WHO IS LOHLA RAMONA?

MISS LOHLA RAMONA took the NJ Transit train into New York one morning, skipping school to hit up Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. She paraded through Penn Station in a silver bodysuit, red sunglasses, and red legwarmers, her platinum blonde extensions falling in razored swifts between her baby bird shoulderblades. In between the shows she'd wheedled herself into, she snuck outside of the building, skipping the ogling of famous faces and obsessive self documentation to perch by an ice sculpture with one of her attractive misfit friends. She was assaulted by cameras, business cards thrown into her hand like darts at a dartboard, this little pipsqueak nobody from New Jersey, all ninety pounds and sixty-eight inches of her barely clothed but sheathed in Something. Amused by the attention, she went home, wrote a paper and went to sleep.

The next morning, she found herself on a multitude of style blogs and on the front page of the New York Times style section. Our little seventeen-year-old stylista realized she could very well have a future as the camera’s coquette. She and her friends had always had a penchant for being obnoxious quirkballs in front of lenses for fun, but Lohlita began to reach out and network with indie artists, filling weekend day trips with photoshoots for small campaigns as off the wall as she was. She continued to show up late to classes (though she still eloquently worked her sequined ass off) but jumped for joy (in large platform heels, in all likelihood) when she was accepted early decision to NYU Steinhardt. Fast forward to Fall 2011 and Lohla is all packed up and moving to New York. She knew this was it, her time to hustle and shine.

She did. She collaborated with dozens of photographers and within months was an Internet darling, her face reblogged and liked by hundreds, then thousands. Within a year, while booking jobs entirely freelance, she has, through her seamless mix of talent and presentation, sculpted brand after New York brand and graced the pages and screens of publications such as Vanity Fair Italia and Nylon both online and in print. Her constantly fluctuating DIY aesthetic mixes with her eye for high-end talent and a conscious perfectionism for end results epitomizes the juxtaposition of traditional fashion and at-home, street-cyber style that have come to represent the current pop-Dadaist culture that we live in today.

​

Looking at her portfolio is like scrolling through a dashboard or blog: a mix of images and influences seemingly disjointed but with a clear and singular spirit.  Lohla is not a mannequin or a one-season face, but a self-constructed talent with the same bottom-up work ethic as a fashion blogger who ends up in the front rows at fashion shows, a rapper who goes from underground mixtapes to major record label deals, or a singer who trades fronting bands at little bars in the East Village for pop stardom. She is an example of the kind of self-made, constantly evolving woman with a penchant for dominating the public through the exposure of her personal reality that is the basis of the current cultural shift in the democratization of the power of style.