It’s hard not to fall in love with someone like Oretta Corbelli. Her sweet smile and contagious passion are magnetic to anyone around her. Oretta, a fashion consultant, creative director, and stylist, has a work ethic that has brought her well-deserved success. She is kind and charming, yet, she means business when it comes to seeing her visions fulfilled. Oretta knows how to command a set, a trait that was undoubtedly developed at a young age while staging fashion shows at her parent’s home. In these early teen years, Oretta was styling out of her own wardrobe; likely managing to put together looks we’d still be captivated by. Her entrepreneurial personality was only just beginning to surface. She has been all over the world and makes a lasting impression on anyone who meets her.
Originally from Rome, Oretta made a big decision following University to move to New York for an internship with Giorgio Armani. It was here that Oretta confirmed fashion could be realized into a career. While New York may not have stolen her heart, fashion definitely did. As many of us know, fashion can be cut-throat, but with her engagingly kind personality, Oretta found people she could look up to. In any career, finding someone to help bond with and navigate the path can make all the difference. For Oretta, that was French stylist Veronique Droulez. When speaking of Veronique, Oretta affectionately remarks “she is my mentor, my sister, and my inspiration”.
After spending 15 years in the world of corporate fashion, Oretta branched out into her own fashion consulting endeavors. She attributes the corporate world to providing a foundational understanding of the ecosystem of teams involved in fashion ranging from buying, merchandising, marketing, and creatives; however, Oretta needed the freedom of putting these skills into her own practice. Fashion is her life and soul, and she needed to live and design it her way.
Oretta’s exuberant excitement for existing can certainly be traced to her Italian culture. She currently resides in her home in LA and absolutely loves it, but of course, there are things she misses about her time in Italy: her Mom, family, and culture to name a few. When asked to share about her time spent in Italy, Oretta pinpoints exactly where her contagious gratification comes from, “Italy is the country where you can really enjoy the time, USA is the country where you can reinvent yourself and realize your dreams. My time in Italy was enjoying life a lot!”. A lesson we can all learn from her, to live with joy will bring you prosperity and make work feel a lot less like work. The contrast in cultures is not just exemplified in our approach to being, but our approaches to fashion. Oretta details her observation of the two different worlds of LA and Italy for “lifestyle, taste, sense of fashion and people’s mentality. I like the mix! Mixing the Italian and sophisticated touch with the LA relaxed vibe”, and she has certainly inherited the best of both worlds to create the beautiful person that she is inside and out.
Whether for work or play, Oretta has been all over the world. LA has clearly made a lasting impression on her, as she has resided here for the last 10 years. We, of course, had to ask a few travel questions. When it comes to shopping, London was the clear winner, however, LA was runner up for it’s collection of vintage shopping. Her favorite city to visit in Europe is Istanbul. For a visit in Italy, she loves Catania, a city in Sicily that lies along the Ionian Sea and under the shadows of Mount Etna. Work has taken her across the states, but most memorable to her was Nashville. It makes sense, as the city is filled with lively character and culture ranging from historic music venues and vintage shopping offering endless stimulation while shooting a campaign.
Oretta has made a well established name for herself in the industry. Her work has appeared in Harpers Bazaar, Elle, Grazia IT, and more. It is an exciting and innovative time to be in the industry. Oretta more than just respects the forward momentum and changes in the way the fashion system works, but embraces them, “Finally, brands, magazines, and the fashion world require talent with real skills. I love the top model from the 90’s, but I also love the fact that today the fashion system works with actors, musicians, TV talents, inclusive talents, etc”. Oretta describes working with such creatives as Bella Thorne, admiring her ability to be “fun, fast, and focused” all the while maintaining the same professional no-nonsense efficiency that Oretta presents. Similarly, she details that working with Mike Tyson was enjoyable due to his “real and human-side”.
When it comes to inspiration, Oretta is never without it. In fact, in fact she is quite the opposite as she energetically declares she is inspired by life itself. If you are familiar with her work, she is always on point and manages to capture a simplistically bold aesthetic. Nothing is too little or too much, always feeling just right, regardless of which end on the creative spectrum she lands. The balance she captures in her stylistic pulls, creative directing, and more is a direct reflection of the balance she draws inspiration from as noted from the mix of her love of both new and old generations of photography and both digital and print magazines. Her ability to embrace the two worlds is a testimony to the challenges she sees in fashion. When asked what the biggest challenges the industry faces are, Oretta answered, “to be open all the time”. For her, this means that she is constantly meeting and working with different people and different ideas, pushing her desire to learn more and more. Simply stated in her own words, “I think the creative process is never-ending and never stops”, is a belief that she clearly lives by and has been the north-star to her fearlessly pursuing her authentic initiatives.
Oretta has an ease when it comes to building relationships that goes a long way. As a stylist, her clients and her are trusting in one-another, allowing room for Oretta’s creativity to be centered around her client’s needs. The organic process she follows when it comes to both styling and creating visuals comes from her professional principle of respecting who she works with which builds a foundation for collaboration and results in complete fashion excellence. The basis for her creative process is to tell a story. She begins with mood boarding, typically alongside a photographer, then goes off to conduct her own runway research and pulls it all together with masterful ease and creativity. She navigates with an eye looking for an essence of beauty that she can portray to tell her stories through pictures.
Telling stories is a theme that emerges in conversation with Oretta. Whether it’s her own or others, she is clearly fascinated by the ability to translate both history and future into snapshots portraying it all. We probed her on her dream, a question not easily answered, and she gracefully responded that her dream is a wish to pursue her passion of focusing solely on portrait shoots. “Portraits are my passion, because any face and expression represents a life and a story”. Oretta’s story is not one to miss and we can’t wait to follow her along as she heads down her path of accomplishments that will lead her to realize this dream of capturing moments of life into personal style. To see her work and connect visit her at https://www.orettacorbelli.com / IG handle: @orettac
IMAGES COURTESY OF ORETTA CORBELLI
