By Katie Pelech
Photographs by Frank Di Piazza
She’s an artist, a precocious painter whose work has been welcomed onto walls across the city. Her eye for color is impeccable. She’s a dancer who holds her own with the best of her generation, light and graceful on dainty feet. She rides horses and plays tennis. Her two dogs, maltipoos, are named Coco Chanel and Foxy Cleopatra, a nod to style icons past and present. She adores pink, and she likes to be color-coordinated (read: more pink). Who is this fetching creature, this modern-day Renaissance woman? An emerging socialite or budding scenester? Nope, she’s 11-year-old Sophie Moran. We sat down with the fashion icon-in-training to talk shop over popsicles.
What’s your favorite thing to wear? Hmm ... Maybe shirts. Any in particular? I wear short-sleeved shirts a lot. I see. So where do you get these shirts? What are your favorite stores? Usually what happens is my mom will go out shopping, and then she’ll bring something home and I can decide if it’s a keeper or not. But I go shopping with her a lot, too. I like Marshalls and T.J. Maxx, and maybe if I need clothes for tennis or sports, sometimes I can find some cool stuff at Target. Oh, and I like Limited Too. What else do you like to do, besides shopping? There’s this one game that I have on my computer. It’s about fashion. You get to pick out a shirt, then you can design your own fabrics and make your totally own outfit. And then you go to hair and then shoes. And then it goes to a stage and you get to pick out moves that they do on the stage. Are you interested in being a fashion designer? Oh yeah. I got this dress form for Christmas. And then I get fabrics, and I don’t really like to cut fabrics because then I feel like I’m wasting it, so what I do is, I’ll just fold it and do all kinds of stuff with it and make all different kinds of outfits with the dress form just by sticking pins in it. Your mom told me you’re pretty particular with your clothes. What things are you picky about? My socks have to be below my ankles. And I can’t stand when they’re too big for me. If they’re too big for me I have to store them for later. And you know what I really hate? You’ll see someone without shoes on, in their socks. And then you’ll see their socks pulled up, and you’ll see where the heel goes, and it’s all pulled up. And there’ll just be this big bump right on here [she gestures at the back of her ankle] and it just really bugs me. Do you ever dress up in your mom’s stuff? I get my mom’s crazy shoes and walk around in the house in them. She has this one pair of shoes, and I don’t know why she bought them because she doesn’t really like them. They’re really weird and not that stylish. They’re white and have layers of fur or something like that, but I like to walk around the house in them because they have a big heel. You like heels? Yeah. I have some shoes that have heels that light up. I wore my heels out in public once when we went out to dinner one night. So where would you shop if you were an adult? One shop that I like that has cute adult clothes is called Byrd. And there’s probably another shop that I like, too, but I can’t think of it right now.
