Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Solimar and Soleil Matias-Rivera. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Solimar and Soleil, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

We started our path as elite gymnasts. Even though gymnastics is all about perfection, it also has very creative elements and beauty. When we decided to move on from gymnastics a friend recommended a modeling workshop “for fun”. It was love at first catwalk! We loved learning to walk the runway, learning about fashion, how hair and make up have to all come together. We were already dabbling into art competitions and learning to sew, but modeling just brought it all together for us. There is so much art into making a photo tell a story and using your body, your eyes, your expressions to inspire. That’s when we knew we wanted to pursue modeling professionally and yes, as twins it makes it double the fun.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

TWIN POWER! We love to say that our twin energy i.e. power, is what sets us apart.

We feed off each others energy, we inspire, challenge, and believe in each other. We are so blessed and grateful to be in this creative journey together and we don’t take it for granted, “Together We are Stronger”. We are both very creative; we design, we paint, we do make up, hair and that fuels our passion for modeling and fashion.

It hasn’t been easy to break into the industry, as any inspiring creative would say, and at just 13 it’s a lot of judgement to manage, we are either too young, too old, not tall enough, too fierce in our look, too high fashion in our walk instead of bubbly kid walk, and we can go on and on. BUT, we focus on our end goal and keep moving forward.

The challenges are real in this industry but that only allows us to differentiate ourselves even more, because we keep “showing up”. Don’t disregard us until you’ve had the opportunity to work with us. We have built some tough skin, even at our age and we’ve learned to take chances. So we want others to also take a chance on us, we will always bring our 100% to the opportunity.

We want the world to know that while failing might be scary, not trying is even scarier. We, @Solx2twins, are proud to be different, look different and stand for all the strong, determined teens that want to make their dreams come true. Limitless possibilities is what we stand for and go for.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Give us a chance. There is a lot of judgement for teens that are seeking a different path in society. Not everyone wants to be a doctor, dentist, and engineer when they grow up. Then, if various groups in our society do acknowledge that many of us, want to create beauty and inspiration, they judge our look, our height, and our background.

In the modeling world, you are seeing a shift, but it’s still very limiting. We are seeing more diversity in some aspects while still not in others. We want society to accept models for all that they stand for and are trying to achieve, INSPIRATION! Creating the opportunity and the space for all talent to manifest is the best way to support them and inspire others.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Is the new Little Mermaid movie moment, when you see someone that looks like you, doing something you thought was available only to a select few. That’s what’s most rewarding, knowing that there are other twins, other latinas, other petite power houses out there looking at you and your fierceness, thinking “I can do that too” or looking at a picture of us and seeing our extreme curls standing proud in a killer design and seeing the possibility of how “they too could look”.

We want to inspire. We don’t see many semi-light skin, super petite, extreme curly hair latinas in teen magazines or high fashion couture photos, that’s who we want to be and what, in our limited time, has been most rewarding for us.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @solx2twins

Image Credits
MTM – More Than Modeling