Tara Ryazansky Photos by Max Ryazansky
Uptown Brownstone Victoria Alario greets me at the door of her uptown brownstone. The place is beautiful with old architectural detail. The archways and high ceilings in her entryway make the space feel grand. Just off the entrance is a comfortable living room with an extensive book collection and items that Alario found in her travels. She says that she visited Italy last summer around the same time that she signed her lease. She found this apartment while still living in Miami, Florida. “It was probably 2 AM when it just became listed. I texted the number right away. I knew this apartment would go. When I got in touch with them, there were already more than ten applications in, but I said, ‘I’m getting this apartment. I don’t care what number I am.’ I was like, ‘Whatever you’re getting, I’ll beat it,’” Alario says. That kind of certainty and decision-making is typical for Alario, who is the host of a podcast called For The Girls that gives advice to young women on topics like dating, friendship, money, and business. Alario’s favorite topic to cover is confidence.
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“That’s the main premise of my podcast. The underlying message is always about confidence. It comes naturally to me,” Alario says. “I’ve always been the way that I am. Of course, as girls, we can get emotional and insecure, that’s just our make-up, but I’ve always known that people either love you or hate you, and I don’t like people who don’t like me. A lot of people want people to like them. But I’m just like, ‘If you don’t like me, well, I don’t like you.’ I just don’t really care to please anybody. I’m just me. It’s attracted amazing, high-quality people into my life. It’s also turned off a lot of people because I’m very honest and I’m very outspoken.” For The Girls attracts all kinds of listeners. “The girl I’m speaking to doesn’t have an age, she doesn’t have a demographic, she has a very big desire to have more in life. This is for the girls who say, ‘I can have it all,” Alario says that she has listeners of various ages. “I get a lot of women in their 40s or 50s who say, ‘I wish I thought like her at that age.’ I also get a lot of, ‘You’re like a big sister energy.’ from the younger ones. I have a more traditional style with how I see things, but I’m the middle man. I’m the modern woman who speaks her mind but also with that traditional flare when it comes to my values, my morals, and things like that.” Modern and traditional are also words that could describe Alario’s design aesthetic. She seamlessly pairs antique-style pieces like a
