We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Margo Huntley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Margo, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned in school and why that lesson is important to you?

I would say that the most important lesson I learned in school, which is also widely applicable, was on fortitude as it relates to success.

My whole life previous to college was spent thinking that success in school (and translating life beyond that) was based on one thing: grades at the end of the semester. I was an honors student. I always liked school. I liked learning. Whether or not I was the smartest in a classroom I always felt good about myself from an academic standpoint because I could study hard and keep up so that my grades reflected what I interpreted as all encompassing success (in other words A’s). I was trained to think that good grades equaled success, that your job was done and you were bound to be well off in life, as long as you got the 4.0 the rest would come easy. What could possibly matter to the real world, right?

So, you can imagine my surprise when I got into the depths of college, beyond prerequisites and into the “meat” of my major area of study expecting it to be the most difficult time I’d ever had in terms of making high marks, and found that grades although present were looked at a completely different way now. They were present of course, but in a creative major the grading scale can’t possibly function the same as in a math or history class where all of the answers are fixed and definite.

It threw my brain for a loop. Anyone now could now get fine grades who cared enough and was passionate about what they did, and we were all keen on what we did. Projects were scored on a rubric, but oftentimes I found that the rubric felt irrelevant to the majority of students who went well above and beyond it every time. This didn’t get you a higher grade per se. Maybe slightly, but it was no longer about just that. We had classes where the entire grade was based on simply being present for a discussion between our professor and an industry professional. Imagine how easy it would be to sit through that and get full points? On the other hand you could choose to sit through it and absorb like a sponge, ask questions and make a new connection. Thats when it clicked for me. The game that traditional school teaches you to play isn’t the same game as real life.

We had classes where we studied current events so that in a networking situation we would be better and more affluent conversationalists. We stayed for hours after classes ended helping with setup for events, spend weekends working backstage at local fashion shows meeting as many people as we could in the process, we started clubs, collaborated on personal projects, pulled all-nighters in the studios cutting, sewing, sketching, dying, photographing, any other sort of creating you can imagine because we wanted our projects to be ones we were proud of. Very little of this was for grades mind you. Notice the difference between an experience like this, and traditional schooling?

As I believe many of the most important lessons in life tend to be – the lesson I just described wasn’t a direct one. It was a slow buildup to an aha realization about the world around me. What you put in is indeed what you get out. I hear many complain that they got little out of college. I think that is such a shame. College, or whatever point you are in school, is an opportunity like no other to grow into an entirely different person should you choose to take advantage. Some major areas may be more straight forward, but regardless you are surrounded by opportunities to do internships, join extracurriculars, try new things, network, the list goes on. In conclusion, while grades alone won’t set you apart on a high level – finding passion in what you do and letting that be the beacon which leads you in your actions to above and beyond, will.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have known I wanted to work in the Fashion Publication Industry from the moment I watched a show called “Ugly Betty” when I was 11 (it’s on Netflix if you haven’t seen it, I would obviously highly recommend it). From that point on it was history. I grew up reading magazines like they were a the Bible. Watching fashion weeks through screens. Learning to sew from my mom and grandmother. Sketching out collections for my make-believe brand.

I went to school and studied Fashion, choosing the business track over the design track. From there I fell farther in love with the industry. I had the incredible experience of co-founding a student run fashion magazine on campus – something that wasn’t yet present on campus. I did this along with my brilliantly talented friend, Elisabeth Bradley. Together the two of us divided and conquered in building Style Line Magazine, a club that welcomed all students with an interest in fashion to immerse themselves in a bi-annually published creative outlet. I took on the business and technical aspects while she took on the creative. We got to work and the rest is history.

Between Sophomore and senior year we grew Style Line from a two member club to over seventy-five. We published 5 Issues in print and digital. Today I am unsure of the exact member status but the Magazine runs strong on campus and has expanded to a blog, hosting fashion shows, networking events, and more. It was the most challenging and demanding but also rewarding experience of my college career. It is something that brings me great joy in knowing that excited incoming freshman have a place to go explore and express their creativity, meet friends and be a part of creating an incredible product each semester, that seniors can add the pages of the magazine they collaborated on to their portfolios when applying for jobs, and everything in between.

Regardless of where the future takes me, because of this experience I will always prioritize and value helping others explore and express their creativity. Especially youth, and especially those who feel like just because their career path isn’t creative, they can’t be creative either. Creativity is what made us all. We are creative beings. The closest we will be and feel to our true nature is in the moments that we are creating freely, letting go of what the world taught us, tapping into who we were before the world influenced and shaped us. Everyone, in my opinion, should have an element of that mixed into their life or at the very least an opportunity to should they want it.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I met the co-founder of Style Line Magazine on the first day of classes in spring of 2020, in a 7am construction class that I nearly didn’t show up to after having returned from a month long trip in South America at 3am the night before classes commenced. I sat in my bed debating dropping it altogether wondering why I signed up for a 7am, 3 hour studio class in the first place. Did I really want to do this to myself all semester? Despite my body screaming at me to stay in bed, I told myself I would go this first day and give it a chance. I didn’t need to take this class but thought it might spark an unknown interest in design for me. Now I realize it was a very different reason my intuition was telling me to just suck it up and go.

When I got there I saw someone I had never seen before, it was Elisabeth. We sat together and I discovered the reason I hadn’t seen her before was because she had just transferred schools over winter break. Fashion was a relatively small major so you normally at least recognized everyone. We talked and had so much in common it was borderline unnatural. It just so happened that the fashion building was on the opposite side of campus to both of our apartments, so after class we took the mile-plus journey back together. It became routine to meet up at 7am and walk to and from class together, giving us plenty of time to become fast-friends. That is the only reason I stayed in that class.

Well, a few weeks into the semester, COVID became prevalent. Our studio class remained in person longer than most, as it is a really difficult one to do at home without the machines, equipment, tables, etc. But soon it too had to move online. Elisabeth is hilarious and creative and the kind of person who always has some new idea brewing – which I loved and which is what started the creation of Style Line. She asked one morning if we could meet because she had the greatest idea for a project while in the shower. So we met, we sat and had coffee, and she told me an idea that wasn’t quite a fashion magazine but something similar, and had nothing to do with being a school club. Within a few hours we had taken that and talked, and tweaked and brainstormed, and eventually conceptualized the idea of starting a student-run fashion magazine upon realizing that was something our school in particular still lacked although it existed on other campuses and that it would have been something we would have loved to have joined as freshman. Many adjustments, tries, fails, and more adjustments later in order to get the club approved by ASU – Style Line Magazine was born and running!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn in a creative and collaborative industry was perfection. Relating back to the first question about my biggest lesson in school being that grades and following a rubric as means of success isn’t really key – neither is perfection. If anything it is what will hold you back, the reason being there really is no such thing in creative fields so striving for it is a frustrating waste of time. Everyone has their own idea of what is best when it comes to a vision for a project, a garment, a business idea, a color palette, artwork, a marketing campaign, the list goes on.

The second that you let go of striving for perfection and embrace trying new things, going with ideas even if they might fail, straying from what is typically your comfort zone, even doing things you are bad at with no goal other than the hopes to get a little bit better – is when you start succeeding much more quickly. Imperfection is where growth happens. Losing the fear that surrounds failure was the best unlearned lesson for me.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/margohuntley/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margo-huntley-58699519b/