金融世家才女掘金运动时尚

    克劳迪娅•莱本索尔不是你我熟悉的那种常规企业家。她确实毕业于斯坦福大学（Stanford University），不过她主攻艺术领域，过去二十年间主要为各种出版物提供创意策划。她也确实出身金融世家——她的大姐是亚历珊德拉，当今“华尔街新女王”，同时也是百年家族企业莱本索尔公司（Lebenthal & Co.）的首席执行官，不过她自己另有一番宏大的商业规划：打造运动风尚生活帝国。

    最近，我在曼哈顿市中心的咖啡馆和莱本索尔讨论了这些计划。它们主要是围绕“运动风尚”（Style of Sport）打造的。这是她去年申奥时创办的一个时髦的在线杂志。这个网站刚刚更新，主要聚集于各类运动及运动与时尚、设计和艺术的交叉领域。莱本索尔身穿一条蓝白相间的条纹长裤（当然是既运动又时髦），在我还没来得及自我介绍前就从人群中认出了我。她坐下来点了一杯加冰的卡布奇诺，面带微笑地说：“能马上认出自己从没见过、但马上就要见面的人真是件有意思的事。”

    莱本索尔的整个职业生涯几乎都在和数字影像及视觉作品打交道。她是一个地地道道的纽约人，从斯坦福毕业后回到纽约，担任《7天》（7 Days）的美术总监。这本曼哈顿的周刊当年是由《纽约》杂志（New York）的亚当•莫斯创办的，如今已不复存在。1990年，《7天》关门后，莱本索尔又去了康泰纳仕（Conde Nast）集团，担任《诱惑》（Allure）的摄影总监，随后又出任了该公司旗下《女性运动与健身》（Women's Sports & Fitness ）和《悦己》（Self）这两本杂志的视觉总监。

    2006年，为康泰纳仕集团效力了14个年头后，莱本索尔开始寻求职业道路上的新风景：她与朋友丹尼尔•斯塔克共同创作了以运动为主题的大开本摄影集《激情飞扬：极限运动的演变》（Stoked: The Evolution of Action Sports）。对莱本索尔来说，这本书标志着她开始进入一个更独立的视觉内容创作阶段。她说：“作为创意总监，你总得按别人的想法办事。在某种程度上，你就觉得是在牺牲自己的观点。”

    莱本索尔称，自己的运动风尚生活在线杂志是受托里•伯奇的网站和时装连锁店的启发创办的。杂志刚面世时叫做Sportology，但在与网络技术解决方案公司Acadaca合作后，这本杂志获得了亟需的华丽换装，变成了一个更时髦漂亮的平台，并于今年3月正式推出。莱本索尔认为，她的网站不仅能提供服务，还能创造一种文化——用她的说法就是：“这不仅是个能购物的地方，还是能打发时间、获得娱乐的平台。我喜欢‘运动风尚’这个名字，因为它能变成形容词，比如可以这么说——‘噢，这多么运动风尚啊！’”。

    在目前的形态下，“运动风尚”是个只发布和运动相关内容的独立网站——即采编、设计都是莱本索尔一手打理（此外还有一些供稿作者）。网站的帖子主要是对各种运动装备的评论，比如设计师特制运动鞋，桨式冲浪板和小零食，还有肌内效贴布（Kinesiology Tape，一种具固定作用的特制弹性胶布，可控制活动幅度，加快复元——译注）的使用说明和滑雪板摄影集。

    Claudia Lebenthal is not your everyday entrepreneur. True she graduated from Stanford, but she majored in art and has spent the past two decades doing creative work with myriad publications. Still Lebenthal, who comes from a family of financiers — her sister is Alexandra, the "New Queen of Wall Street" and CEO of the family's near century-old firm, Lebenthal & Co. — has big, business ambitions of her own: Building a sports lifestyle empire.

    I recently met Lebenthal for coffee in downtown Manhattan to discuss these plans, which take shape around Style of Sport, a chic online magazine she originally founded last year in the run-up to the Olympics. The newly evolved site focuses on sports, and their intersection with fashion, design, and art. Before I even introduced myself, Lebenthal, wearing a pair of blue and white striped pants (both sporty and chic, of course), picked me out of the crowd. "It's funny how you just know the people you're suppose to meet even though you haven't met them" she said with a smile as she sat down and ordered an iced cappuccino.

    Lebenthal has worked almost exclusively with digital images and visuals over the course of her professional career. Born and raised in New York, she returned from her years at Stanford to work as art director at the now-defunct 7 Days, a Manhattan weekly founded by New York magazine's Adam Moss. When the publication folded in 1990, Lebenthal moved to Conde Nast, where she was Allure's photography director, and then she moved to visual director stints at the company's Women's Sports & Fitness and Self magazines.

    In 2006, having worked at Conde Nast for about 14 years and in search for a change in scenery, Lebenthal co-created a large format sports-themed photography book titled "Stoked: The Evolution of Action Sports" with friend Daniel Stark. For Lebenthal, the book marked the beginning of a more independent phase of visual content creation: "When you're a creative director, you're generally executing someone else's vision" she says, "there's a certain point after which you feel like you're compromising your own point of view".

    Lebenthal—who says her sports lifestyle online magazine is inspired by Tory Burch's website and fashion line—was initially launched under the title Sportology, but after partnering with Acadaca, a web-based technology solutions company, Lebenthal's creation got a much needed makeover, evolving into a sleeker looking platform that launched in March. Lebenthal sees her website as a way not only to provide a service but to create a culture as well – "a destination not just to shop, but to spend time and be entertained", she says, "I like the name Style of Sport because it can be turned into an adjective. As in – 'Oh, that's so Style of Sport!'"

    In its current form, Style of Sport is a stand-alone site for sports-related content – curated, edited, and designed by Lebenthal herself (in addition to a couple of contributing writers.) Posts range from reviews of sports gear like designer running shoes, paddleboards and snack bars to an explainer on kinesiology tape to a gallery of snowboard photography.