When they met in middle school in Boston, Emily Bache and Abigail Breslin became fast friends who shared a passion for fashion. “We happened to be the same shoe and clothing size, so from the very beginning, we decided to share clothes,” says Breslin. “In order to have a bigger wardrobe, I'd buy the pants, she'd buy the top, and then we’d swap.”
That was 25 years ago. They have since turned their passion into a full-time career, and are known as The Wanderlust Girls. It all started with a blog they began in 2009 during their senior year of college. They were attending different schools - Bache in Long Island and Breslin in Florida - and wanted to share what they were wearing with each other.
“This was at the very beginning of blogs, and Instagram and Twitter didn't even exist yet,” says Bache. “I would make a post saying ‘Hey, I bought this dress, this is how I wore it, and you'll own it too when we reunite.’ Then Abigail would write back, and it was really just going back and forth.”
Someone who saw the blog remarked that other people were following them and they might want to do something more with it. The two already had a plan to move in together and live in New York City after graduation, and having a successful blog would open up
opportunities.
“We feel so comfortable together, and we're so ambitious together, so we were able to really throw ourselves into a city like New York and just figure out a way to be in the world of fashion,” Bache says. “We saw bloggers starting to go to Fashion Week and we wanted to go too.”
They emailed every single designer who was showing and all of their PR companies to introduce themselves, explain what they like to do and how many views their blog had. “We ended up covering 60 shows our first Fashion Week, which was wild.”
The two best friends started getting hired to write about products, cover events, style lookbooks and campaigns, and provide blog-related activities. “Clients liked the way we dressed and put together looks for our blog,” says Bache. “We then got hired by a big brand and knew we had to form a company.”
In 2011, they founded Wanderlust Fashion LLC. “We were watching this inspirational video, Wonderfully Lost in My Wanderlust, and we thought wanderlust was such a beautiful word,” says Breslin. “At first, we were Lovely Wanderlust, but we didn't feel like it really aligned with us. As fortune would have it, one of the street style photographers at Fashion Week forgot our name and instead called us The Wanderlust Girls, and we liked that so much better!”
When hired to promote a product or put together a wardrobe, they definitely do things their own way. “We're very big into storytelling,” she says. “We like themes, and we love to come up with concepts that are fun. We really like to make things a little bit dramatic and that have more heart than just a picture of something on a table. We come up with theatrical ideas that are a bit more unique.”
One day, they were hired by a videographer to do a creative video with beautiful flowing dresses on a rooftop. He asked them to find a designer and pull some pieces. “We ended up turning it into this very dramatic kind of Romeo and Juliet inspired modern day video,” says Bache. “It was really cool.”
The videographer posted the video all over social media. Shortly after, they were out in town when, from across the room, they saw a man looking at them. “He came up to us, and he asked if we were The Wanderlust Girls,” she says.” They quickly realized it was Logan Neitzel, who designed the dress that was used for the video. “He told us he loved the video and wanted to keep in touch and talk.” They did, and Neitzel ended up hiring them to style Macklemore for Saturday Night Live. “That's how we get a lot of our jobs - from people noticing us kind of stepping outside of the box and doing something that pushes things a bit or is a little more unique,” says Bache.
While living in New York, the two visited Nashville a couple of times. They ultimately fell in love with the city and decided to move here in 2017. “New York kind of lacked the luster that it had when we first moved there,” says Breslin. “It was a little too corporate and felt like a lot of the artists had left or were pushed out.”
They found their new circle in Nashville. “It seemed like everyone we met was a sculptor, a painter, a musician, or some other type of artist,” says Bache. “We were so excited to be surrounded by these super creative people.”
Today, The Wanderlust Girls have over 20,000 followers on Instagram and more than 50,000 across all social media. They are also writing a book about their experiences.
Over the years, instead of doing what everyone else is doing, they say they’ve really stayed true to themselves and their style. Their fans seem to appreciate that – some of their followers have been with them for 14 years. “People say they feel like they're friends with us,” says Bache.
TheWanderlustGirls.com
@WanderlustGirls