Molly Guy of Stone Fox Bride, An Interview

Molly Guy approached us on the stairway of her beautiful Park Slope home in Brooklyn, her energy instantly made us feel welcome and it all made sense that this personality was behind the new NYC bridal concept Stone Fox Bride.

When you walk into Stone Fox Bride you feel…
…peaceful, serene, stylish, relaxed, inspired, creative, excited and curious.

She’s carefree, light hearted and fun with a modern day bohemian flare — that’s exactly the feeling you get when you walk into Stone Fox Brides newly launched showroom on Broadway, Manhattan.

Stone Fox Bride is…

…a twelve-hundred square foot, low-key bridal showroom located in the historic Cable Building in downtown New York City.   We carry high fashion custom wedding dresses created exclusively for us by Daryl K, Ohne Titel, Electric Feathers, Mandy Coon and more.  We also offer a Concierge Service  — a hand-picked roster of healers, trainers, stylists, florists, shamans, makeup artists, nutritionists, tattoo artists, Pilates and yoga instructors, marriage counselors, financial counselors, life coaches, astrologers and more — anyone and everyone you can think of to help guide the bride-to-be through her marriage transition tastefully, gracefully and meaningfully.

Tell us about you?

I graduated from Brown University in 1999 with a degree in English and moved to NYC right afterwards to write and edit magazines. For years I worked as an editor and writer at YM, Nylon, Ellegirl, Maxim, Tar, Tokion, Jane and more. I went back to graduate school for a Masters, sold a novel to Grove/Atlantic Press and then realized, at the age of 32, that I had no idea what I wanted to do next. This strange existential crisis and life transition just happened to coincide with meeting the great love of my life who asked me to marry him soon afterwards. At that point I was working in a windowless office on the 57th floor of a huge highrise in Midtown writing package copy for the back of beauty products and deeply bemoaning the loss of my creative life — although the one thing that sustained me through it all was the planning of my wedding over the next eight months which felt truly raw, fun, deep and real — as intense and meaningful as any writing project I’d ever done. After I got married, I decided (literally) on a whim to open Stone Fox Bride — I literally didn’t know what else to do with my life, and I knew the NYC wedding world lacked all the edge, excitement, inspiration, style and cool that originally drew me to the city in the first place. I aspired to carve out a niche for brides-to-be who felt totally alienated from the whole puff, fluff and froufiness of already existing bridal market. And so Stone Fox Bride was born.

What else about me… I grew up in Chicago, fourth generation both sides. I live in Brooklyn with my husband Mike who is an editor and magazine writer and our baby daughter Sunny. I practice yoga regularly, am obsessed with wellness, dogs, travel, the beach, Isabel Marant, my friends, long lunches and good design.

You’ve stepped away from the traditional bridal look, why is that?

There’s nothing about the traditional bridal look that I identify with or relate to. After spending eight months navigating the NYC wedding world, I realized that it all felt boring and rote and blah. One big puffy, fluffy, frilly showroom after another. The wild, raw, dark, pure, beautiful, unpredictable, organic spirit of the city was confined to cool boutiques, none of which catered to the bridal market. Plus an entire diaspora of my female friends —  former party girls and hell raisers I called “stone foxes” — were, one by one, moving into unchartered married territory. I wanted to honor my friends and the NYC I know and love. When I was planning my wedding, everywhere I went, and every person I talked to, had the same old-fashioned, un-cool idea of what a wedding was: A showy, theatrical display of big dresses and bad hair. Nothing beautiful, stylish or poetic about it. The whole thing made me feel like I like I didn’t know anything about love. But that’s not true. I know what love is — what it looks like, feels like — I know it because I found it three years ago. And I haven’t let go of it since. I founded Stone Fox Bride to liberate other women from the tyranny of the perfectly sanitized, storybook wedding.  From synthetic hair and flowers, hysterical bridesmaids, insane mother-in-laws and puff, fluff and phoniness. I don’t expect the world to be free of confusion, shades of gray or cellulite. I’m an imperfect person; you’re are imperfect person. Our imperfections is where our beauty and truth lies. I think few things in life are worse than sacrificing your personal style to please other people. I believe that love —  just like marriage — is beautiful, messy and complicated.  And that weddings are as raw, felt and real as any true art form.

To put is simply — the meringue frocks, the Vanna White makeup, the stiff flowers and the overall Kim Kardashian-ness of it all is and was everything I wanted to stay far from. My goal is to offer Stone Fox Brides a space to discover their raw, untamed, full-blooded wedding style, and to honor the style and imagination of Stone Foxes everywhere.   

You have some great concepts going on, like the dream catchers and the amazing veils – can you tell us a little about them?
Our veils were designed by a member of the Stone Fox Team, Gabrielle Damico — the Head of Showroom and Merchandising. Her collection is called Le Paola Peu and is inspired by by a wide range of designers, books, concepts, etc including: the femininity of Valentino, the avante-gardness-but-lack-of-pretention of Rodarte, Sylvia Plath’s fiction, poetry and ability to create magic in every mundane detail, the bizarre beauty of Wes Anderson films, vintage dresses, antique French lace, Moroccan  hand beadings and embroidery, fresh flowers including wild garden roses, vibrant peonies, poppies with deep fig tones like black irises, air plants, succulents and “my mom — whose name Paola has inspired my collection because she is one of the most free thinking, stylish, and gorgeous woman I know who has always radiated a level of class, sophistication and style without ever having to try.”

The dream catchers were made by an amazing company called Land Rich. They work with us to create custom dream catchers for brides-to-be who are looking for some sort of spiritual talisman to guide them through the marriage process; they recently collaborated with a client who wanted a dream catcher to help her manifest peace, professional prosperity, romantic love and commitment, satisfaction and order, so together they chose a mix of fabrics, stones and crystals that reflected her vision. Everything in our showroom is for sale and has been designed and curated by Interior Architect Peter Staley (designer of Sweet William and The Future Perfect) who created a mellow, punk-bohemian sanctuary filled with reclaimed wood tables embedded with secret nooks, stones, branches and succulence, ottomans covered in Moroccan textiles, and a bedouin tent (covered in sequins, silk, and silver tassels created by Confetti System) that doubles as a dressing room; photographer Stacey Mark (Purple, Self Service) who curates — on an ongoing basis — a gallery of paintings, collages and photographs created by some of the city’s top artists,  and downtown florist extraordinaire Taylor Patterson who, once a week, replenishes our supply of wild poppies, corral plants, pineapple lillies, gloriosa, tropical bromeliad, desert jade and branches of quince. We encourage all our clients to lounge, drink tea, eat snacks, flip through fashion magazines for inspiration,  listen to good music and  find the creative space they need to explore their truth and style.

We loved the mood boards you had hanging up, how do you get inspired?
I believe really strongly that inspiration can be culled from anywhere — dreams, driving, travel, in bathtubs, on long walks, from magazines, blogs, random objects, random people, books, conversations with strangers, exercise, food, etc, etc. In graduate school I used to spend hours and hours pulling pages from magazines, cutting out words from books, collecting random objects from around the city (feathers, coasters, restaurants napkins, etc) and arranging them in books and boxes and bulletin boards trying to find patterns and colors that would inspire stories and/characters. I encourage my staff to do the same thing. Each Wednesday we have an “inspiration” meeting where we bring as many objects/tears/pages/ideas as we’ve gathered in the past seven days and talk about what’s on our mind, what creative ideas we’ve had lately and how we can apply them to the brand. The mood board that’s hanging in our showroom is one of a bazillion collages we’ve created and archived in the past year — we have eighteen months worth of them that we’ve scanned, organized and stored in our files.

And lastly what’s next for Stone Fox Bride?
We’re launching our website next month, including our “Weddings We Love” feature where we document some of the coolest, edgiest and most original weddings around (Cynthia Rowley’s, Richard Kern’s, and KT Auleta’s, to name a few)— in addition, our blog is also going live which will feature a series of conversations, stories, pictures and service tips from some of the most stylish and smart Stone Foxes around including a wide range of designers, artists and NYC personalities. We will be launching E-Commerce soon in addition to rolling out our own line of dresses soon that can be customized according to each bride-to-be’s vision.
We’re working with an amazing crop of new designers who are creating a whole bunch of new custom wedding dresses for us — the lineup is very exciting which we will announce soon. Stone Fox Groom and Stone Fox Mama are also on the horizon!

Go here to visit Stone Fox Bride and Check out our brand new Limited Edition Dress and Special Occasions Dresses

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megan
11 years ago

Everything seems so beautiful…although i am already married, i can’t wait till their website is ready and up so i can take a look at all the wonderful stuff..maybe a renewal of the vows is in my near future :)

Alexis
11 years ago

This post was so inspiring to me! Thank you so much for featuring such raw and uniquely beautiful people and their stories. Its nice to finally see new perspectives and ideas developing in the bridal industry.

julie
10 years ago

she is such a phony. and that store is a joke. over priced bridal stuff just like saks and the other brands already out there. and there is nothing easy going or low key about them. they try to push everything on you and feel like shady used car salesman but with a pretty hippie style

Sara
10 years ago

Shut it Julie.

emily
9 years ago

Shut it Sara.

Anna
8 years ago

Anyone looking to breast feed or pump in the area please stop in her store. She will definitely stop what she is doing and offer you her seat at her desk.

7 years ago

Everything seems so beautiful.