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What made you decide to start @accidentallywesanderson? Were you always a fan of his films? Funny enough, it just started out as a personal travel bucket list, so to speak. You know, my wife and I have always been avid travelers. We have always tried to spend our vacations doing something interesting, like exploring a different country or culture. I sort of happened upon these photos that looked as if they had been plucked from a Wes Anderson film and I just started doing some more research on them and creating this bucket list. I've always been a fan of Wes Anderson. His work, the aesthetics, everything. It's always spoken to me, or just kind of sparked travel in me. But I remember seeing "e Darjeeling Limited" and then a few months aer that, having the opportunity to travel last-minute with a friend to Mumbai. Aer a few weeks in India, I got to explore and relive the movie and see things through a different lens. rough this project, it's grown so significantly on a number of fronts. Both from what it was to now. It's almost like this evolving, visual inspiration—like a living history project. e page itself is a mix of curated submissions from travelers, professional photographers, etc. How fast did this creative community start to take shape? You know, it wasn't overnight. First off, we never set out to really do anything other than create this bucket list. But at the same time, you're able to gain a perspective from 10, 20, 100 or 3,000 people who have been to that same place. So you're able to explore it through the eyes of others at the same time. As we were doing that, we found there were a handful of people who caught on and were messaging us and saying, have you been here? Have you checked this out? It almost turned into this travel book club, you know, without the books. And so from that, we wanted it to be a platform of sorts for the community that was starting to form. And it wasn't for a few months of consistently creating this content and evolving that the community itself started to grow fairly significantly. I don't like the word "influencer" or "followers," but we hit a pretty significant mark recently and by growing organically and cultivating a community of this size over such a short amount of time, it feels like a pretty significant feat. And now you've become almost a kind of resource. We're shining a light on communities, cultures, families, people, structures that don't get the limelight they deserve. And in addition, the photographers who don't necessarily have a huge platform or are struggling to get their amazing, beautiful work out there. I always say that we want to give adequate and ample credit because that's what the community is all about, upliing everybody and keeping everybody involved and participating. You've also worked on several collaborations within the account, including partnering with travel boards to visit some of these destinations in person. Which locations have you been able to visit? We're lucky to have been able to partner with some pretty large organizations from the tourist board of Vienna and Los Angeles to then much larger brands like Prada and Hotels.com. Each of these actually fell into the next one in a very fun and serendipitous way. We were able to travel to Austria with the Vienna Tourist Board. Prada then reached out to us and brought us to Milan. Aer we came back, we went to Los Angeles with their tourist board, and then traveled to Tokyo and Kyoto with Hotels.com. Most recently, we went to the Catskills and explored Upstate New York with Widow Jane whiskey distillery. I would say that Tokyo and Kyoto were the most incredible. I had never been to such a beautiful, interesting and surprisingly quiet, crazy place. We got to experience these cultures and communities in their local atmosphere, which we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. So it has been an absolute blessing to have this community with us. By participating and being so pumped about it, they're helping us to make these adventures all that more special. So what are you looking for in a location that makes it Wes Anderson worthy? ere has to be an aesthetic. Maybe that's symmetry. Maybe that's color. Maybe that's just something super unique about it. But what makes it Accidentally Wes Anderson, or "AWA," is the story. An interesting backstory that makes you think, 'Hey, I didn't know that." rough this project, we've found so many interesting places in our own backyard that have some of the coolest stories that we were never aware of. It comes from, like I said before, looking at it through that slightly different lens to achieve that aesthetic. But then, even more, we dig a little bit further. We find out why this structure is here and what made it what it is. I think that intersection of distinctive design and the unexpected narrative is the bull's eye of Accidentally Wes Anderson. In addition to aesthetics, I imagine each post requires quite a bit of research. On the submission front, I think we're getting close to 3,500 to 4,000 submissions a month. In terms of the research process, you know, it's a lot of Googling. I'm never going to be able to tell the entire story in 300 words. It's not possible. But what we like to do is give a little sense of where it came from, how it got to where it is today and leave you with something that hopefully makes you smile, but also leaves you with maybe a small bit of information. If I can capture you with the beauty of this place, now I have your attention. And maybe now we can learn something and leave just a tiny bit smarter. ere's a certain layer of substance that I strive to put out into the world. Whether it's consumed or not, I feel better about myself knowing that I put something out there that's meaningful. V U E N J . C O M 72

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