by Lorelei Marfil

Elizabeth in the Pop-Up Shop

Wanderlust, a popular shopping hotspot in Cambodia set foot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with its first pop-up shop. From cool retro Cambodian pop music to Wanderlust staples, shoppers experienced a little taste of Southeast Asian culture. No passport required!

Before setting up shop in Siem Riep, Cambodia, the store’s owner, Elizabeth Kiester, made her mark in fashion. A former fashion director and editor for magazines like YM, Jane and Marie Claire, she was tapped to be the global trend/concept director for Abercrombie and Fitch and then the global creative director for LeSportsac where she developed the Stella McCartney for LeSportsac collaboration.

Her fashion credentials also include a stylist and brand consultant to brands like BCBG Max Azria, Gap and J. Crew. We asked Keister about her daily routine, her career in fashion and what’s on her inspiration board. Here’s what she had to say.

Blush: Take us through a day in the life of Elizabeth Kiester.

Elizabeth Kiester: Cambodia is a land of opportunities–it’s a big, wide open world there–but you must remember that this country has suffered through decades of wars, strife and serious hardships and is just getting back on their collective feet. So everything is new, never been done before, an awakening, which is extraordinary and illuminating and thrilling but can also present enormous challenges and obstacles us westerners never ever could anticipate. So every day is a brand new day for me–no routines, no lunch at 1pm, no real plan. I have learned–and still am–how to be nimble, patient and reactive. You can’t be proactive, necessarily! There are days when we have power outages for no explainable reason, days when I cannot navigate through the language or cultural barriers and have to start all over again. And we are a very small team, so we all do everything. No divas, no ‘that’s not my job.’ One minute I am training my shop girls on new styles and how to wear them, and one second later I am writing copy for the website, and in a flash I am reviewing fabrics and buttons and then I find myself in a tuk-tuk going out to see the new scarves that are being woven 10k away in the middle of the rice paddy only to come back and start packing boxes to be shipped for the U.S. The phone never stops ringing, the inbox is never empty. I work at minimum six days a week, at least 12 hours a day. I am trying to give myself Sundays off, to sit by the pool at my friend’s glorious boutique hotel and regroup and refresh! But this is what it’s like owning and starting your own business. You do it all. (more…)