Lauren Santo Domingo

Moda Operandi CEO Aslaug Magnúsdóttir is said to have left the ecommerce site she founded with Lauren Santo Domingo in 2011.

An unnamed source told Page Six that Magnúsdóttir left the company because of a rift with Santo Domingo, saying, "Lauren felt Aslaug wasn’t hip and cool enough." While neither of the founders has commented on Magnúsdóttir's departure, they spoke favorably of each other in a WSJ. Magazine story on the company that was published last month.

"I was immediately impressed with Lauren's great sense of style and felt that we had very complementary skill sets: mine being on the business side of fashion and hers on the creative side," Magnúsdóttir said.

A representative for the company had not responded to requests for comment at the time of this post.

Before helping to get Moda Operandi off the ground, Magnúsdóttir got her MBA from Harvard Business School, then founded the venture capital firm TSM Capital with former Bloomingdale's CEO Marvin Traub. She was also an executive at Gilt Groupe and has served on the boards of brands, including Matthew Williamson and Rachel Roy.

Source: Billy Farrell/BFAnyc.com

>> Moda Operandi, the online trunk show site cofounded by Lauren Santo Domingo and Aslaug Magnusdottir, has added two new directors. Roopal Patel, a longtime executive at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, will join the site this month as fashion director overseeing merchandising, and Taylor Tomasi Hill, former style and accessories director at Marie Claire, will become artistic director focusing on the site's editorial. The site has been growing rapidly, according to Magnusdottir, and more so since September, when Conde Nast invested in the company. [NY Times]
Photo by Phil Oh

>> As a Dolce-and-Gabbana-sporting Lauren Santo Domingo sat down to the three course lunch at yesterday's Veuve Clicquot-sponsored Governor’s Island Polo Classic in New York — which began with caviar — she noted, WWD reports (seven weeks after giving birth to her first son): “'The only thing I really, really craved during my pregnancy was caviar,' Santo Domingo said, daintily separating it with her fork from the fennel infused creme-fraiche custard below. 'I was Googling it constantly to see if it was something that, you know, you shouldn’t eat. Somehow, there were more people Googling ‘crack while pregnant’ than ‘caviar’ on most Web sites… But I asked Dasha [Zhukova], seeing as she’s Russian and a great mother, and she said it was OK.'" [WWD]

>> Launched in February during New York Fashion Week, Lauren Santo Domingo's online trunk show site, Moda Operandi, is now raising its second round of venture capital funding, co-founder and CEO Aslaug Magnusdottir confirmed yesterday. Magnusdottir declined to say how much was being raised, but noted that she had been approached by several investors as interest in online luxury retailers grows. "The recent successes of Gilt [Groupe], Rue La La, and Net-a-Porter being sold has really made this a much more interesting sector for a lot of investors," Magnusdottir said, referring to recent deals. MO received its first round of funding last year from Boston-based venture capital firm New Atlantic Ventures, and is expected to be profitable by the end of 2012, Magnusdottir said. She hopes that the site's membership will hit 100,000 by the end of this year, up from 15,000 now. [Reuters]

>> Yesterday afternoon, Lauren Santo Domingo and her husband, Andres, welcomed a healthy baby boy — their first child. The couple have been married since 2008, and last month Santo Domingo said her pregnancy was going smoothly: "I’m 8 ½ months pregnant and not much has changed — it’s been pretty easy, I haven’t had any sickness. . . . I’ve been really really lucky. In fact, my hair has grown two inches! I’m the same size, in everything that goes above or below the bump. I don’t really have cravings." [NY Post]

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