Camila
I stopped waiting to be on the stage. Now I dress it.
Where it started
Camila grew up in Hialeah in the apartment above her grandmother's alterations shop. After school she sat under the cutting table with pins in her mouth while her grandmother hemmed quinceañera dresses and talked about Havana.
What they wanted
She wanted to dance. By sixteen she was training six days a week and had a spot waiting at a conservatory in New Jersey.
The wall
At nineteen she tore her ACL in rehearsal. The surgery went fine. The spot did not wait.
The moment it clicked
A friend's company needed someone to fix forty costumes the night before a show. Camila sat backstage until 3am taking in waists and moving hooks, and when the dancers walked out under the lights she cried harder than she ever had at her own recitals. She loved making people look the part, and she had been doing it her whole life.
The new path
She took her grandmother's old Singer to a rented closet on Collins Avenue and started styling music videos for anyone who would pay her in cash or credits.
The hard part
The first two years were broke. One director kept her on set fourteen hours and then never paid the invoice.
The breakthrough
A video she dressed went to number one on Latin radio, and the artist's team called her directly for the tour.
Today
Camila runs wardrobe for tours and campaigns out of a studio off Lincoln Road. She still keeps a pin cushion on her wrist. The South Beach frame goes on the minute she steps outside and stays on until the sun is down.
This is Camila's locked face. Every photo and video of her starts from it, so her look stays the same everywhere her appears.
Andre
Sofia
Mateo