Today we’d like to introduce you to Haya Zoubi.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My early childhood consisted of moving around different parts of the world which greatly influenced my worldview and love of travel and art. I was born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia and then we lived in New York City, Riyadh Saudia Arabia, Memphis Tennessee,
Jonesboro Arkansas, and finally the valley of the sun: Arizona which is where my late childhood and teen years were spent.
From a young age, I always knew I wanted to move to Los Angeles and I finally did and attended FIDM. While attending fashion school, I interned for Los Angeles Confidential Magazine, Studio Number One (Shepard Fairey) and New Image Art.
Also, while attending FIDM, I took on assistant stylist and fashion show production jobs for experience and extra money. One of my most memorable fashion show production gigs was for Giorgio Armani’s induction into the Rodeo Walk of Style.This was 2004 when literally every envelope/event in Los Angeles had Paris Hilton as a guest and the Armani Walk of Style induction was no exception.
After assisting stylists including Alejandro Peraza, Jessica Paster, Fati Parsia, Megan Ross and Bobette Cohn, I decided that the grunt work around assistant fashion styling just wasn’t for me. So I got a job at Pierra Blodwell’s PRB PR to learn how fashion/wardrobe PR works in LA alongside the ins and outs of running a showroom and pitching clients to stylists and press.
After less than a year at PRB, I decided to go at it on my own and freelance by offering boutique PR services. I procured press mainly for jewelry and accessories clients on the E! Channel, the cover of Oprah Mag, InStyle, Lucky, Daily Candy and more. This was in the age when print was still a queen about to be demoted to princess before completely relinquishing to online media.
The cover of Oprah for my client at the time, Melanie Auld Designs was particularly exciting. It was a photo of Oprah wearing a ring by Melanie Auld Designs while sitting at a breakfast table and enjoying a cup of coffee. The ring was highlighted by Oprah holding the coffee mug close to her beautiful face. I was able to see first hand how the “Oprah Effect” worked because Melanie Auld Designs really grew in the years following that cover.
While doing freelance PR, I also started a travel blog called Swell City Guide. This was before Instagram turned everyone and their cat & dog into influencers and so what I was doing at the time was considered more unique then than it is now. Through blogging, I traveled a great deal between LA, NYC, Paris, London and sometimes Barcelona. Mark the Cobrasnake and Steve Aoki both blogged hotel reviews for Swell City Guide and then shared it with their followers on Twitter which really helped grow the blog. I met the photographer/blogger Facehunter (Yvan Rodic) outside the Barbara Bui fashion show in Paris and he ended up contributing hotel reviews to Swell City Guide before we decided to collaborate with me working as his manager and liaising with brands that were hiring him at the time which included Volvo, W Hotels, Esprit, Toni & Guy, Urban Outfitters and many more.
One of the best gigs that I landed for Facehunter was a sponsored trip around the world via Esprit Clothing. The project consisted of Yvan shooting ten stylish men & women in 6 cities and posing the question, “What is your wish for the world”. We traveled to Berlin, Shanghai, Sydney, Los Angeles, NYC and London all in the span of less than 23 days, shooting a total of 60 people and the whole trip was captured by a cinematographer who came along This whirlwind trip was one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life in that I met so many people in so many different places in such a small span of time.
Throughout all the experience I was gaining I always loved to document and take photos. My love for photography went all the way back to when my parents owned a photo mat in the 80’s. In recent years I made a change from offering freelance PR/management to content creation and photography.
I lean most towards shooting with film, but I also can shoot digital if needed. I shot a social media campaign for Jakett New York in 2019 which consisted of shooting various influencers wearing Jakett’s leather jackets in Los Angeles, NYC, Paris and Barcelona. Each influencer would be shot with an iconic background and my rule was always one roll of film/36 frames for each person/jacket.
When the pandemic hit in March 2020 my ongoing life as a traveler stopped abruptly. I settled into an apartment in Silver Lake and decided to start my own candle line. I love candles, I love beautiful scents and I love photography so the goal with this has been to merge all of these things into one.
After many months of scent blending and candle testing followed by a brand incubation period, I am now shooting my candles and plan on releasing them at the end of November 2020.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think that the majority of obstacles that I’ve had were put there by me. I’m not sure why, as humans some of us tend to do this, but when things seem to be going too smoothly, one may add in an obstacle or two in their own path in order to make things more difficult. It is asinine and It makes absolutely no sense but it happens and I’m sure there are some people out there who can relate. The only benefit of self-sabotage might be that if one doesn’t have things come too easy, it can help sharpen critical thinking thanks to the extra brain power you need to lend to a situation. But it’s also possible that the benefits of self-sabotage are outweighed by the negatives, though this all depends on what the ends to the means are. Luckily, I have found myself outgrowing this phase which I believe means the future is much more wide open.
Gone Bazaar – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I think aesthetic wise what sets me apart is my love of 35mm film and saturated colors, especially the color red.
I started Gone Bazaar in 2014 with two friends in Brooklyn shortly after selling my old blog Swell City Guide.The two of them were a couple, One wrote for Reuters and the other was a corporate fashion designer and yogini/pole dancer. All three of us had a love for all things Jack Kerouac/Beat Generation. The words “Gone Bazaar” were inspired by beat slang used in On The Road, specifically “Gone”.. which is also a slang term heard in a few T-Rex songs.
Gone Bazaar in its first incarnation was “The Gone Cat” but after the couple split up, they let me keep The Gone Cat and I changed the name to Gone Bazaar. I used it as a vehicle for pop up shops, blogging, interviewing artists and displaying my work. Most recently with the upcoming launch of my candles, I am turning Gone Bazaar into an e commerce site and keeping the old blog on it. I am basically tying in all the aspects of my work that have brought me to this point as a candle maker.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I can’t say that I have one intensely proud moment. I think that when I look back over the past 17 years since I first moved to Los Angeles, I am most proud of the fact that I’ve had such a wide variety of experiences. It’s like the old saying “The best part is not being at the Inn, it’s what happens on the road there”. or something like that. I guess if I were to say one thing that I’ve felt proud of was this one time when a young man almost walked into a huge oncoming dump truck but I quickly pulled him backward and away from getting mauled by that truck. It was a super busy street in SOHO, NY and a mob of people standing nearby looked at him and I in shock and awe because I possibly saved his life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gonebazaar.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/gonebazaar
Image Credit:
Picture of me taken by @RomyVitelli; The rest of the photos taken by Haya Zoubi
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