Monah Li Is Back: New Line, Movie In Works
Monah Li
Monah Li had turned her back on fashion.
After a career made prominent by some appearances in some Los Angeles Fashion Weeks, her self named label seen on high profile people like Salma Hayek and Nicole Kidman, and launching the now inactive Coalition of Los Angeles Designers, she was going to drop it all to start a career in drug and alcohol counseling and writing. But that was in 2007.
Fast forward to the present, the Vienna-born Li is shopping her new women’s line Monah Li, she opened a Monah Li studio at the Tiziana boutique at 1766 N. Vermont Ave., located in Los Angeles’ Los Feliz neighborhood. Her creativity will not be limited to clothes. She also sold a screenplay on theL.A. fashion world called Fashion Slaves. It will be produced by independent film house BlancBiehn Productions this fall.
If the shift in gears sounds wild, perhaps we can make sense of it with this maxim. Like entertainment and politics, no one ever really leaves fashion.
“I really missed it,” Monah said. “I know I’m good at it.” Monah said about the schmatte biz.
Maybe we ought to call Monah’s break just a much needed vacation.
It started when she was not getting along with her business partners for the now defunct label Monahmour. Fashion was literally making her sick too. She was recovering from 19-years-of living with bulimia, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at a fashion magazine, what with all of the skinny models on those glossy pages.
She dropped her career to work on an alcohol and drug counseling certificate, to take writing classes at UCLA Extension, and to help ex-husband Jerry Stahl while he completed his novel Pain Killers.
The novel was published in 2009. But in 2010, she was divorced from Stahl. After earning her alcohol and drug counseling certificate, and doing a couple of counseling internships, the pull of fashion proved too strong to ignore.
She waded back into fashion by doing some freelance design for Bebe and later started work on the new Monah Li collection. It is a line of silk and rayon dresses with wholesale price points which range between $60 and $120. Monah called it sexy and romantic. They are good words to end any tumultuous story.
“I’m totally happy,” she said. ”Fashion together with the writing;it’s the best combination. I’m having the time of my life.”
