Author:Ana ColónPublish date:May 20, 2020In many ways, Taylor Tomasi-Hill's career has evolved with the fashion industry, her resume reflecting how the tides — and perhaps more consequentially, the power brokers — have shifted.
It was the early 2000s — "the height of the magazine," Tomasi-Hill remembers. And for the next decade, she'd have a front-row seat at the evolving job description of the fashion editor. It was around this time that Tomasi-Hill began noticing other incongruences in the fashion system. She recalls having conversations with fellow senior staff at the end of fashion month, where they would discuss what stories they wanted to execute and products they wanted to shoot based on everything they’d seen on the runway in New York, London, Milan and Paris — but seeing a disconnect between what pieces the editors highlighted and those the retail buyers actually placed orders for.
Moda Operandi was a crash-course in data and analytics, she says, which confirmed to her that she wanted to work in fashion roles that married the quantitative and the creative. But after a while, she got burnt out. The origin story of the company, which Tomasi-Hill worked on for two years, goes like this: She was taking meetings with brands like Diane von Furstenberg and Tory Burch right after leaving Moda Operandi and would send her own floral arrangements as a thank-you — those caught the attention of the right people, and soon enough those very brands began commissioning her for events.
"Every job that I have taken on, there has always been one thing that I'm very upfront about, and that is that I don't want to just be the face of a brand," Tomasi-Hill says. "I don't want to just be sitting at fashion shows all day. I don't want to spend my time just at dinners with the same people for 30 days four times a year. I don't want to be away from my family that long.