We were lucky to catch up with Carolina Orrico recently and have shared our conversation below.
Carolina, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
I was 18. I thought the best thing I could do for myself was finding an internship at a fashion brand that I felt connected to. I wrote every single brand I could think of an email, and one of my favorite designers replied back. I’d make $300/month + $300 in store credit. Once I started working for that designer, I realized that my favorite part of working for a brand was to conceptualize and help out on shoots. My best friend at the time had bought a camera after a modeling gig. We offered to work on a lookbook for her and had it displayed at the store. After about a year I quit that job, but kept working on images with my friend as a hobby. We’d post them on Facebook. Soon enough an art director noticed our work and commissioned our first print cover. And it all started there.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got into this industry really young, it started out as a hobby that I was somehow able to capitalize. Ever since I can remember I was always into fashion as a self expression tool. I’ve always been obsessed with magazines, catalogues, campaigns, I just loved the energy they embodied, so it was pretty natural for me to start fooling around as a teenager. I got my first digital camera at age 15 and my friends and I would play dress up for shoots. We’d also be obsessed with collecting international magazines and catalogues. When I started college, I’m pretty sure I wanted to be an art director at a magazine, I just didn’t know the name for that specific title at the time. I tried studying graphic design, but it didn’t feel fashion related enough, so I switched to fashion design. While I was in college, I took an internship at a fashion label and realized that my favorite part of working for a label was helping out with campaigns and photoshoots. I kept shooting with my friends and a hobby, when suddenly a local art director noticed our work and commissioned a cover. That’s when I realized this was my job and what I wanted to do for a living. I think that what I like about what I do is that I get to work on images that create an aspirational world that inspire people. I like to think that people that look at what I do feel a certain way.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I still sometimes can’t believe that I get to call my passion my job, but I recognize that success has come mainly with hard work. As a teenager, while all my friends where at the beach on their summer hollidays, I’d stay and work, it was the only time where I got ahead of all the other established stylists, I was the only one left in town. Also, at the beggining I’d say yes to most gigs that came my way, I felt that was a great way to learn what I wanted and what I didn’t want to do.
I moved to NY after 4 or 5 years of pursuing styling in Buenos Aires. We had very limited savings (my now husband and I) and had told ourselves that we’d try NY out for 4 months. We lived out of the smallest budget, I literally emailed every single person I could think of at the time, I was determined to stay. At the very last part of our 4 month trial I got a job as a stylist at Barneys NY. The studio was in NJ and I lived in Brooklyn, I woke up every day at 5 am to get there.
Bottomline is that I never complained once or really felt anything that I was doing as a sacrifice: I really wanted to be ahead of everyone else and just went for it as much as I phisycally and mentally could.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I think my audience specifically likes to see my work, and a little bit of BTS every now and then. I’d say my social media prescence is a networking platform, I don’t make it too personal so it’s not about me, it should be about my work with a little glimpse into my life
Contact Info:
- Website: www.carolinaorrico.com
- Instagram: @Carolinaorrico