We Are andi

As a group, we knew we wanted the magazine to have a short name. We sat down one afternoon and brainstormed like crazy, but nothing was clicking. We’d get close, but not close enough. Sort of like Goldilocks with her porridge. We were going back and forth, all contributing our fair share of mediocre ideas.

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We thought back to a previous conversation we had about starting the magazine and how it felt like destiny.

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Growing up, I loved the movie 13 Going on 30, and my dream was to be a magazine editor because the main character’s name was Jenna. At eight years old, that seemed like the most logical way to decide who I would be.

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Erin was in school to be a social worker when The Devil Wears Prada hit theatres. When she watched that movie, she was so inspired she dropped out of her social work program and switched to journalism. Talk about a main character moment. Now she’s a successful author and journalist.

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Andreja grew up loving the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, where both main characters, Benjamin Barry and Andie Anderson (wink wink), are columnists. She too had a writer’s vision for herself.

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I wrote down all three movies in my notebook and asked them both what they had in common, thinking maybe we could get somewhere. We discussed it a little, and after a few minutes of silence, Andreja blurted out:
“ANDI.”

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And all of us just nodded. That was it.

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Andrea (Andi for short) Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada and Andie Anderson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days were the common thread. We were all in agreement that this was the name. We liked the four-letter spelling of ‘andi’ and rolled with it.

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We explored it even more. Now that we had the name, we could start thinking more deeply about the brand.

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We started thinking about colours, and there’s this famous scene in The Devil Wears Prada. Miranda

(Meryl Streep) is styling a model when Andrea starts to laugh to herself, which angers Miranda. She turns her attention to the cerulean blue sweater Andrea is wearing and gives her a bit of history on the colour. Her point was that fashion is bigger than just clothes and colour. It has meaning, and it isn’t something to laugh at.

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We weren’t laughing either. And just like that, we had one of our colours: cerulean blue.

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We followed a similar pattern to decide on andi’s butter yellow.

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We all know that scene. Ben is picking up Andie for the Frost Yourself Jewelry Gala, and she stuns in a beautiful low-back butter yellow dress. That image of her spinning and looking back at Ben is frozen in my mind and my Pinterest board.

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And thank you to her, because now we had our name and the andi colours.

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The andi name and brand pays homage to the early 2000’s movies that link the 3 of us together and inspired us while growing up. Working on this magazine has felt like fulfilling a childhood dream, and we take so much joy in sharing that with you.  

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Love,

andi