Tag Archives: Molly Hays

Helen Nurse’s Parlour of Style – TracyChambers Vintage

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Words by Molly Hays
Photography by Jacklyn Greenberg

Many a woman working from home soon finds her professional life elbowing in on her dining room. Rare, though, is the entrepreneur that converts her dining room into a retail space, sets regular business hours, and opens up her home to the public. Meet Helen Nurse, founder and proprietress of New York’s TracyChambers Vintage: determined, creative, and—yes—rare.

In early 2012, Nurse spied a market gap in affordable vintage clothing and so set out to rent a storefront, only to learn that rents in her Brooklyn neighborhood were sky-high. Beyond-reach sky-high. Most aspiring entrepreneurs would have shelved their idea as unfeasible and moved on. But not Helen. She redoubled her efforts, revisited her options, and arrived at an elegant, if unconventional, solution.

In March of that year, she opened a vintage clothing boutique very close to home. In her home, actually.

Impeccable

Helen credits her grandmother with her lifelong love of vintage. “My grandmother didn’t have very much money; she had just a few things. But the quality of her clothing was amazing. Every time she went out, she looked impeccable.”

Fast forward a few decades, and here is Helen Nurse, mom to three young kids, former Event Planner, fashion-aficionado, and enterprising eye which sees both the value in that storied craftsmanship, and the demand for vintage that fits Everywoman. “I choose vintage based on real women’s bodies,” she explains, an exercise in editorial purchasing that yields styles women can actually wear.

She started small, testing the waters, selling her collection at street fairs on weekends. The response was good, but with young children in tow, ages 3, 2 and 1, the hours and impact weren’t worth it. The seed, however, had been sown. And the concept, proven.

And so, caught between prohibitive rents and family demands, Nurse paved herself a third way. Noting how many brownstones in her neighborhood already sported ground floor businesses, she pitched the idea of transforming their little-used, street-level dining room into retail space. Her executive board—a.k.a., her family—assented. TracyChambers Vintage, named after Diana Ross’s enterprising, ambitious, impeccably dressed character in Mahogany, was off and running.

To read more about TracyChambers Vintage, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Heart and Soule

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Words by Molly Hays
Photography by Steve Soule

Writers, accountants, lawyers, artists: there are as many work-from-home arrangements as there are home-based workers. Still, few have masterfully integrated work and home as organically as author, mother, magazine founder, and master blogger Amanda Soule.

As followers of Amanda’s widely-read and deeply-admired blog SouleMama know, she has built a career around home: its pleasures, graces, challenges, rewards, and, above all, its enduring importance. When she launched her blog over a decade ago Amanda was a young mother, at home all day with two young boys, seeking a creative outlet. It was “just a way…to have something tangible at the end of the day.” Fast-forward eleven years, and Amanda’s daily life looks significantly different, with five kids, ages 3-14; three books; one quarterly magazine; an international following; and farm animals beyond count.

Still, the heartbeat of her work hasn’t wavered. In print and online, Amanda explores everything from hand-plucking hornworms, to honoring kids’ art, to making muffins from leftover oatmeal. All the while eloquently re-defining home, not as edifice or landing pad but as vital, essential source of comfort, creativity and potential.

All from within the four walls she calls “home.”

To read more about Amanda, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Brian Hersch: The Guy Feature

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Interview by Molly Hays
Photography by Mariah Shope

Hersch, whose wildly entertaining word game Taboo has sold 20 million copies (and counting) is founder and General Partner—and chief game guru—of Hersch and Company. His eponymous game design firm is heading into its third decade, boasts a backlist well in excess of 40 titles, and has booked retail sales north of $850 million. The man knows how to make play pay.

Fun and games aside, Hersch takes the business of play seriously. His back story certainly figures in. From a first career in real estate development, Hersch made the unorthodox jump to game design after recognizing a huge untapped market. Thirty years later, he continues to develop hit titles and successfully navigate a wildly dynamic gaming landscape. Here’s his story.

To read more about Brian Hersch and Taboo, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Soar: The Misty Copeland Story

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Words by Molly Hays
Photography by Jacklyn Greenberg

“I’ll bet you didn’t know that I could fly,” Misty Copeland writes in Life in Motion, her recently released memoir. “I can bounce into the air, then float there a little while before lighting, softly, on the stage.”

Simple, no?

But, of course, we all know that ballet is the art of rendering the excruciating, effortless; the utterly grueling, exquisitely graceful. And this for the ordinary ballerina. Misty Copeland, described by many accounts as the first African American female soloist for the American Ballet Theatre, is anything but ordinary, even in the extraordinary world of classical ballet.

Packing, Scrambling, Leaving
In the rarefied world of classical ballet, there’s no one path to the top. Still, Copeland’s road stands among the least traveled.

The fourth of six children, Misty Copeland was born into a family as tight-knit as it was itinerant. From age two, Copeland writes, when “my mom squeezed our lives onto a bus headed west, our family began a pattern that would define my siblings’ and my childhood: packing, scrambling, leaving—often barely surviving.” Dramatic? Yes. Though the next sixteen years would only prove more so.

To read more about Misty Copeland, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Mad Success: Lucinda Scala Quinn on Management, Martha, Motherhood, Men, and Improvising a Life

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Words by Molly Hays
Photography by Jacklyn Greenberg

If a proper success story should read like a résumé, all steady build and single-minded trajectory, don’t tell Lucinda Scala Quinn. In 2000, she was home full-time with her three young sons, “fully immersed in motherhood.” Today, she’s a four-time author, entrepreneur, television host, and Executive Food Editor at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. “My life has really been an improvisation,” she says. Clearly, this hasn’t been an issue.
In the Beginning
Looking back, it’s easy to see the underpinnings of Scala Quinn’s success. Growing up, good homemade food was the norm, and the glue that gathered extended family together. “I was in an environment that felt good. I felt safe and secure and nourished.” Add to that the “social interactions with multiple relatives, and it just felt amazing to be IN it.”
Small surprise, then, that she began cooking professionally as a teenager. She enjoyed it, excelled at it, moved to New York to pursue it, and then? Walked away. When her sons were born—she has three, Calder (26), Miles (22), and Luca (19)—she switched gears. “I just had this gut sense that I really needed to be rooted where I was.” Freelance writing and odd catering gigs aside, she left the fast track to be home with her boys.

It wasn’t easy.

To read the rest of the article, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here