For those of you with Twitter or Instagram accounts, you may be familiar with @OscarPRGirl, a verified and highly-trafficked social media account run by our one and only Holy Cross graduate Erika Bearman. This past summer I was lucky enough to interview her, and I cannot emphasize enough how amazing I think Erika is. I interviewed Erika not only to have the pleasure of having a one-on-one conversation with her, but also because I assumed many girls, besides myself, are intrigued with Erika’s path from attending Holy Cross to working closely with Oscar de la Renta.
Many people may think that Erika’s sole job is Head of Public Relations at Oscar de la Renta, but, in reality, she is much more than that. Erika is the Senior Vice President of Global Communications and with that oversees media and advertising, press, celebrity dressing, events worldwide, creative services, and social media. Essentially, her goal is to tell people outside of the office what Oscar de la Renta is.
During her time at Holy Cross, Erika studied English and Art History. She says that she never could have seen herself pursuing a career in fashion during college. She wasn’t a “clothes horse”—she wore hiking boots around campus. However, Erika believes, “Style is within a person and it is up to you to figure out what you want to project.”
Despite not knowing exactly what she wanted to do after graduation, Holy Cross prepared Erika to enjoy her studiesa and led her to consider doing something in the art world. However, it was a friend of her father, an executive at HBO, who suggested she go into fashion. Erika first got her start in the fashion world when the head of Public Relations at L’Oreal took a chance on her and offered her the position of Assistant Head of Public Relations at Armani.
Erika admits she loved Holy Cross. She says it was the best time of her life and that it is such a luxury to be in a place to expand your mind. Looking back, she realizes even more how luxurious it was to be able to take two hours to talk about a painting. She admits that she is 100% sure that attending Holy Cross has contributed to her success, because it helped develop her as a person, made her intellectually curious, and encouraged a sense of service in her.
I’m sure we’re all wondering what a typical work day is like for Erika Bearman, but she says there is no such thing as a regular day. Depending on the season and where Oscar is determines what she is doing. Erika could be promoting Oscar’s new home collection or like the day of our interview, their new children’s collection, where a bunch of four year olds were running around the office. She finds every day to be fun and interesting. Because the company is fifty years old, it has a rich history and a legacy for making beautiful things, a fact that makes her feel so lucky to be a part of its transition into a global lifestyle brand. In addition, Erika works very closely with Oscar de la Renta and describes him as an extraordinary human being. She says that he enjoys everything about life and that he lives in a way in which he appreciates the finer things. Essentially, he is world class.
Erika also travels very often for her job. However, when she travels with Oscar it is always extremely quick, because he is so busy. In fact, they were just in Singapore in June for a runway show. For her, every day with Oscar is a learning process; she is a student in the world just like we are students in school.
Although her job does not go without hard work, hard days, hard moments, and feeling as though at times she did not do everything she could, overall she feels incredibly lucky and considers herself to be the luckiest girl in the world.