More than a look—style is a story. Celebrity stylist Mickey Freeman has spent his career telling stories through fashion, connection, and care. Now he’s focused on legacy. We are reporting live from an uber black on the East Side Highway in route to the Bronx and Banco Fall/ Winter 2025 show....
- Ready?
- Mhmm
- OK, what's your name?
- Mickey Freeman, AKA Mickey Boom
- What do you do?
- I'm a celebrity fashion stylist and editor.
- Okay, what is style to you?
- Well, style is whatever you want it to be. In terms of sartorial expression, you know. Whatever you're vibing on.
- Cool. So, what do you do? What does a stylist do?
- Well, a stylist they don't just pick up clothes and put clothes on people. They actually curate experiences through fashion and a lot comes along with that. There's a lot of planning, organizing, gathering, a lot of collaboration. Collaboration of the minds, fashion minds, fashion, art creativity. So many moving parts to it. I couldn't just sum it up in just one answer.
- How'd you get here? How did you get into styling?
- Work, hard work... lots of hard work.
- So if a client comes to you and says I have this thing coming up, where do you start? How do you get the person into the right outfit for the event? How do you make it happen?
- First I find out about them, their story, you know, why are they even interested in fashion styling. Or why are they even seeking out to have a fashion stylist, come into their lives? So it's really about them first.
- What's your day to day like?
- My day to day is actually walking around the city window shopping, reading about fashion, studying fashion. Actually, my life is all about fashion, and that sounds really kind of cliché because I'm a fashion professional, but really, I literally eat and breathe and don’t sleep over this world.
- Obsess over it in a healthy way.
- Absolutely, for sure.
- Do you have a crazy styling story or just something memorable from over the years that, really sticks out?
- Oh my God, there's so many. One that I can think of, oh man. I could say I had to dress a client for I think it was the Emmys and the dress came. She decided she was not gonna attend for work reasons; she had other commitments. And then last minute the day of the show, I got a call, but since I didn't think I was actually going to be doing the event, I decided to sleep in and put my phone on do not disturb. So I woke up to like 100 missed calls and texts from her PR team, managers, my agents and the client asking where are you. I was able to get to her with the dress in time and she didn't miss the carpet. In the end, we were on best dressed. So that was a crazy experience.
- Awesome. That's incredible. What inspires you to keep going after all these years?
- What inspires me is, touching lives. People don't think that you can actually touch lives through fashion, but it's really a thing. You know, we're really not just styling, we're also therapists and friends, best friends, and family to a lot of our clients. We form bonds that, you know, go beyond just fashion. It's relationship building, confidant, confidence building.
- Connection.
- Connection, there we go. Thank you, Dean.
- What is next for Mickey?
- What's next is I'm going to start bringing on younger artists and talent in fashion, so they can start shining. It's about the next generation, and I'm actually gonna start doing more creative direction and production. I'll let more younger stylists come in and do the styling.
- Cool so like opening up the world, creating more..... Lastly, if I wanted to be a stylist today, what are the best steps I could take or, what would you suggest, how can one best position themself, to start being a stylist?
- I would say making great connections with other great artists in fashion. You can do that by social media, utilizing social media, TikTok, Instagram. Nowadays you can just start your own style styling projects and post on social media to get the attention of those people you want to work with. People actually just want to see that you're hungry and putting in work. That's where it really starts. You got to put the work in. And if people are seeing you putting the work in and they see you have some talent, they'll bring you on.
- Amen. Thank you. ON EST LÀ
