious and unexplainable and different for all of us, especially in the ways they intersect.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?

I took a huge risk moving to New York City and trying to become an actor. I had had a dream, like an actual night-time dream, that I needed to move back there. It was the most vivid dream about Sullivan Street, where I had once lived. I think that dream gave me the courage, and I owe my whole life to listening to it. Before that, I was always the good girl and the perfect, straight-A student. Honestly, I felt bored and trapped. I knew there had to be more to life. Moving to New York City with nothing in my pocket but some dreams was a real break from that achievement-oriented identity. I was supposed to be applying to grad schools, not cavorting around the city, auditioning and crying and trying my best and often failing. I’m going to disclose that my college boyfriend at the time had a trust fund– a very modest one, but it still helped us make that dream a possibility. I saw an Instagram reel recently in which a woman was bragging about how she moved to New York City and it changed her life, and that anyone could do it, too; I thought that was very dishonest and irresponsible. My college boyfriend had just completed law school, so we were moving there so he could become a lawyer and I could become an actress. We both achieved that– me in only a small way, but I did it– off-off-off Broadway and some films and some very small roles in television, a member of SAG-AFTRA and some legit and commercial agents (who hated me when I disclosed how old I actually was– but I’m proud of myself! I learned to put myself out there and not be afraid to take risks and, most of all, not to be afraid of failure. Failure can teach you a lot and help redirect towards where you should be going. So, anyway, he and I were both working very, very hard while we were there to make our dreams come true, yes, but it was also 2007, and things were slightly more affordable. I would say to anyone who dreams of moving to New York, prepare yourself to work hard, but accept that you probably won’t be able to live that close to the city. My husband teaches law school now, and we know first-year lawyers for big firms that can’t afford to live in the city any longer. They live in Yonkers, which is pretty far out. My college boyfriend and I lived in a tiny studio in Jersey City the first year and then we found a teeny-tiny, narrow apartment in the East Village that probably contributed to our breakup but was only $1500 a month in 2008. The same place is now going for $4,200 a month I believe, which is madness. It was so small we couldn’t fit a couch in there– we had to give away our Jersey City studio couch– and you used to have to put your knees under the sink when you peed, but it was right next to Tompkins Square Park and you could hear someone playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on their saxophone every day at around 5:30 on the dot. I loved it. I was also modeling and bartending, and I was not great at either of those things, but I was willing to work very hard in order to live in the city. During college, I had lived in the city with family friends or my dad during the summer. I worked temping in offices or waitressed to make money for college. I really hated those jobs, so I didn’t want to do those kind of jobs again post-college. At that time, all the castings were for models or model-types, too, and I was 5’9″ but already too old for all that, but I thought, hey, I’m an actress– I’ll treat this like it’s just another part, and maybe it will help me get some acting roles, which it did. I wasn’t a bad actress, but I was a terrible model. Just tall enough and skinny-ish from not being able to afford cabs. But rather than temp or wait tables, I’d take any awful catalogue job that came my way. Some of those jobs were harder than any other job I’ve done, and I’ve also worked as a day laborer on farms. You’d be expected to stand in heels for 8 hours sometimes just changing in and out of these endless, awful polyester outfits that were lined up on infinite racks. I once lost feeling in my left foot for months after one job where I had to wear platform sandals all day. Sometimes there wouldn’t be any heat in some weird, sketchy location in the winter or no AC in the back of a windowless sweatshop in the summer. You’d get paid maybe $300 for that, sometimes more, sometimes less. You didn’t have much say, and there were times people didn’t pay you at all. I had a friend who was with an agency you’ve definitely heard of who got stiffed by one of the biggest e-commerce sites that you’ve also definitely heard of. It was very disempowering, and I have to say it rubbed the glamor right off the modeling industry, which I’m grateful for. I saw a lot of things that help me no longer feel impressed with or intimidated by models but rather worried for them. I couldn’t afford any nice things on that kind of money, so I’d spend a lot of time thrifting. This is right before thrifting became cool, so I’d find the most incredible things for $5. A pair of Bottega Veneta shorts that I recently sold on the Real Real for example and actually made a profit from. I think that’s when I really fell in love with fashion. Not because of the modeling, but because of the thrift stores and the New York City street style. I noticed how people who didn’t have a lot of money often had more style and charisma than people who did. It taught me style and fashion are very different categories and how powerful self-expression through fashion can be. On a side note, I should have nannied instead of modeling, but I am one of five daughters and grew up babysitting my little sisters. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, but I have a lot of friends who had great experiences nannying for wealthy families in New York. If that’s available to you as an option, it might even help you find a place to live in the city! And then I took another risk, I broke up with my college boyfriend– on good terms, we’d outgrown each other, but I took another risk of being in New York on my own. It was terrifying, and I almost gave up, but on the day I came back from visiting my mom in Virginia and was about to make the decision to move back there, I got into a cab outside Penn Station and happened to find the laptop and briefcase of a New York Times editor. I decided I’d be that person’s best bet for getting their stuff back to them. I took it home and figured out how to turn it on, somehow found the name of the account on the laptop– it wasn’t a normal laptop, and then I tracked down Carla Baranaukas, who turned out to be the editor in question. We’re friends to this day! How do you ignore a sign like that? I didn’t. I stayed in New York, hoping I’d figure things out, and I even began interviewing for dreaded office support jobs. A week after making that decision to stay, I met my now husband at a friend’s birthday party. My life would look very different if I’d left. Ryan couldn’t be a more supportive partner. He loves my writing, and we even have a band together. He’s also a jazz musician. I’ve written the lyrics, and he’s written the music, and some of our songs were recently featured on Spotify’s best of lists! None of that would have come to pass if I hadn’t kept working hard and doing my best and putting myself out there. I never became famous or rich, but I still feel like I succeeded, because I went from feeling lost to feeling like I was someone who could always find a way. I was also lucky, but you make your own luck sometimes, too.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabelladavidvintage
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isabelladavidvintage/
• Other: Threads @IsabellaDavidVintage

Image Credits

All by me or my husband, Ryan McCaffrey. All wearing thrifted outfits and hanging out with my kids in Philly.