Pia Arrobio
“The moment I got the opportunity [to start LPA], I signed my contract and moved to Venice [California]. I became much more introverted, because I knew it was gonna take me like a year to build it outright. I started in October and launched in August, and during that time, I started focusing on working out, learning how to meditate, and just making sure that I was mentally prepared for the inevitable: that a lot of girls in my life were gonna be jealous and pissed. I [knew] I was gonna end up hearing bad things people were saying about me. Like, ‘Oh, she’s only successful because she knows famous people.’”
“My boyfriend and I have the same argument all the time. He’s like, ‘You’re always too out there on social media.’ I’m like, ‘First of all, without social media, I wouldn’t have a job. Second of all, nobody even knows I’m with you.’ The things that are very, very personal to me aren’t things I’d share. It’s like, you gotta lean into the change. You can’t be mad about it. Imagine how our parents felt when the Internet fucking started and people stopped going to libraries.”
“I spent many years having anxiety. Many years being really jealous. Many years with eating disorders. Many years, just like a normal girl, going through lots of crazy girl shit, being really frantic and frazzled and on my phone all the time. Now I have rules with my phone. I have rules for myself. Now I go into work a little bit later because, like, I have to go to fucking hot yoga every morning.”
Pia wears LPA dress.
“I really love the Tom Ford Soleil Blanc Shimmering Body Oil. I was in the Hamptons one day this summer at an event, and this blogger there just looked fucking great. Her skin was just glowing. I said to her, ‘Do you put sparkles on your skin?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah. I do it for myself, and I do it every day.’ She was like, ‘When you do little things that are for yourself, you just feel better. I really like to have a nice glow on my shoulders—I think it’s really pretty.’ I had a different French one before that that I got at a pharmacy—it was like an oil with some bronze in it. And then Tom Ford sent me one. It’s really sparkly, but I’m really into it. I put that on my chest and collarbones and shoulders if I’m going out to dinner or going somewhere where I’m showing my skin, ’cause it makes me feel beautiful.”
“I’ve been very into makeup since high school. Makeup, hair, and skin. My skin’s been a really big struggle for the last seven years, since I was 24-years-old. I got adult acne, and that was a hormonal thing. I think it was also like a partying-in-New-York thing, where I was just like smoking and going out all the time. My regimen… I feel bad even talking about it. It’s expensive!”
“My mom is Danish, and I feel like Danish women are notoriously focused on their outward appearance. It’s not like my mom is snobby, but she always just had this really intense pressure of like, ‘What would Audrey Hepburn do?’ I remember seeing her when I was younger, sitting at her little vanity before she and my dad went out on a Friday or Saturday night. She just looked so beautiful sitting there putting on her smokey eye or painting her nails. She always just looked so nice.”
“[My mother] takes care of my father, all my siblings, and all of their kids, but doesn’t take care of herself. Like, never works out. The house is starting to become messy because she’s getting older and it’s overwhelming, so I go there once a week. I mean, I sleep there once a week, anyway. But now I’m going there and taking care of her. Her and my dad weren’t feeling well yesterday, and I just kind of lost it. I said, ‘I actively do a lot all day long to make sure that I am not overwhelmed,’ and they called me a brat.”
“I actively practise being my best self—being self-aware, and being aware of my body and how I feel inside of it every day—but a lot of people don’t have the means to do so. And I think a lot of people don’t allow themselves to have faith. This is something I’m trying to teach my mother.”
Pia wears LPA top and skirt.
“Vulnerability is the most powerful thing in the world. It’s something that’s carried me for the last ten years of my career. It’s like this constant common denominator of vulnerability. And that’s what’s attracted people to me and given me a clothing brand. People can identify with something. And it’s not me in particular, but I do feel like I’m a conduit to this underlying state of vulnerability and insecurity. I think that people are too afraid to admit that they’re like, scared, or feeling sad, or feeling ugly.”
“I had a full-blown meltdown trying to pick out an outfit for an event once. We had dressed all these celebrities. We had dressed all the influencers. I had dressed all my friends who were going. Obviously, I put myself last with what I was going to wear. Totally fine. No big deal. And then I thought, Okay, well I have so many samples in the office. I’ll wear one of the samples. But like, I’m not sample size. And my samples aren’t even extra small. They’re small. I work out every fucking day and monitor every single thing that goes into my mouth, but I can’t fit into samples. I tried on four of them, and then I broke the zipper on two, and I just started crying. I called my boyfriend and had a meltdown. I was just like, ‘I fucking hate this. I don’t want to make clothes anymore. I’m fat. Let’s just move to Italy, and I can just be what I am, which is a thick woman, and we’ll have children. I can’t do this.’”
“Last weekend I was so fucked up. It was like 4 in the morning and I was at some party, and this girl I’d met through my neighbour came up to me and tried to talk shit about another girl to me. This girl was a lot younger than me. I was like, ‘Babe, don’t talk shit about people. You don’t know me that well. We’ve met twice. Don’t talk shit about anybody, period. Definitely don’t talk shit about people to me. I’ve only met you fuckin’ twice. I’m not your friend.’ Like, that’s how you roll? Don’t do that. You could just see her wheels kind of spinning a little bit.”
“It’s inappropriate to speak poorly about another woman unless you’re venting to your friends about another friend, or if someone has really fucked you over. If someone’s name comes up, going out of your way to say nice things about that person changes the conversation. It changes the dynamic, and it changes the energy in the room.”
“I use GrandeLash-MD on my eyelashes. It’s $40 on Amazon. It’s a serum and it’s definitely all chemicals, but, I mean, I had long eyelashes to begin with, and now they touch my eyebrows.”
Pia wears LPA top and skirt.
“What’s been really, really cute is when I walk down the street and run into girls who know who I am. They hug me. They don’t try to shake my hand and they don’t try to introduce themselves. They scream my name. And then they hug me.”
“I started seeing a woman who does the Biologique Recherche facial. I started using it when I was younger, but I couldn’t afford to keep it up. Now I do, especially because I’m constantly being photographed and profiled—obviously my skin is an investment for me.”
Pia wears LPA top and pants.
“So, I was seeing this facialist, and on top of the Biologique Recherche stuff, she really loves this brand called Osmosis, which is more focused on good skin from the inside. There’s like a water, and you squirt five pumps of it into your mouth in the morning and at night. Then there’s another weird serum thing that I put under my tongue, called Restore, to get rid of my melasma, which is really nice. You put a squirt under your tongue and you hold it for as long as you can, which sounds weird, but is actually pretty fun. I hold it under my tongue for like 5 minutes. It heals severe eczema, too. Osmosis also makes an intestinal cleanse, and I did that for ten days, which kind of jump started everything.”
“My dermatologist, Camille Fields, gave me antibiotics for when I break out. I take one and put another in my toner, along with Biologique Recherche’s Lotion P50. I’ll put that on my cystic acne so it doesn’t get infected. If it gets really bad, I get a cortisone shot. I’ve had to do a lot, because if I let it go too long, the pinholes just stay there forever and they’ll live in my face. I’ve only taken oral antibiotics once, because I do have a really bad digestive system, which is probably why my skin is always so bad.”
“I’ve been using the same Chanel blush for like ten years. My friend, who used to work at Chanel, sent it to me. It lasts forever. The colour is 02 Rose Bronze—it’s so pretty. It’s a really beautiful rose color with a little bit of shimmer in it. I don’t go anywhere without that.”
“I use all the Biologique Recherche products. I use a milky cleanser, which I don’t really like because I really like to use something that’s for acne. I really wanna feel that tightness in my skin when I wash my face, but apparently that strips your skin of its lipids and makes more acne come, so I’m now using the milky cleanser. And then the Lotion P50, which I’m obviously majorly obsessed with. I use a Biologique serum, too. Sérum Extraits Tissulaires—very French. Then I use their moisturizer, Crème Placenta. I do their masks twice a week—Masque VIP 02 and Masque Vivant. I mix the two. It works, and I’m gonna continue to do it until it stops working. I went to work with no makeup today, and that for me is a fucking miracle.”
“Cle de Peau is my favourite concealer. Now that my skin has got better, thank goodness, I haven’t needed it as much. Charlotte Tilbury sent me a bunch of makeup, and so I’ve been using her Magic Foundation in Medium, which is really great. I also love her Glow Palette to contour and highlight. It’s perfect for my skin. I just lightly contour under my cheekbones, give myself a glow on my forehead and under my chin with contour, and highlight my cheeks. It just makes me feel like the prettiest girl in the world, like a 70s disco star. I also love the Nars Laguna bronzer.”
“I use Glossier’s Boy Brow in Black because my eyebrows are so big and bushy. Then I use Mary Kay’s Brow Gel, which is literally like $10. That keeps them really locked into place.”
“I don’t know if [competitiveness] is societal as much as it’s just us being women. I honestly feel like those insecurities, and us being in our own heads, and competitiveness, and all of those things, I think they’ve kind of been around since the dawn of time. I think it’s just hyper-accentuated by all these different [social] platforms, and everyone is much more expressive about their feelings. I think that it’s kind of been around forever.”
Pia wears LPA dress.
“I use a cheap mascara—Maybelline’s Lash Sensational. I was at my mom’s house one day and used it, and was like, ‘Geez, this works so well!’ Before that, I was only using Dior, but the cheap stuff is just as great.”
“Girls are so funny. [With LPA], they’re like, ‘You need to shoot more normal people. You need to shoot this. You need to shoot that.’ So I’ll listen and say, ‘Okay, I’ll do more normal people.’ And then I’ll take a photo of a ‘normal’ girl in LPA and post that on Instagram, and it’s like the least liked, with the least engagement and the least comments. And it’s like, ‘Alright, you’re all so adamant about me shooting normal people, but that’s not what you even want to see! You want to see something that’s more aspirational!’ I’m obviously gonna continue to shoot ‘normal people,’ though.
If you haven’t yet been introduced to Pia Arrobio, it’s high time you were. The straight-talking, ultra-talented woman is the founder and creative director behind your favourite label, LPA. Chatting with her provides the same kind of comfort and sense of mutual understanding that talking to your best girlfriends over a mid-week wine does. Basically, if you spend the entire time reading her quotes nodding enthusiastically and sharing a LOL with yourself, know that you aren’t alone.
Pia is in the business of self-awareness and embracing your vulnerable side. Like any modern woman navigating societal expectations—and those that we impose on ourselves as a result—the ray of sunshine has had her fair share of anxieties and jealousies, further exacerbated by being “on [her] phone all the time.” Over the years, she’s learned to mitigate this with a bit of (gentle) self-imposed discipline: taking time for herself, meditating, limiting her phone use, and most importantly, going “to fucking hot yoga every morning.” Lifting other women up and refusing to indulge in extraneous gossip has also enabled her to focus her energy on the things that matter: her work, her personal relationships, and becoming our favourite person on Instagram. You know, the important stuff.
Far from what it presents itself as (an accurate snapshot into people’s lives), Instagram has become a place for people to present highly curated, near-fictitious versions of their worlds. If we were to take Instagram’s word for it, everyone would be wooting around Europe each summer on a yacht drinking spritzes, or out at the coolest bars drinking $20 cocktails every single night of the week. Feeling “meh” wouldn’t be a thing. Pia’s Instagram is awe-inspiring, don’t get us wrong (TBH, that’s what we wished living our best lives looked like), but she’s also not afraid to keep it real. That’s why we, and her legion of fans, love her.
Outside of creating clothes that make women feel good in their skin and promoting positive vibes, the smart babe’s skincare routine would #inspire even the most devout beauty fan. If you’ve been hit by the nasty hand of hormonal adult acne, it’s of especial importance that you jot down some notes. But why am I still here telling you all this? Pour yourself a glass of wine, buckle into your couch, and read on for some invaluable wisdom from one of the coolest women in the game.
Interview, Carlie Fowler. Words, Madeleine Woon. Photography, Maggie Shannon.
