Chiara Ferragni
With her blog The Blonde Salad, the former law student has used her social media style posts to create a multi-million pound business. ‘People like my story as a self-made woman,’ she explainsChiara Ferragni (Italian pronunciation: born 7 May 1987) is an Italian fashion businessperson. She is an influencer who has collaborated with fashion and beauty brands such as Tod's and Pantene via her blog The Blonde Salad. In September 2017, Ferragni was ranked first in the Forbes list of the most powerful fashion influencers.
he name Chiara Ferragni might not be familiar to most over-35s but the 29-year-old’s alter ego, The Blonde Salad is – to borrow Ron Burgundy’s phrase – kind of a big deal. Ferragni, an ex-law student from a small town near Milan, started The Blonde Salad blog in 2009, documenting her camera-ready personal style, full of prints, blowdried hair and kooky cross-eyed faces. Seven years later, she has 7.3 million followers on Instagram, 1.2m likes on Facebook and more than 14m page views per month on her website. The latter now handily also functions as a shop selling everything from suitcases to stilettos designed by Ferragni. There’s also Chiara Ferragni Collection, a shoe brand with flats and boots covered with her signature eye logo.Ferragni is 29 – smack bang in the middle of the millennial generation span. She displays all the traits millennials are meant to have. She is, and I don’t mean this in a derogatory sense, completely self-centred, and completely at home online. This interview is arranged initially to talk about Ferragni’s shoe line but, when I try to ask a question specifically about the shoes, Ferragni turns the conversation back round to, well, Ferragni. “I started as a blogger but it’s not so much that any more, I do so much more,” she says. “I create an inspirational platform. We do so much on the e-commerce side, the projects, the management. But most of‑the revenue still comes from projects related to me.”
The daughter of a dentist and a writer, Ferragni says she knows exactly why she’s so popular. “People like my story as a self-made woman,” she says. “That’s very unusual in Italy – a lot of people of my generation don’t even have a job. I don’t really know how I did it.” Timing was definitely a factor. In 2009, she worked with her then-boyfriend, now CEO Riccardo Pozzoli, to turn a “personal space” into a business, first through banner ads and Ferragni modelling brands’ clothes in the images, with fees of about €1,000-2,000 for a post. Now, she doesn’t disclose what the fees are, but it’s safe to assume they’re significantlyhigher. And, like the whole discernible talent thing, Ferragni’s fans don’t appear to be concerned by these corporate hookups. “It has to feel natural and transparent,” she says. “For me, selection is everything, it has to be something that my followers will be happy to know about. I can’t lose my credibility – you can’t put a price on that.”
Bloggers’ and influencers’ credibility – or supposed lack thereof – hit the headlines earlier this year when Sally Singer, American Vogue’s creative director, wrote on the magazine’s site: “Note to bloggers who change head-to-toe paid-to-wear outfits every hour: please stop. Find another business. You are heralding the death of style.” Ferragni thinks this is an old argument. “I started when it was like that; when I was the only one not coming from fashion and I had so many haters – people who were twice or three times as old as me being so aggressive,” she says. “I don’t understand that because I think there is space for everyone. The audience decide now; you don’t have to pick and choose. Now we’re business people, not just crazy bloggers.”
This is the angle that Ferragni is keen to run with, with her life as her shop window. Ferragni provides a fantasy for people scrolling through an Instagram feed on the bus home from work – she goes to tropical holiday destinations and fancy hotel spas and changes up to five times a day in fashion week, so you don’t have to. But you might just buy her shoes for a sprinkle of that jetset life. “My biggest satisfaction is that people think about me and smile,” says Ferragni. “People love to dream through me.”
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