CLARA’S INTERVIEW

November 14th, Friday
10:24 am
In her appartement, Paris
2025

111mb on disk

By A & M

Corporate Background

A: Yeah, people do this thing all the time where they’re like, “I like doing this because it’s easy and I’m good at it,” and that makes them feel good.

CLARA: You know, that is the perfect freaking segue back into corporate life, because the only reason I ever ended up in the corporate job I had was because I was like, “Yeah, I mean, I’m kind of good at it.” That’s literally how I got there.

Even throughout my studies, I never asked myself, Do I actually like this? And I never had to, because I was never confronted with failure.

I remember my first year in Amsterdam. I was doing a Bachelor in Communication Science, which was technically a Bachelor of Science, so there was math and statistics and all that shit. We had this stats class that everyone talked about like it was impossible. I think it had something like a 50% fail rate.

People were dropping out all the time. Friends of mine struggled so hard just to pass. Meanwhile, I was kind of chilling. Not that I didn’t work hard — I did. I was nervous before exams and everything. But it always felt manageable to me.

So I didn’t question anything.

The people around me who were struggling started asking themselves deeper questions: Maybe this isn’t for me. Maybe I should change paths. But I just kept going, naive as hell, inside my little tunnel like, “Nope, I’m fine.”

And we live in a society where performance gets rewarded. You’re told: Be good. Achieve. Succeed. So every time I did well, I took it as confirmation that I was on the right path.

I just kept going. I finished my studies. And honestly, I loved what I studied at the time. But then I entered the workforce and realized it was nothing like what I imagined. Nothing.

The discrepancy wasn’t small — it was huge.

But even then, I was still kind of good at the job. So again, I kept going.

Then I did my master’s, and honestly, it got worse.

By that point I had become such a nerd, such a perfectionist. I wanted to be the best student in the class. I wanted everything to be flawless. I’m an extremely Type A person, and I had become so rigid in trying to fit perfectly into this mold that I started feeling the cracks.

I was at a French business school, and everyone except me understood that if you paid to be there, you were probably going to be fine. People chilled. They partied. They coasted through.

Me? I thought, Oh my God, this costs so much money — it has to be worth something.

So I worked constantly.

And that’s when the cracks really started showing, because the thing I had believed my entire life — If you work hard and follow the rules, you get rewarded — started failing me.

People around me were doing chaotic shit, barely trying, still getting similar grades. Meanwhile, I was killing myself trying to be perfect.

That was probably the first time I started noticing the illusion a little bit, but I wasn’t really self-aware enough yet to fully reflect on it. I think part of it was honestly just age. You’re young, you go with the flow.

And my parents were both extremely hardworking people who always did “the right thing.” That was the model I grew up with. I didn’t even know there were other options.

And again — I wasn’t failing. So why would I question anything?

After that, I got an internship at a major beauty brand and moved to Paris.

The first six months were intense, but this time I was actually getting rewarded. I was working hard and the system was functioning the way I thought it should. I was getting visibility, my managers liked me, they were pushing for me internally — and eventually I got offered a job there.

So again I thought: Okay. The system works.

I got interviews internally, landed my first real role, and apparently it was considered a huge deal.

Meanwhile, I was so deep inside my own head that I genuinely didn’t understand the context of what was happening. People were calling me like:

“Oh my God, bitch, you signed a CDI at the company. Do you understand what this means?”

And I remember being like:

“No? Why are you congratulating me like I won a Nobel Prize?”

To me it just felt… normal.

Which honestly says a lot about how I viewed myself back then. Achievements didn’t feel exceptional. They felt expected.

Like:Yeah, obviously. What else would you do?
How dare you fail?

CLARA: After a while, though, I started understanding why people considered it such a big deal.
I was working on a smaller brand inside the company during a messy restructuring period, and at first I thought the chaos came from the rebrand, the team changes, all of that.
Then I realized: no, this messiness exists across corporate culture in general.
Corporate environments do a really good job pretending everything inside the walls is organized — workflows, systems, processes, structure. But a lot of it is chaos held together by appearances.
And realizing that shattered something in me.
Because I had spent my whole life believing:
Follow the process → get rewarded.
Then I entered corporate life and discovered the human factor.
Managers are parents dealing with their kids. People have egos. Some employees are overwhelmed. Some interns got hired through connections and don’t know what they’re doing yet. People are distracted. Tired. Emotional. Human.
I had this almost robotic idea that adults in professional environments were perfect — organized, efficient, always giving 100%.
They weren’t.
It was mostly just me.
And maybe one other neurodivergent girlie.
That realization shattered the fantasy I had about adulthood and professionalism.

A: The company you worked for has this really capitalistic energy to me. It feels very American in the context of France.

CLARA: Yeah, but it also still has this laid-back French attitude underneath. Having seen places like Estée Lauder too, I’d still say it’s pretty far from full American corporate culture.
But there is this strong focus on individual ambition and climbing upward. People move jobs constantly, chase opportunities, reposition themselves all the time.
And honestly, there’s so much good in that. You can evolve quickly. You can move across departments, push projects, reinvent yourself.
But I think that same ambition also creates a certain messiness.
And I want to say this very carefully because I genuinely don’t have anything bad to say about the company. I met incredible people there. I learned so much. For a lot of people, that environment is amazing.
It just stopped aligning with me.
My expectation was:
I give my all → you give your all back.
But corporations don’t work like that. That’s not their role in your life.
The relationship is more distributed. More political. More social.
You have to find the right people, align interests, position projects correctly. And emotionally, I struggled with that.
Because I got so invested.
I would feel euphoric after a successful project and devastated when something got canceled or didn’t go my way. I was riding constant emotional highs and lows, and eventually it fried me out.
And weirdly enough, the workload itself was never the issue for me. Even though we were objectively overworked, I could handle the pace.
The problem was emotional overinvestment.
Corporate environments require a certain detachment.
And when I finally tried becoming detached, it backfired. I probably overcorrected — I went from deeply emotionally involved to emotionally absent, and people around me were like:
“What the fuck happened to you?”
That shift is what ultimately made me realize I couldn’t stay.

Leaving Corporate
A: It’s interesting because you talk so much about perfectionism and reciprocity — wanting to get back what you put in. And now you’ve moved into something completely different. To most people, going from corporate to a Pilates instructor and pole dancer in Bali feels like a massive jump.

CLARA: It is. But honestly? We’re kind of a cliché.
There are so many girls with this exact trajectory. Every day after class I have someone telling me:
“I want to become a Pilates instructor.”
And now I actually stop them and say:
“Manage your expectations.”
This job is not easy. It’s exhausting in a completely different way. And the industry is crowded as hell.
I literally tell people:
“Do you actually love Pilates, or do you just need a break from your current life?”
Because there are easier ways to escape burnout than spending thousands on training.

M: But financially — how did you leave? What did you actually do?

CLARA: Babe, I quit.
I had nothing.
And I think that’s important to say, because people imagine there’s always some perfect backup plan.
There wasn’t.
I started planning to leave around December. I tried saving money, but honestly? I’m expensive. That’s just who I am.
I like beautiful, high-quality things. I don’t buy a lot, but when I do, I buy well.
Which becomes a problem when you’ve taken six pole dancing classes and decide to buy yourself a custom-made pole.
Who possessed me? Truly.
So saving money was difficult.
I originally planned to stay another year and save properly. But one day I fainted in the metro on my way to work.
I had never fainted in my life.
And I realized something inside me had genuinely broken.
I didn’t want to go to work. I didn’t want to perform this detached version of myself anymore. I didn’t want to be controlled by a life that no longer fit me.
So I walked into the office, wrote my resignation letter on my work laptop, printed it, and handed it to my manager.
And honestly? She was lovely.
She looked at me and basically said:
“I’m not surprised.”

That night I had to go home and tell my mother.
My mother is Italian. She runs the family. Not just the household — the entire extended family.
And she was proud of me. Proud that I had this prestigious job in Paris. To her, it meant stability. Safety.
So I had to tell her:
“I quit my CDI at the company.”
I was shaking on the plane home.
The night before, as a joke over wine, someone had said:
“What if you move to Bali and teach Pilates?”
And suddenly, sitting on that plane, I was like…
Actually.
I got home, told my mother everything, and she was in shock. Then she asked:
“What’s your plan?”
And I said:
“I think I’m going to Bali.”
And she looked at me and said:
“Book your flight.”
Not supportively. As a challenge.
Like:
Okay. Do it then.
And suddenly I had to prove it.

For a week I barely slept because I had no idea how I was going to afford any of it.
I do come from a family where I could technically fall back on support, and I want to acknowledge that privilege honestly. But I didn’t want to rely on it.
Then, after I came back from a ski trip, my manager called me into the office and asked:
“Would you consider staying freelance?”
They had someone burn out internally and needed help.
And in a completely delusional burst of confidence, I said:
“Okay. I’ll do it. But I work three days a week, and I live in Bali.”
And somehow…
They said yes.

So I started freelancing remotely from Bali while teaching Pilates.
And honestly? That relationship with corporate life worked so much better for me.
Because suddenly I wasn’t an employee anymore. I was a collaborator.
Nobody was controlling me. Nobody was telling me who to be.
I’d answer calls from the pool in a bikini. Sometimes I’d literally take work calls in clubs because social media work is reactive like that.
And weirdly, I loved it.
I got to keep the projects I enjoyed, work with people I liked, but without feeling emotionally trapped inside the system.

Eventually, though, even that became too much.
After burnout, I actually became more productive at first. My adrenaline skyrocketed. I couldn’t stop moving.
People kept saying:
“Clara, you just burned out. Why don’t you rest?”
And I physically couldn’t.
Then around June, everything crashed.
I took three weeks completely off for the first time in my life. No work. No teaching. Nothing.
And after that, I realized:
Maybe this is the beginning of a new phase.

A: How much of the old corporate Clara still exists inside you now?

CLARA: I think she’s dead.
Completely.
But I still mourn her sometimes.
Especially when I’m around old corporate friends. Sometimes I miss putting on a beautiful outfit, walking into a conference room, opening a PowerPoint presentation.
Not all of it was bad.
I romanticize almost everything in my life — even painful experiences. Some parts of that life were genuinely beautiful.
So whenever my current life becomes difficult, there’s this temptation to think:
“Well… she had this.”
And then I have to remind myself:
“Yeah, but she didn’t have this.”
Every version of your life is a trade-off.
And honestly? I think I’m going to live many different lives before I’m done.

A: Yeah. Going back to the whole identity shift and grieving process — thinking about a younger version of yourself — did you ever expect your life to look like this? Was this ever something you secretly hoped for? Even in a hidden way?

CLARA: Kind of.
I think a lot of women have already said this, so I’m not saying anything revolutionary, but honestly? You should do everything your 13-year-old self wanted.
My 13-year-old self was so on point. She knew everything. She wanted all of this.
But I shut her up.
I kept telling her:
“You can’t have this. You’re not good enough. Not perfect enough. Not enough of this, not enough of that.”
I spent years explaining to myself why I couldn’t have the things I actually wanted.
But it turns out you can’t escape what you genuinely want. The emotion behind it is too strong. It keeps coming back.
And honestly, the only regret I really struggle with is:
Why didn’t I start sooner?
I try not to live with regret, but that’s probably the one thing that still gets to me.

A: Do you think when you hit that really low point in June, there was also this feeling of:
“Well, I’ve got nothing left to lose, so I might as well give my younger self what she always wanted”?
Like:
“Okay girl, go crazy. Nothing else worked.”

CLARA: I do agree with that.
I also think it came from realizing that the ways I had been trying to live my life simply weren’t working for me anymore.
And I really believe that if you don’t change anything, then you can’t complain that things stay the same.
The thing is, change is actually very hard for me. People don’t believe that because I do change a lot, but it’s never easy. It’s constant friction. Constant growing pains.
Sometimes those growing pains feel exciting. Sometimes they’re exhausting. But they never really stop.
The only reason I keep moving through them is because I know certain things are no longer working, and I hate being stuck.
I hate it.
You know that feeling where you have a problem you can’t solve no matter what you try? Eventually you become so desperate that you’re willing to try anything just because you can’t tolerate staying in the same place anymore.
That’s what it felt like.

A: What’s interesting is that when people look at your life from the outside — corporate job at one of the biggest beauty conglomerates in the world, now Bali, Pilates, pole dancing — they think:
“Oh, she’s free. She just chose this glamorous alternative life.”
But people don’t realize how many major life changes happen because you get cornered into them.

CLARA: I was cornered.
Oh my God, I love that phrasing. I was absolutely cornered.
And honestly, it ties back to the whole 13-year-old-self thing. That version of me wanted something so intensely that no matter how many times I told her “no,” it kept resurfacing.
If I look at my life in smaller patterns, I’ve basically been rebranding myself every one or two years forever.
And when I say “rebrand,” I mean changing my hair, my aesthetic, my whole identity.
I think what kept happening was this: I would spend one or two years being the “good girl,” doing everything correctly, holding myself together through discipline… and then eventually I’d snap and go in the complete opposite direction.
I’d dye my hair orange again. Completely reinvent myself.
It was like my younger self rebelling.
Like:
“I need out.”
And eventually life corners you into listening.
People ask me:
“How did you end up moving to Bali?”
And honestly? I got cornered by my mother standing in front of me saying:
“Book your flight.”
And suddenly I had to prove I could do it.
I think people underestimate how much life is just action and reaction. You do something, and then life responds, and then you have to respond back.
At some point it stops being:
“Did you consciously want this?”
And becomes:
“Well… now I’m inside the situation.”
I’m in the strudel now.

Fashion, Identity & Rebranding

A: Speaking of changing identities — and honestly, you’ve accidentally answered half our questions already — we wanted to talk about appearance and fashion too.
Because style clearly became part of how you constructed different versions of yourself. And now your life has changed so much that even the clothes attached to your identity have changed too.
You’re not wearing the corporate suits anymore.

CLARA: Not at all.
Now I’m wearing completely different outfits.
And honestly, this is where the brand comes in.
Because one of my biggest struggles throughout all my different identity phases was that I was always sporty, but I never found sportswear that actually felt like me.
At 13, I was a hardcore emo kid.
Like… extreme emo kid.
I still have all the clothes in Hamburg somewhere. The chain belts. The whole thing. It was intense.
But then the issue becomes:
How does an emo girl go to the gym?
She doesn’t.
Except I did have to go to the gym because I had a severe eating disorder at the time. So again, it wasn’t really a choice.
But sporty culture never matched the identity I wanted.
She wasn’t going to show up in Alo leggings.
Absolutely not.

A: They don’t exactly sell emo gym clothes at Hot Topic.

CLARA: Exactly.
Every time my family went to the U.S., I forced my parents to take me to Hot Topic and buy all the ridiculous band shirts and accessories.
Honestly? I still love that aesthetic.
Then later I went through this hyper-feminine princess phase, but again:
How does that girl dress for the gym?
Every version of myself kept crashing into activewear culture.
So when I created the brand, I wanted to design clothes that were wearable for girls like me — pieces you could actually move in, but that didn’t feel like “gym wear.”
Because athleisure never felt like me.
I don’t want to look sporty.
I’ve never wanted to look sporty.
I’m Posh Spice, not Sporty Spice.
I may work out more than Posh Spice, but spiritually, I’m still Posh Spice.
So the whole idea behind the brand was:
Pilates clothes that look like real clothes.
Feminine cuts, soft fabrics, scrunching, flow, pieces that work for pole too — clothing that still feels expressive and styled.

Keepsakes & Feeling Seen

A: Okay, last few questions.
Do you have a lucky charm? A keepsake? Some object that carries a really important memory for you?

CLARA: Honestly, no single one.
I’m very attached to objects in general. Every object has a little emotional story attached to it. But there isn’t one specific thing that stands above the others.
I don’t really have a “favorite.”

A: Is there one object you’d still want to talk about?

CLARA: There’s one little story I really love.
I have this small piece by Salvador Dalí that’s pretty beat up now.
My family is from Matera in southern Italy, and years ago there was a big international exhibition there with a bunch of artists. We went to this Dalí exhibit, and I kept picking up this little piece over and over again because I loved it.
You know how kids do that thing where they quietly keep touching the thing they want until their parents notice?
I must have picked it up five times.
Nobody reacted, so eventually I gave up.
Then months later, at Christmas, I opened my presents and there it was.
And I think what made it so special was that feeling of being seen.
Kids want things constantly, but there’s something different about someone noticing which thing actually matters to you.
That moment felt very much like:
“Oh… you saw me.”
And that’s why I still love it so much.

Pippi Longstocking & the Return of the Inner Child

A: Can you share a childhood memory that deeply shaped who you are today?

CLARA: Actually yes — and weirdly enough, it connects to my next “rebrand.”
A few weeks ago in Bali, I randomly remembered something I hadn’t thought about in years:
I was absolutely obsessed with Pippi Longstocking as a child.

A: Interesting, because she honestly terrified me as a kid.

CLARA: Really? She was my idol.
Everything about her.
The red hair — which I’ve always been obsessed with. My other childhood icons were Ariel and Anastasia. Apparently redheads imprinted on me permanently.
But beyond that, Pippi’s whole thing was:
“I do whatever I want.”
And as a child, I related to that so deeply.
At some point, though, that voice inside me died. Or maybe I killed it.
I think I spent years suppressing her.
But in Bali I suddenly thought:
“You know who needs to come back? Pippi Longstocking.”
Because she’s fearless. She wakes up every day and just lives exactly how she wants. People judge her, attack her, misunderstand her — and she simply doesn’t care.
But she’s also kind.
That’s what I love most about her.
She’s bold, loud, unconventional… but still deeply caring toward the people around her.
And I feel like we rarely see female characters written that way.
Especially young girls.

A: She’s free.

CLARA: Exactly.
But maybe freedom also comes with loneliness.
Because if you truly do whatever you want, you detach yourself from structures — community, expectations, belonging.
And maybe the trade-off for total freedom is isolation.

A: That’s probably why I always found her unsettling as a kid.
She had all this freedom, but she also seemed profoundly alone.

CLARA: Exactly.
And honestly, I think that tension is one of the biggest struggles in modern life.
People either pursue individuality so aggressively that they isolate themselves from everyone… or they sacrifice themselves completely to fit into a community.
And neither extreme works.
The challenge is finding the balance between self-expression and belonging.
That’s probably the work of an entire lifetime.

Learning to Accept Herself

A: What’s a flaw you used to hide but are now learning to accept?

CLARA: Still learning, okay? We’re in process.
But honestly, I think because I’ve always had a playful personality, people interpreted me as flirtatious very early on.
And it got weaponized against me.
I remember in fifth grade, this teacher told my parents:
“Clara is always flirting with the boys.”
First of all, those boys were my friends. Second of all, they were deeply unfuckable.
That was not the intention.
But I internalized this idea that being socially open, warm, playful, engaging — all of that was somehow dangerous or inappropriate.
So I shut that side of myself down for years.
But the funny thing is: she never actually disappeared.
I think the version of me people have seen over the last ten years is already the muted version.
And recently, for the first time, I stopped viewing “flirty” as an insult.
I went on a date in Bali and the guy said:
“When I met you, I thought: wow, she’s very flirty.”
And for the first time in my life, I heard it and thought:
“Thank you.”
Which honestly felt revolutionary.
Because flirting itself isn’t evil. Warmth isn’t evil. Playfulness isn’t evil.
But for a long time, I was taught to believe it was.

A: Yeah. It’s crazy to me that a teacher would say something like that about a ten-year-old. I still can’t get over that.
I think it’s dangerous and reckless for an adult, especially a teacher, to frame a child that way. It can really affect someone’s psyche.
Wait, we’ve got two more questions. It’ll be quick.
So, are you comfortable with silence?

CLARA: Yes. Yeah. Uh, it depends who I’m around, but usually I am. Honestly, I learned it from some of my friends. I have a few friends who are much quieter than me, and when I first became close with them, I was really confused by the silence because, as Westerners, we’re taught that silence is awkward or bad. But in other cultures, that’s not necessarily true.
I don’t know if it came from culture or from their households specifically, but they just had that comfort with silence. And yeah, now I sit in silence a lot.

A: Yeah. Like you said about extroverts and introverts, I think there’s something really true there. I know a lot of extroverted people where, when they’re alone, it’s like… you know.

CLARA: Honestly, this morning was a bit of an exception because I put on an album with lyrics. Usually, I listen to music without words.
First of all, I’m very attached to lyrics in music, so I choose really carefully what I listen to and what people are actually saying. Because if I hear SZA crying over a boy one more time — I swear to God, you’re thirty. Change the fucking narrative. I can’t do this anymore. I get tired.
But also, lyrics are distracting. I think words in music influence us much more than we realize. And honestly, even though I love her and sometimes it’s appropriate, I’m not going to wake up and listen to Lana Del Rey. I don’t think that would be healthy for my depression.
You listen to her whole albums and you’re like, “You guys… we are not okay.”
And you’re kind of reinforcing it, because everything you repeatedly consume reinforces your current state, right? So I think it’s important to be selective with it. I’m not saying sad music is bad — I listen to it too. We need different kinds of emotional release. That’s why music and art exist.
But when I’m in moments where I don’t really know how I feel yet, I try not to influence myself with lyrics. I’ll put on instrumental music instead so my own brain can speak without being guided somewhere else. Because we’re always being influenced.

A: Okay, and then our last question — the big one.
Basically, imagine life as a car ride. Where would you place yourself? Are you driving? Passenger princess? Outside the car? Somewhere else entirely?

CLARA: It’s funny because when you first asked it — I’m going to explain the evolution of my thought process — at first, I was driving the car.
By the way, the car has red leather seats, but it’s silver. It’s also a convertible. I think it’s a Porsche.
Which is weird because I would’ve expected it to be black. Actually, not weird — just unexpected. Because when I think about it more deeply, I would paint it black. But my first instinct was silver.
Anyway.
At first I was driving, but then you said I could be anywhere in or around the car… and suddenly I was lying on the front hood.

A: Okay. Why?

CLARA: I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know what that means. But I’m on the hood of the car.

M: What is the front hood?

A: It’s the front part you lift up to look at the engine.

CLARA: You know? Although, in a Porsche, that would actually be—

A: In a Porsche, it wouldn’t be the engine. It’d technically be the trunk.
So she’s lying on the trunk.

CLARA: But I’m definitely on the front.
And I’m lying on my left side, specifically.

A: Okay. Did you bring your birthday paper? We’re going to make you draw it.

CLARA: No, I can’t draw it.

A: You have to.

CLARA: I can’t draw.

A: None of us can draw. It’s okay. Just draw a terrible little car and a little body on the hood.

CLARA: You know what I’m thinking?
Did I drive over myself? Like… was I driving the car, and then somehow ended up on the hood?

A: How did you even get there?

CLARA: I think I drove over myself.

A: You somehow hit yourself and ended up on the windshield.

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