Chiara Ferragni launched her blog, The Blonde Salad, in 2009 while attending Milan’s Bocconi University for a degree in law. Initially indicative of the “mixed salad” of interests including travel, beauty and food, the blog has since become focused on fashion. Among her style choices and inspirations, The Blonde Salad charts her collaborations with an impressive roster of design houses, including Dior, Louis Vuitton, Ermenegildo Zegna, Benetton and Mango. She was also announced as the European ambassador of Amazon Fashion and face of its Spring 2016. In 2017, Ferragni stepped up to the helm of her TBS Crew to become its president and chief executive. Ferragni’s namesake line, Chiara Ferragni Collection, started out in 2013 as a footwear line with Luisa Via Roma. It has since expanded into clothing, accessories and children’s wear and boasts four flagship stores and over 300 retail doors. The company reported 2016 revenues of €17 million ($20 million). With her blog The Blonde Salad, Chiara Ferragni has used her social media style posts to create a multi-million pound business. ‘People like my story as a self-made woman.' The daughter of a dentist and a writer, Ferragni says she knows exactly why she’s so popular. “People like my story as a self-made woman,” she says. “That’s very unusual in Italy – a lot of people of my generation don’t even have a job. I don’t really know how I did it.” Timing was definitely a factor. In 2009, she worked with her then-boyfriend, now CEO Riccardo Pozzoli, to turn a “personal space” into a business, first through banner ads and Ferragni modelling brands’ clothes in the images, with fees of about €1,000-2,000 for a post. Now, she doesn’t disclose what the fees are, but it’s safe to assume they’re significantlyhigher. And, like the whole discernible talent thing, Ferragni’s fans don’t appear to be concerned by these corporate hookups. “It has to feel natural and transparent,” she says. “For me, selection is everything, it has to be something that my followers will be happy to know about. I can’t lose my credibility – you can’t put a price on that.” To further illustrate Ferragni’s influence, the documentary Unposted, a "millennial story of making it", contains interviews with Delphine Arnault, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Diane von Furstenberg, Paris Hilton, Jeremy Scott, Silvia Venturini Fendi, Alberta Ferretti, and more fashion-world fixtures. The industry approval, the 17 million Instagram followers, the young men and women that scream and weep in her presence, and the fact that Harvard Business School used her as a social media case study cement Ferragni as one of the internet’s most valuable moguls. She’s also one of the most clever. At the film’s premiere, Italy’s Consul General to the United States introduced her to the audience, making a pointed connection. “I think that Chiara Ferragni runs deep in the historic Italian tradition of creativity. […] She combines, at the same time, a capacity to be an entrepreneur, an influencer, a producer, a designer. I think these are all features of the Italian Renaissance, to be many things together at the same time,” he said.