I recently sat down with Alisa Greenspan, the creator behind iEdit. Alisa spent years immersed in the high-stakes worlds of fashion PR and interior design, then owned an accessory and clothing showroom in the luxury and contemporary sector of the fashion industry. But now she spends her time doing a deeper dive into the creative psyche looking for the "nuggets"—those idiosyncratic details and deep-seated obsessions that make a person truly unique.
We had a great conversation and talked about her childhood growing up around inventors and art legends, the grit it takes to build a business, and her philosophy on "zigzagging"—the idea that passion isn't a straight line, but a series of brave pivots toward the things that actually light us up!
Full Interview Transcript
Krista: So good to have you here. I’m so excited to talk to you.
Alisa: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Krista: For those who don’t know you at all, I really want to start at the beginning... childhood! Can you take me back to the earliest days you remember art being a passion?
Alisa: Both my parents are physicians, and my mother’s always been heavily entrenched in the art world, especially with modern art and abstract expressionists. She was very interested in Jackson Pollock and Rauschenberg and de Kooning. One of the tales of the great artwork that got away was—when my mother was a writing intern at Scientific American in the city, Jackson Pollock visited the office. This is obviously pre-famous days. He brought in Blue Poles (or Number 11), which my mother was obsessed with. It was on sale for under $800. She begged her father to give her a loan, and he wouldn’t. In 2022, it was valued at $500 million.
Krista: Wow. Oh my gosh.
Alisa: It’s one of those crazy stories. I also found out that she spent a week going to Rauschenberg’s studio in Springs in the Hamptons. She just kind of knocked on the door. So I have these stories ingrained in me. Also, my father, as an inventor, was always creating things in the house—memories of inventing explosions going off and casting plaster and styrofoam. He was also obsessed with tree bark. Later on, I helped to market an invention of his.
Krista: You said you wanted me to tell the Calder story. Tell us who that is for people who don’t know.
Alisa: Alexander Calder, the amazing artist. He did sculptures, stabiles, and mobiles. We lived in the Philly area, and my mother took me to New York a lot to look at art. I was very pint-sized, like three or four years old. Calder was talking at the Whitney and there was this huge crowd gathered. He said, “I want to get an opinion from a child, from a burgeoning person who’s going to be unfiltered and pure”. He asked me what I thought of this painting, and I said, “To be honest with you, Mr. Calder, I find the colors a little clashing and the textures off”. The audience held their breath, like, I can’t believe this little twerp just insulted Alexander Calder. His response was, “You see, that’s why I love children. They’re unfiltered and honest and pure and just tell it like it is”. I don’t know if I actually remember that story or I’ve just heard it so many times because it’s my mom’s favorite.
Krista: What happened from the pint-sized you through college? What were you interested in then?
Alisa: I have to say, not so much art. I think it became either subconscious or unconscious, but it didn’t come to the surface again until after I graduated. I was on overdrive with it, going with my family a lot. But I still appreciated it—I spent a lot of time with my dad and he was always showing me his experiments. After my first real job in PR in New York, I did market an invention of his, which was really cool.
Krista: What was the invention?
Alisa: He developed this incredible technique that took natural materials like metal, ground stone, cement, and concrete, and he would sift it with natural pigments. He would attach it to a wall-covering substrate. It went on the wall like standard wall covering, but it was three-dimensional. It was called New Metal Surfaces and it won a lot of design awards. Some of the top designers loved it. We did Nobu in New York and Saks Fifth Avenue, a lot of retail and some residential.
Krista: When do you feel like you made art your own?
Alisa: I feel like it’s been a slow integration into different fields. After I worked with my father for 10 years, I decided to open up my own accessory and clothing showroom in the Flatiron District. I was kind of like a kamikaze pilot. I had been working stints in fashion PR and an accessory designer asked me to help her with a project. I got lucky and started working with some really amazing emerging talent. After my daughter, Lily, was born, I was working 60 or 70 hours a week and it wasn’t sustainable, so I sold the showroom. I still did consulting with different brands in fashion. During the pandemic, I created digital virtual pop-ups with some stores. Then I joined an organization called The Board, which is C-suite execs and entrepreneurs in fashion, beauty, and tech. Then I came up with this idea for my Substack, i/Edit.
Krista: Tell us about it.
Alisa: The whole idea was, you know, I kind of come from when magazines were like—people love to read them and touch the paper and the print. There’s this idea that there are all different types of now more digital, obviously, magazines in fashion and beauty and design and architecture and photography and food. My idea was, I feel like I’ve met so many different types of inspiring creatives throughout my many decades out of school and out of college. The idea was kind of to have creatives in one place, and to get intel from these creatives to see who their favorite creatives were. So kind of like creatives giving advice on interesting creatives. So a little bit in the weeds.
Krista: I love “in the weeds.”
Alisa: Yeah, I love it. I mean, I select these creatives and they’re all in these disparate fields from architecture to design, food, and beauty. Like some of the ones that come to mind—like my very first eye editor, Joanna Williams. I was obsessed with her for ages. She had—now she’s doing it online—but she had a brick-and-mortar store in LA called Kneeland Co. She is this just incredible master at finding vintage textiles and home goods and combining them with accessories, and just has this really incredible sense with color, design, texture, and how she combines it. So that was one I’ve worked with.
I’ve interviewed people in fashion like Tamu McPherson, who’s based in Milan, who is a brand ambassador. She had All the Pretty Birds, which was her site. On the beauty side, Jamie Rosen, who’s a pretty well-known beauty writer and editor. And Mariana Velasquez in the food world—she did Colombiana. And then, of course, April Uchitel, who started The Board. There’s just a whole range. Oh, and I have to mention Jenny Rosenstrach because she’s just an incredible food writer and started Dinner: A Love Story.
It’s just this—everybody has their own perspective. And to me, what defines an interesting creative is definitely not a mainstream person. Something is a little off, a little idiosyncratic in the best way, in how they express, how they combine, how they create. Usually they have a pretty singular perspective, but also a sense of humor, I would say too. They don’t take themselves too seriously, and that could be shown in their writing or their creativity. But yeah, and like, honestly, zero pretension. I’m not into that at all. That’s one of the things that I wanted to create—I wanted subscribers to get a sense of discovery and joy. I don’t want it to be very mainstream. Hopefully, I would love it if they’ve not heard of somebody. I mean, it could be somebody really well known like Jenny and Tamu, but they’re like also people that I’ve featured that are quite fringe in their areas but just so interesting to discover.
Krista: I have a few questions about this. One: how do you find the people?
Alisa: Great question. So we launched about a year ago. In the beginning, it was—I kind of, quote-unquote, “stockpiled” people I’ve been obsessed with. And I have to say, I thought the hardest part was going to be getting them to say yes, but they did. I mean, honestly, all but one person—and I’ve asked like 50 different people—have said yes. I think once they saw the quality of the first couple of interviews and they realized how I put things together with my editor and the graphics person, they realized, “Oh, okay. I might not know who Alisa Greenspan is, but her eye—she can select who to feature.” So it kind of went from there. Once they saw what I was doing, one person would recommend somebody else. Not everybody is a fit that was recommended, but yeah, it’s definitely through my lens.
Krista: That’s so cool. I find it very interesting because we have some similarities in our newsletters, because my newsletter is focused on passionate people. I’ve had a very similar experience reaching out to people. I think I’ve also gotten one “no.”
Alisa: Oh, that’s so funny.
Krista: Because people love to talk about what they love. It’s just so fun. And the interviews can be lighter and fun and everyone’s laughing. So that’s really cool to hear.
Alisa: Another person which was particularly interesting: Robyn Lea, a Melbourne-based photographer. She did a gorgeous deep dive into the hidden alleyways of Milan and where she got inspiration. And live illustrator Ali Rybczyk. That’s what I’m going for—getting these nuggets from the perspective of these creatives.
Krista: I’m going to ask you to get a little meta. What have you learned talking to all these people about sustaining passion or discovering something that you love?
Alisa: I feel like some creatives really stick to their lane—they are very consistent. Others are really zigging and zagging, constantly discovering new leaps they want to take creatively.
Krista: Where are you in that? Are you in one lane or do you zigzag?
Alisa: I zigzag because I like to be exposed to a lot of different things. As creatives evolve, their taste or direction can change. I find a lot of the creatives I’m featuring have had a lot of zigzags.
Krista: Do you feel like there’s usually a consistent umbrella theme?
Alisa: I feel like it could be more like a slow evolution than giant zigzags. But this idea that we don’t have to stay in one lane is much more accepted now. My career has always been in fashion, design, or PR, and now it’s a combination of all the things I’ve loved. I even dusted off that English degree.
Krista: Isn’t that cool when everything comes together?
Alisa: I try and tell my daughter that the first job doesn’t have to be the ultimate. You’re taking nuggets from everything. My first job, I had the worst boss possible, but I learned a ton—even if it was what not to do. Everything truly is a learning experience. You do things to figure out what you don’t want to do as much as what you do want to do.
Krista: How do you know when it is time to zag? To change?
Alisa: It is a feeling, but you also have to take action. If it kind of inside you and keeps presenting itself, you have to take action because feelings don’t necessarily make you act.
For me personally, sometimes I’ve stuck with something way too long because I didn’t want to give up. My kind of zigs and zags have been adjacent to these different creative fields. But I do think sometimes things pull at you and you have to be brave enough to take a chance. And sometimes, sometimes they fail, obviously. And sometimes they succeed. But it’s true. You’re always going to learn something
Krista: I have a tattoo on my arm that says “dream bigger.” I’m hoping it’s a reminder to myself and anyone else who sees it: keep dreaming.
PS. One tiny note from Krista related to the title of this post — if you haven’t read it, one of my favorite books is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. He talks a lot about the power of zigzagging and how all our passions and experiences add up to a slow evolution toward what truly resonates with us. It made me feel very seen when I first read it :)
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