They’ve been ‘It’ girls, they’ve been bloggers, they’ve been influencers, they may now be content creators – and despite the skepticism of some of the editorial elite, they’re just as much a part of fashion industry as always. Our feeds today have never been more flush with people who are their own brands, making careers through partnerships, appearances and paid posts. How long this will last largely remains to be seen: what does it take to really build influencing into a career, how do you stay relevant, how can you scale to a large company?
Olivia Palermo enters. Initially, the New Yorker rose to fame thanks to a role on the reality series “The City,” which started in 2008, and she was called a socialite, an “It” girl and, yes, an influencer (a term she doesn’t like) , while maintaining relevance in the fashion world. She has collaborated with brands from Karl Lagerfeld to Banana Republic and Scalpers; she had her own site, fashion line and beauty brand and a full staff of people, but now it’s a one-woman show. Interest in her has never waned over the years, with consistent growth to 8.2 million followers on Instagram – a platform she claims she doesn’t fully understand, but which is successful behind the scenes.
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“I always felt like I was going to be in the public eye,” Palermo says. “I felt like it. I didn’t know why, I’m a very private person. But I had a feeling that it would happen sometime in the future, that it would be part of my career. Luckily I navigated it very well.”
Moments earlier, Palermo has stormed into Fouquet’s restaurant in TriBeCa, apologizing for her 30-minute late arrival and unhooking a bedazzled handbag from her arm as she swings into a booth. She’s as groomed for a Thursday lunch as she is for any performance, and for the next hour she’ll exude a nonchalance about her continued success as if it’s something she’s barely aware of — versus, as we suspect, something that has carefully cultivated them for years.
“I am a person of influence. I think that’s a better way to put it,” she says of the term “influencer.” “I think we’re going back to trends and trendy terms again, and I think when I started it was ‘blogger,’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t blog.’ I have a website. We create content.” So when someone uses the trendy word or lazy terminology [that doesn’t] describing someone’s general nature, I think it’s a bit funny. They say, ‘Oh, influencer.’ And I’m like, ‘I’ve been doing this work since before its significance even dawned on me.’
“What’s interesting about Olivia, I think, is that she was an authority on fashion before the fashion influencer existed,” says Jeffrey Tousey, founder of social-first digital marketing agency Beekman Social. “And the thing about that is she has an uncanny ability to style anything and make it look timeless and sophisticated, but also be bold and edgy. I think her secret sauce is the ability to curate her personal collection through a lens that is relevant to what is cool now, but also to what will always be cool.”
The 37-year-old says she is on the precipice of Olivia 3.0. First came TV, then modeling, ambassadorships, collaborations and advice for brands. Then it was time to create her own brand.
“I really, really enjoyed that, but I really wanted to take a step back from it because I feel like I wear so many hats and can do so much – I really just need to figure it out. 2.0, I think it was really about building the brand and looking at it from the full circle – and then COVID hit,” says Palermo, which led to her closing her eponymous labels in fashion and beauty, as well as her website. “I wasn’t angry about it because at the end of the day I really believe that everything happens for a reason and you just have to really think about everything.”
Post-pandemic, she has downsized, now employs just one jack-of-all-trades team member, handles her social posts herself (with occasional help from her husband, Johannes Huebl, with Instagram Reels, which she finds difficult), and is she is in the middle of a general reset, looking ahead to her next chapter. Her approach could serve as a how-to for staying in power in the industry: develop an identity and stick to it, and the brands will come.
“I think because it’s more of a corporate account, you’ve lost that personality a little bit. It was a bit too sterile, I thought. You can definitely tell the moments where I really take the time to post because they’re probably more funny emojis or little Japanese funny things that make you think, ‘Oh, that’s definitely Olivia,'” she says.
“This is something that probably everyone can relate to, but a brand wants you to say something specific, but you know the voice of your channel and you have to make it work. And if you decide to do what the customer wants, they’re going to have to understand that those numbers are going to go down, that it’s not going to be successful, and then it’s just going to hurt you when those numbers go down. So we are very much in favor of: please listen to us, otherwise there is no point in doing this.”
Her latest is a women’s collection for Spanish retailer Scalpers. “The team was incredible to work with. I think they really learned a lot from us, which is great. I’m very reserved with the collections I do now. I’ve done so many and it’s amazing. When I started the collections, that hadn’t happened yet. And then it got too saturated and we pulled back,” she says. “I really feel like it’s about looking at brands I want to work with, looking at where I am in my career and also looking at their infrastructure: if they’re doing it for the first time, if they’ve done it before, What is it? the why, do we need them?
“I completely withdrew after COVID,” she says. “I thought, instead of sticking to something, let’s just start from scratch, reassess and just do a 3.0. Then you will feel much lighter mentally and you will have a clear mindset. I don’t think anything I ever do is a failure. I think in life you are constantly learning and growing. When something doesn’t work, you think, ‘Why isn’t this working?’ To make sure you don’t do that the next round. But I think in a way everything is a success because you take that and you continue to grow with it to make sure that you’re better in the next round, in the next round, the next round, and you can share that. get to know the people you work with.”
That’s the kind of confidence and self-assurance that comes from experience. While influencers today can get stressed if a partnership doesn’t translate into numbers or engagement drops, Palermo is confident that the next thing is just around the corner.
“No negative Nancy here,” she says. “You can’t sit around and think, you just have to keep moving forward and it will happen.”
What sets her apart from others in her field?
“I work very hard. I love what I do. I love my fashion community. I wake up every day and it motivates me,” she says. “My friends motivate me, seeing what they do motivates me. Our industry, the beauty that the designers bring, the energy we see in marketing, in everything.”
And the field in general?
“I guess I’m kind of in my own little world and there’s people around me that I grew up with, who are the same age, we grew up in the same industry, so I definitely see them and I’m like: ‘ Yes, we grew up around the same time. That’s fine.’ But I don’t think I can think of one person,” she says. ‘I won’t shadow, I don’t promise that at all. I literally just can’t do it. I’ve never done comparisons. I just do my own thing.”
That means she can confidently say she plans to one day build a billion-dollar company and has earned the industry’s trust in a backstage way – again atypical for most influencers.
“I do so much behind the scenes privately that no one sees and I would never talk about it publicly. There are brands that have had an IPO that I have done the introductory emails for and am happy to help,” she says. “For me it’s normal. It’s like helping friends.”
Nowadays she is massively aware of fashion influencer culture, but pays little attention to it.
“It makes me smile and think, ‘Okay, I’m glad I’ve created some kind of platform where everyone in the world can make their own voice heard. I appreciate that,” she says. “You go.”
Launch Gallery: Olivia Palermo on longevity, relevance, successes and failures in fashion
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