Leandra Medine

Early life and education

Medine was born on December 20, 1988 in Manhattan. Her father Mois Medine is of Turkish-Jewish descent, and her mother Lyora "Laura" Medine is of Iranian-Jewish descent. She grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household. She has three brothers: Haim, Henry, and Mark.

Medine attended the Ramaz School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She earned a bachelor's degree from the New School's Eugene Lang College, where she majored in journalism, graduating in May 2011.

Early career

Medine's first foray into online writing began in 2009, when she was a student at the New School. After studying abroad in Paris, Medine started a blog called Four Months in Paris using the hosting service Blogger. She later renamed it to Boogers and Bagels (stylized as Boogers + Bagels). The name of the blog arose from an anecdote that Medine shared on the blog. "I was enjoying the fantastic weather while looking devilishly handsome clad in a Madewell Chambray light wash shirt with ripped Levi's denim shorts.... Anyway, I stopped at Bagel Bob's to get a bagel and eat it in Washington Square Park. So I got it and I ate it and while I was eating it found a booger on my cream cheese. Boogers and bagels!"

The blog primarily covered fashion trends, humor, personal stories, and feminist issues. The blog's final post was published on April 19, 2010, shortly after the launch of Medine's second, and most famous, blog, the Man Repeller. Prior to the completion of Boogers + Bagels, Medine had started to incorporate "Man Repelling" terminology into her Boogers + Bagels blog posts, with articles titled "Daily Man Repeller" and "Man Repeller Du Jour."

Man Repeller

Medine started the Man Repeller blog in May 2010 as a hobby, blogging from her parents' apartment on the Upper East Side. The idea for the blog came during a trip to Topshop with friend Rachel Strugatz, now an online editor at Women's Wear Daily. Medine recalled, "We were laughing at how everything was so man-repelling: acid-washed harem pants and enormous shoulder pads, and I just said, 'That's it! That's the blog.'"

A few days after it launched, the Man Repeller was featured on the fashion website Refinery29. It quickly became popular enough that Medine began collaborating with major magazines like Lucky and Harper's Bazaar. The blog became so commercially successful through a combination of traditional advertising, sponsored blog posts, appearance fees, and designer collaborations that Medine decided to work on the blog full-time instead of pursuing a traditional career after graduation.

In its early years, the blog solely consisted of Medine. Now, she and five other full-time employees edit, write, and promote the website, working in an office in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan.

The Man Repeller also covers topics such as current events, lifestyle, and feminism. According to Medine, she never intended the Man Repeller to focus just on personal style, but also on social commentary. "Man repelling" has been described as not being focused on repelling men, but allowing women to dress for themselves. According to the essay "The Man Repeller and Rejection of the Male Gaze," man repelling is focused on constructing a feminine identity and presentation centered around women's perceptions of themselves.

In September 2012, during an appearance on Bloomberg Television's Surveillance Midday, Medine announced that she was working on a book which would consist of a collection of essays. In September 2013, the book, entitled Man Repeller: Seeking Love. Finding Overalls. was released by Grand Central Publishing. In his review of Medine's book, Simon Doonan, creative ambassador of Barneys stated: "Leandra is a sick, twisted fashion addict and guess what? There is no rehab. As this book shows, she is doomed to be stylish and groovy and hilarious for the rest of her life.”"

Medine has collaborated with designers on limited collections of clothes and accessories, including Gryphon, shoe companies Del Toro and Superga, jewelry line Dannijo, and clothing line PJK. Additional brand collaborations include Michael Kors, Maje, BaubleBar, Stuart Weitzman, and Saks Fifth Avenue. She is close friends with Dannijo founders Danielle and Jodie Snyder, as well as designers Rosie Assoulin and Rebecca Minkoff, the latter of whom helped Medine to design a motorcycle jacket for her 2012 wedding to Abie Cohen. In her book, Man Repeller: Seeking Love. Finding Overalls., Medine says: "With the help of a designer friend, Rebecca Minkoff (I realize how pretentious this sounds, but I did wear a moto jacket over my wedding dress, after all), I created the alpha jacket in a perfect hue of eggshell white organza equipped with many obligatory gold zippers and buttons." Additionally, Medine walked in Rebecca Minkoff's Fall 2011 Runway show.

In 2012, Medine signed with the Creative Artists Agency, an entertainment talent agency headquartered in Los Angeles, California. In an interview with The Business of Fashion, Medine said: "I think they are great at representing individuals and they know how to execute. We have the ideas, we just need an execution plan and that's where they come in really well."

In March 2017, Man Repeller announced that they would be partnering up with Topshop for their spring line. A video featuring Medine, with the title "Man Repeller x Topshop Presents Dancing Jeans" was released on the Man Repeller Youtube channel.

Personal life

In December 2011, Medine announced her engagement to Abie Cohen, a financial advisor at the Swiss investment bank UBS, whom she had met when she was 17 years old. The announcement of the engagement, made through Medine’s Twitter account, took followers by surprise, as Medine had never explicitly mentioned the presence of a significant other on her blog. Her Twitter pronouncement read: “So, funny story! I got engaged last week!” Following Medine’s pronouncement, many responded negatively, questioning her commitment to the principles of “man repelling” outlined in her blog. The Huffington Post wrote: “What happens when the Man Repeller no longer repels men?”

In Man Repeller: Seeking Love. Finding Overalls., Medine outlines the period of personal doubt that followed the social media backlash to her engagement. "The ridicule paralyzed me. I understood why people were upset," Medine recalls. "I was delivering insight on fashion and projecting information onto people"..."telling them to be confident and cool and dye their hair pink when ultimately, maybe, I was doing the same things only because I had the comfort of a man who loved me behind me. And that wasn't fair."

Relatively quickly, however, Medine's relationship with her followers recovered. "As with everything else on the internet," Medine says, "the rage died down to make room for the next marginal scandal. And when that happened after a considerably long four days of beating myself up over getting engaged and really wondering if maybe I couldn't have it all-- would I have to sacrifice my blog for my man or my man for my blog-- the insecurities finally melted away and I felt like I could enjoy my engagement."

They were wed in June 2012 at The St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan. She and her husband currently live in the East Village. In the December 16, 2016 episode of her podcast, she revealed that she suffered a miscarriage.

In 2013, her brother Haim launched jewelry line Khai Khai and her mother Laura launched jewelry line The Laura Medine Collection.