While Carla Rockmore has only been on social media for the last two years, the 54-year-old fashion influencer had already made a name for herself in the fashion industry years prior, lending her hand on the design side.
Rockmore’s design career spans several decades and countries, as she’s designed for brands and herself in places like Amsterdam, Montreal and Dallas. At the beginning of the pandemic, however, Rockmore’s design career was sidelined, as she had to put a pause on her new fine jewelry line made out of India due to the pandemic and travel restrictions.
“I need to be creative. If I’m not creative, I tank,” she said about the time and how it influenced her to look to social media as her creative outlet. “I didn’t have any of my tangible items that I use to design stuff with [during lockdown]. The only thing I had was my vast collection through my many, many years of curating my closet, a 16-year-old son who was sequestered with me to teach me iMovie and a phone.”
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To occupy her time and channel her creativity, Rockmore started making weekly fashion videos on YouTube for her friends to watch. After a year on YouTube and a little under 100 subscribers, her son convinced her to pivot to TikTok to reach more people.
Rockmore stated that after just one week on the social media platform, she gained 200,000 followers. She was able to continue the momentum week-after-week, and now has a follower count of 1.2 million followers.
@carlarockmore You never know where you’re going to find something fabulous. I scored these fabulous 70’s vintage palazzo pants in the CLOWN section of a halloween costume store 😳😂. When I paired my classic @amazonthedrop crisp white shirt with those palazzos, Chloe immediately came to mind. I adore Chloe for their consistent reference to the sexy 70’s. Maybe its because we’re about the same age 😜
“In terms of messaging, it’s really important to me that I reiterate that trend is a very different thing than style,” she said on why she thinks she’s resonated with her followers. “And it has nothing to do with age and nothing to do with what’s coming down the runways. I try to be extremely inclusive.”
Her efforts on inclusivity have paid off. Rockmore stated something she hears frequently from her followers is that mothers and daughters both follow her and share her videos with each other. She stated her follower demographic starts in the late teens and extends up to the 60s and 70s.
“Moms and daughters share me,” she said. “That’s exceptional in the industry to be someone that they can each look to in their own age group to gain something from and share.”
When it comes to her style, Rockmore jokingly described it as “schizophrenic.”
“I’m so all over the place that I’m not able to put myself in a box,” she said about her style. “If I were to run around and say I’m a maximalist and then I want to dress cleanly one afternoon, I’ll feel pressured not to because I’m a maximalist. There’s no reason for us to label ourselves. I am an eclectic dresser, so I will follow my gut and decide which bits of what’s hot speak to me.”
Rockmore is taking this ethos over to her new fashion collection with Amazon’s The Drop, where she is looking back to her design roots and creating a capsule collection of essential pieces like midi dresses, button-up shirts, palazzo pants and draped pencil skirts.
“I felt it was imperative to address my entire demographic,” she said about the collection. “That’s not easy to do — to bring pieces together that excite a 20-year-old and a 60-year-old. The only way to do that, I believe, is to stick with the classic styles I have purchased over and over again.”
Rockmore’s Amazon fashion collection will be available starting Tuesday on The Drop’s website. Pieces range in price from $44.90 to $79.90.
While Rockmore is still planning to continue building her social media platform, the influencer has plans to get back to her design roots in a larger way by revisiting her fine jewelry line and building out a costume jewelry business.
“I’m very much committed to bringing back quality in costume jewelry. That has somehow been forgotten,” she said about her line. “I want to create certain elevated pieces that would be passed down even though it’s not precious.”
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