By Swastika Saha
Editor's note: Adapted from Swastika's August 2018 internship assignment profiling a business personality. Figures, titles and family details are as reported at that time, not current.
Chiara Ferragni is an Italian businesswoman, fashion icon and entrepreneur, born on 7 May 1987 to Marco Ferragni, a dentist, and Marina Di Guardo, a writer. She has two sisters, Valentina and Francesca. She developed a keen interest in fashion early on, thanks to her mother, herself a fashion enthusiast.
From law student to blogger
While pursuing law at Bocconi University in Milan, she started her own blog, The Blonde Salad, in 2009. She had begun working in fashion young, modelling for several brands. The blog covered travel, beauty and clothing and quickly gained a following. In December 2011 she was named "Blogger of the Moment" by Vogue, and New York Magazine called her one of the biggest breakout street-style stars of the year.
Career and business ventures
She built the blog into a business. Her own footwear line, the Chiara Ferragni Collection, launched in Milan in 2013, and she collaborated with American designer Steve Madden on a nine-shoe collection for spring 2014. The blog, written in Italian and English, also became an eBook with fashion advice, styling and makeup tips.
Television followed: she appeared as a presenter at the TRL Awards in 2014, judged a season of Project Runway and featured on the Italian show Chiambretti Night. At the Bloglovin' Awards in September 2014, her blog won Best Personal Style Blog. In January 2015, The Blonde Salad became a case study at Harvard Business School, and she was listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 that year. She was the first fashion blogger to appear on the cover of a Vogue edition, on Vogue Espana.
Her brand collaborations include Zegna, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Chanel. She became a global ambassador for Pantene and the face of Amazon Fashion's spring 2016 campaign in Europe. Mattel created a Barbie version of her, dressed in a leather jacket, jeans and footwear from her own collection, and she designed costumes for the fourth edition of Intimissimi on Ice at the Verona Arena.
Personal life
At the time this profile was written, Ferragni was engaged to Federico Leonardo Lucia, the Italian singer and rapper known as Fedez, who proposed during one of his concerts in Verona. The couple had a baby son, Leone. Her dog Matilda had become an Instagram personality in her own right, with hundreds of thousands of followers.
Success mantra and the road ahead
Ferragni's journey is an inspiration for young women who want to make a mark in fashion and blogging. Her example shows that age has little to do with success. Her mantra: believe in yourself, have a business plan and follow it strictly. Like most successful entrepreneurs, she stresses that customer satisfaction is vital, so product development and improvement must continue to keep existing customers and win new ones. Taking risks, she notes, is an inevitable part of any business. Her life motto: love fiercely, enjoy every moment and experience everything as it comes - and be a powerful CEO and a "boss mama".
