SARA ROTMAN ENTERS her office on Varick Street apologizing profusely, her toned, tattooed arms weighed down by shopping bags. “I’m so sorry I’m late!” she gushes. Her driver had refused to take her instructions to avoid rush hour (“Holy misogynistic cab driver, Batman!” she exclaims). Clearly, he messed with the wrong woman.
Rotman, the founder of branding and marketing firm MODCo Creative (which, naturally, stands for My Own Damn Company), is the design genius behind the Tory Burch logo, the revamped Circa ad campaign and Century 21’s push to reach the luxurious masses. Now she’s hard at work promoting Loquita, her own line of scarves and accessories inspired by the nickname bestowed upon Rotman by Argentine friends who taught her polo as a child.
“When I first started to play polo, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life,” she says. “I couldn’t get over it—the emerald fields, the horses, the tack, the poetry in motion, the players, the skill, the terror. I thought, ‘I want to wear something as beautiful as that,’ but there was nothing. So we just started designing.”
The line consists of beautiful scarves in bold colors and knits like cashmere. Our favorite: a gorgeous gray silk mesh covered in a black hand-drawn Victorian-inspired filigree design—with a particular vulgar phrase written in Gothic script. Because, as Rotman says, “It’s always good to have a little ‘f— you’ on the inside.” Available at H Groome, 9 Main St., Southampton, 204-0491; hgroomeonline.com
