A NEVERWORNS Episode with Mellany Sanchez
A NEVERWORNS Episode with Mellany Sanchez
The consultant and stylist, who has worked with everyone from Drake to Vogue, talks about the pieces she's never worn in her wardrobe and why.
Today on #NEVERWORNS, I’m sharing the episode with Mellany Sanchez. I’m in awe of this woman, so much that I let this episode run longer than usual. Watch the Mellany’s episode at the end and learn a bit more about her below. As always, subscribe, watch the NEVERWORNS channel, and stay tuned for guests’s drops on neverworns.net.
I first met Mellany Sanchez in 2016 when baby-me did a Vogue story about her shopping at her favorite downtown jeweler, Jane of New Top on 185 Centre Street. Mellany has always been decked out in gold: a nameplate, a handful of hoops. After all, she had been buying gold in New York City since she was a kid—born and bred in Bushwick—and had a lot to say about it. After the shoot, Mellany and I became friends and I have been following her work ever since.
A bit about her: Mellany grew up working retail at the now-closed David Z sneaker store during the rubber sole heyday of Broadway in Soho, eventually leaving to work for the streetwear label Kith in its conception years from 2013 to 2016. From there, she began her freelance life and spent a year doing special projects at Vogue until she got a call in 2017 from Drake. She transformed Drake, putting our brolic Loverboy in the sleekest Brioni suits and the softest Loro Piana cashmere turtlenecks.
You can see her influence in the years she worked with the artist. I specifically remember when she commissioned the legendary hip hop photographer Jamil GS, who captured the likes of Jay Z and Mos Def, to shoot Drake. Mellany knows her references and does her research: Having an original like Jamil GS photograph Drake means something and shows the rapper through a historical lens. In a photo series in which their team went down to Turks and Caicos, Jamil GS got a stellar photo of Drake in an old money country club, sitting between two dweeby men: one in a striped polo and the other in a pineapple print camp shirt. The men’s unassuming doofiness is an I’m-loaded signifier; a code for unbothered wealth. Meanwhile, Drake looks manicured, wearing his lint-rolled black Nike polo with that delicious swoosh. But he was wearing a visor with sunglasses perched on the brim, which felt like a funny choice, maybe something that a loaded suburban Alpha dad would wear on his head. Yet, Drake looked incredible, brimming with testosterone-drenched energy in that sunglasses-visor mashup, an out-of-context accessory that was fit for a guy steering a John Deere lawn mower and certainly not for the crown of the most popular crooner of the rap world. In a way, Drake even blended in with his two unassuming bar neighbors but looked the most powerful he’s ever looked. That was the purpose as Mellany explained to me in a text, “When you’re rich and you can do that.”
Mellany has a way of world building that is rare because she bases an aspirational universe off of the tiniest details—a visor and sunglasses!—which informs both her personal style and her projects. We’ve had hour-long conversations about how women hold bags and the way a heel sounds when it hits the floor. It’s those details that do not only define a person’s look but how they move about life. (A shoe on the ground means, “I'm here.” Holding a bag in the hand means, “I can afford to have only one hand free”). This hyper focus on the details trickles into how Mellany creates images and views the world, transforming the smallest slices of an outfit the most important elements.
Here, watch her #NEVERWORNS video.