To work in public relations in the fashion industry has been one of my goals since starting at Johnson & Wales University. Today at Pink & Chic Communications the owner, Maria Chiara Arona, talked to us about how she started in the industry and her goals for future growth. She currently has five official clients and three unofficial and she works with them from the beginning. She likes to work with small luxury brands so she can help them grow because with their success comes more success for herself! It isn't always the fun catwalks (fashion shows) or boutique openings, there is a lot of hard work that goes into the preparation for these events while working with the press. She has a great group of friends that work with her and it showed me how close Italians are to each other. I always understood that in Italy your family is your family and you are extremely close, but I am also learning that here your friends are also your family and they help any way that they can. Maria continues to work with designers in Milan, Paris, and New York. These designers all come from different backgrounds, work with different materials such as silks, cashmere, lace or furs, and they all produce different products, such as dresses, coats, or shoes. She has learned a lot from her various bosses and brought the advice that if you want to start your own company you need to be able to work with yourself and have the money to invest into your project. Her broken English made for many laughs although she still said that talking in front of all of us students put more pressure on her than talking to the press.
With friends being very close here in Italy, Maria called her friend that had a boutique a few blocks away to see if we could stop by and talk with her. The designer is Laura Mancini and she is an entrepreneur as well. She designs dresses for the average woman, not the stick thin model. She uses herself as the model to see if her designs work or don't work. By branding herself and working very hard, so hopes to have the total outfit for woman one day. She is innovative and comes up with designs that are popular two years later, she makes her own prints on fabrics, she has her own stockings, and soon hopes to design shoes.
With talking to Laura and Maria I learned that Italians stick together. They help each other out whether they are family, friends, or strangers. In the fashion industry it is about who you know in order to get your name and project out into the world. If you can pay a magazine to print your name, they will; if you can't pay, they won't. It was refreshing to see two strong confident women realizing their dreams, working hard, and not taking ‘no’ for an answer.
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| Pink & Chic Sign outside of the showroom |
