STILL MOVING: GREG YUNA ON DISCOMFORT, CURIOSITY AND THE FAMILY THAT REMAINS.
Words by Carolyn Gray
Photography by Brandon Battle
I met Greg Yuna around 2015 or 2016, back when I was running an Equinox near the Diamond District. I actually came across his Instagram before I ever really knew him. At the time, he was doing these photo shoots that seemed to happen whenever he felt like it (no permit, I’m assuming), stopping traffic on Sixth Avenue or using that brief transition from red light to green as an opportunity to get the money shot in what felt like 25 seconds or less.
Then it would be uploaded to the ’Gram: finished, polished, aspirational, very New York, and usually featuring a celebrity who had probably found him the same way everyone else did and wanted a diamond piece curated, sourced, or designed by Greg Yuna; who, at that time, went by a name that now belongs to a closed and carefully vaulted first chapter.
That’s the thing. I’ve known Greg, partied with him, celebrated New Yorkers with him, even ran through Central Park with him, but in many ways I’ve always felt there was still so much about him I didn’t know, even though I call this man a friend.
I’ve watched from afar as he learned hard lessons. I rooted for him during moments when it felt like not enough people were. I watched him be forced to reinvent himself, only to later realize that reinvention may have been one of the best things that could have happened to him. And through every transition, one thing remained clear: loyalty.
Many of the people around him have been there through multiple versions of his life and business. He has reached what most of us would recognize as success and, more importantly, what he recognizes as his own definition of success. All the while, still choosing comfort in the discomfort.
A few weeks before we finally sat down for this conversation in the office tucked behind the Greg Yuna store on Mulberry Street, I approached him outside his shop. He was sitting on the bench out front. It was summer, the block was buzzing, and his team wasn’t far away: Rachel, his designer and creative director, and J-Frost, who oversees operations and business.
In reality, though, their titles only explain so much.
Greg has also never been someone I’ve known to sit still for very long or give you uninterrupted eye contact for an extended period of time. He’ll be managing a business conversation, answering a text, cracking a joke, saying hello to someone from the neighborhood, and then suddenly turn back to the person standing directly in front of him and ask, sincerely, “How are you doing?”
You might think he hasn’t been listening.
He has.
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Issue 004
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PRODUCTION
Words by
Carolyn Gray
Photography
Brandon Battle