Fashion

Jessica Svoboda Reveals Her Hopes and Jeans

April 15, 2011 / 1 Comment

California-based denim designer Jessica Svoboda is loved by women worldwide for her amazing jeans for the curvier figure. She and Anna Scholz have collaborated on jeans designs in the past, and she runs her own popular website, svobodastyle.com.

Here she gives us the skinny on the woman behind the perfect plus-size jeans.

What is your favourite part of your body?

My brain

What superpower would you like to possess?

I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but I really wish I was a whiz at math.  Does that count?

Jessica Oscars : favourite male actor / favourite female actress?

To be honest, I am tired talking about actors & actresses.  There are amazing men and women doing things we never get to hear about – men and women who are creating, thinking, and making advances far more important to the world and its future than entertaining the masses. But we don’t have the pleasure of being exposed to or inspired by these men and women, because the press is too busy covering the latest celebrity divorce, breakdown, etc.  I think it is time they focus on the real life stories, real people, and not just regurgitate the stars’ press releases.

Which living person do you most admire and why?

Oprah.  I think “why” is self-explanatory.

Where will you be in 5 years?

I’d love to say that I have a 5-year plan; but 5 years ago I couldn’t have planned where I was going to be today, and I don’t think I should put a limit on what the next 5 years will bring.

Who is your favourite designer?

Probably you! It is very hard for me to choose a designer outside the plus-size realm, because it is all I get to really experience.

What is your favourite movie?

Dances with Wolves

What is your favourite restaurant?

This is a hard one, there are so many. Urth Café in West Hollywood – I frequent it often enough.

What is your favourite song?

I love indie music. I tend to prefer smooth female voices or solo male guitarists. Right now, I am listening to: “I’m Gone” by Sumter Pendergrast and “Star Fucker” by Ninja Betty and the Nunchix (a group headed by my friend Natalie Ferraro).

What trait do you most dislike/ like about yourself?

These two go hand and hand.  What I dislike about myself is that I am a slight procrastinator.  The thing I most like about myself is that once I have committed, I am able to pull off, in short time, what others could never with a ton of planning.

What has been your greatest achievement?

I would hope I haven’t achieved it, yet.

What is your greatest fear?

Most fears are irrational, but death (of yourself or your loved ones) can only be delayed (not eliminated entirely) – so why fear it, right?

What makes you sad?

A person with without hope, dreams or a life to truly call their own.  i.e., children sold into slavery, women married off to old men when they hit puberty.

Heels or flats?

Heels on everyone else. Flats on me.  Is that fair to say?  Visually, I love the concept of heels, but there came a point in my early 30s when I could no longer stand to wear heels.  In fact, I simply refuse.

Black or white?

Shades of ivory, grey and brown – in clothing, and in life – because it is in these colors where everything is possible and nothing is absolute.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

That no one is ever defined by or limited to our past.  In this global, digital world, absolutely anything can happen.  You can reinvent yourself or be obsolete in less than 3 months.

How would you like to be remembered?

An imperfect person with perfect intentions.

How do you relax?

A $125 aroma therapy scrub massage from my favorite Korean Spa!

What has been your biggest disappointment? Your happiest moment?

It is a funny thing.  I don’t really remember the lows or highs.  To be honest, I can’t think of one – either way.

Have you ever said ‘I love you’ and not meant it?

No. It may be that I say “I love you” often and to many people, but love is something I give away pretty freely – so, in that very moment, if even only for a fleeing second, my love is true; it’s mine to give and I am giving it to the person with whom I am offering those three words.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

The freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want.

Where would you like to be right now?

I guess where I am.

What do you appreciate most in your friends?

Intense intelligence. Brutal honesty.  The ability to share and listen openly, in a non-judgmental way. Loyalty. Affection.

What is your idea of happiness?

A quiet evening on the patio of my parents’ lakefront home in Minnesota.  Great food, wine and conversation surrounded by the sunset, my parents, my husband, my siblings and the ones we love.  Absolute bliss are the nights when dinner is followed by songs and s’mores around a beach bonfire.

If not yourself who would you like to be?

I would love to be someone brilliant like Bill Gates. Someone influential like Oprah.  I also think I would have found being Condoleezza Rice or Hillary Clinton (during their time as the Secretary of State) pretty damn interesting.