Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.
“Girlboss” is practically a dirty word nowadays, but it’s a label worth revisiting for Sam Abrahart.
Even if you’re unfamiliar with Abrahart, you’ve probably seen her company, The Mayfair Group, on your Instagram feed—it’s the label behind those “Empathy” sweatsuits that have become so popular. And while at first glance, she could seem like another social media It girl, if you look closer, her story might give you hope for the next generation of leaders.
As a business owner, she’s philanthropic. As a boss, she’s empathetic. As an influencer, she’s intentional. But most of all, Abrahart is profoundly human. She carries around a leather-bound journal in case a mantra or affirmation strikes. (These may later end up on Mayfair’s Instagram grid or embroidered into apparel, sayings like “Being human is hard, please be kind,” “Burnout is real, take time to heal,” or my personal favorite, “BRB Sobbing.”) She meditates, she heals her inner child, and all the while, she runs a clothing-slash-social media brand with more than half a million followers. In her words, though, it’s not a brand. “We were a community first,” Abrahart tells ELLE.com. “That’s still how we see ourselves.”
Abrahart, 33, first started building said community from a place of loneliness. Her mental health worsened throughout college and in the years after, when she began working in the fashion industry in wholesaling, PR, and social media. Scared to accept a potential diagnosis, she stayed in denial for seven years, until one day in 2016, she couldn’t avoid reality any longer. So she left her job, moved to Arizona, and amid a breakdown, admitted it was finally time to get help.
“Through that year of total darkness, I would go online and be like, where is the community for this?” she says. She observed that, maybe, mental health conversations just weren’t being marketed as well as they could be. Although informative, there’s nothing particularly sexy about the content from clinical resources like the Mental Health Coalition or the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “I wondered, ‘What if we could take these messages but make it digestible, so people can see it in their daily lives and feel reassured?’” she says. Thus, The Mayfair Group was born. (The name, if you were wondering, comes from the London nightclub where her parents met.)
This content is imported from instagram. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0cGfuiJKtF/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=13&wp=607&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.elle.com&rp=%2Ffashion%2Fpersonal-style%2Fa46244445%2Fthe-mayfair-group-sam-abrahart-interview%2F#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A5785.599999904633%7D
