Let me start with a confession.

I don’t have the perfect background for fashion. No prestigious MBA, no famous fashion school, no powerful family contacts. Just ambition and a slightly unhealthy habit of emailing strangers.

Since I was fifteen, I’ve been sending applications to companies I admired. The big ones. The intimidating ones. The ones where you assume they’ll never even read your email.

My system was simple. Three applications a day. Sometimes through LinkedIn. Sometimes through official career platforms. Sometimes just cold emails to someone whose name I found online.

Most of the time? Silence. Occasionally a polite rejection.

But once — and only once — something interesting happened.

I once cold-emailed someone at a fashion company in New York. I never received an answer, so I assumed it disappeared into the same digital graveyard as the others.

A year and a half later, literally a year and a half, I received an email during the summer.

“Hi Camille. Are you still interested?” That email turned into a three-and-a-half-month internship in New York. Which proves something important: sometimes opportunities don’t arrive fast. But only if you sent the email in the first place.

 

Cold emailing is boring. Do it anyway.

If you want experience in fashion, events, design — anything creative — here’s the reality:

Nobody is waiting for you. Applications disappear, LinkedIn messages get ignored, career platforms feel like sending letters into space.

So make it a habit, put on a TV series, order a pizza, open your laptop, AND send emails. Three a day, preferable. But see it like this, three a day becomes more than 1,000 opportunities per year. Something will eventually crack.

 

Sometimes the opportunity is standing right in front of you

A friend of mine really wanted a corporate finance job. He emailed someone at a company he admired. No response. Weeks later he attended a real estate conference. He recognized the exact same person walking toward his car. So he walked up to him and said “Hi, I sent you an email last week. I just wanted to make sure you received it.”

It wasn’t aggressive, it wasn’t awkward, just honest.

They spoke for five minutes. Now he has an interview. The lesson is simple. Sometimes networking is just courage disguised as small talk.

If the opportunity doesn’t exist, create it

At one point I applied to an event company I admired. They rejected me. Instead of moving on, I asked why. The woman who answered was incredibly kind. She told me the real reason: other candidates simply had more experience in that field. That answer changed everything. Because now I had something concrete to solve. Not talent. Not motivation. Just experience. So I decided to create it. At the time I was living in Lisbon and working on my first fashion capsule. Six months of designing alone in my room. I thought: we should celebrate this. 

So I organized a small fashion event on a beautiful beach inside a national park near Lisbon. Everything was planned. Models confirmed. Three DJs booked. Photographer and videographer on the way. A drone operator coming to film the sunset. Then we arrived at the beach. And the beach was… gone. Overflowed by water. Completely flooded. Guests were already arriving. DJs were on their way. Models in taxis. So we had about ten minutes to find a solution. Instead of panicking, we drove into the mountains. Thirty minutes later we saw a small farm with a red roof in the middle of nowhere. I turned to my friend and said: “This is it. This is where the event will happen.” The only problem? It was private property.

 

A farmer suddenly appeared and explained the situation. After a few minutes of discussion, he agreed. And that evening turned into one of the most surreal nights of my life. Music in the middle of a farm. Fashion in the middle of nowhere. Friends, DJs, lights, cameras, everything. At some point the farmer even told us his dream had always been to host a rave on his farm. So apparently we helped him achieve his dream too. Because if the beach hadn’t flooded, the event would have been far less interesting. Sometimes the disaster becomes the opportunity.

One event became five

After that night, something clicked. I discovered I loved events. So we organized four more events in Lisbon. Then one in Paris. And now we’re planning more worldwide. That single rejection email led to an entire new direction.

People often believe success comes from connections. And yes — contacts help. But ambition helps more. Especially when you don’t have the privilege of shortcuts. When you want something and can’t access it easily, your drive grows stronger. Think about buying something expensive you really want. If you could buy it instantly without effort, it wouldn’t mean much. But if it takes a year of saving, thinking about it, imagining it — the moment you finally get it feels completely different. Opportunities work the same way. The harder they are to reach, the more meaningful they become.

Passion alone is not enough

Having a passion is already rare. Knowing exactly what you want is even rarer. But passion without action fades quickly. You need to nourish it.

Try things.
Move cities.
Start projects.
Create opportunities where none exist.

Comfort is the fastest way to lose your fire. For me, leaving comfortable environments and starting over somewhere new always brings that energy back.

Where does this bring us?

I still dream of working with some of the best event companies in the world. Even though I’m building my own creative studio. Both things can coexist. I want to learn from people who are better than me. So remember that event company I got rejected from? Well, I emailed them again. But this time I had something new to show them.

Events.
Projects.
Experience.

Because sometimes the best way to get a job… is to create the job first. If nobody opens the door for you, build a door. Then knock again. And again. And again. Someone will eventually open it.