STYLING BY EMMA READ. PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVEN CHEE/DLM. HAIR BY DOLLY/UNION MANAGEMENT. MAKEUP BY ANIA MILCZARCZYK/DLM. MANICURE BY JOCELYN PETRONI. MODELS: KAYLA ITSINES; PIA MUEHLENBECK/22 MGMT; LAUREN CURTIS.
STYLIST ASSISTANT: ANA ZUPANOSKA.
PIA WEARSDRESS: THURLEY, $699.99 (THURLEY.COM.AU). BANGLE: PETER LANG, $119 (PETERLANG.COM.AU). EARRINGS: BY CHARLOTTE, $199; NECKLACE: $199 (BYCHARLOTTE.COM.AU)THE LIFE OF AN INFLUENCER
ISN’T ALL BIKINI SHOOTS
AND BEAUTIFUL BEACHES.
AS LIFESTYLE ‘GRAMMER
Pia Muehlenbeck
TELLS M E L E VA N S , T H ER E ’S
A LOT OF BLOOD, SWEAT
AND GIGABYTES THAT GOES
INTO WHAT WE SEE ONLINEI
t’s hard to resent Pia
Muehlenbeck. As much
as you want to – from her
Victoria’s Secret-catalogue-
esque bod to the fact the
woman literally travels around
the world and calls it a career- when you meet her and find
she’s just so goddamn sweet,
it really puts a halt to those
malevolent thoughts.
Far from a jaded ’grammer
who demands Evian on tap
or arrives with an extensive
entourage only Mariah Carey
can get away with, Pia tells me
she doesn’t even like the term
‘inf luencer’, let alone recognise
and take advantage of the fact
she is one.
‘I find the word a little bit
strange,’ the 27-year-old says
after a long pause. ‘It’s not what
I would say if someone asked
me my job title. I obviously
understand what it means and,
yeah, I do work with different
brands and help create content,
but it’s really not the word that
I would use. I think it’s more
about creating. I think I like
the word “creator” a lot better.’
And creating she is. Mainly
trading in travel posts and
videos, Pia ricochets across
the globe with her partner in
crime (and business) Kane Vato.
Today she’s hamming it up to
the cameras alongside Kayla
Itsines and Lauren Curtis on
her Cosmo shoot. Tomorrow
she’ll start planning for her
latest jaunt, from Queensland,
back to Sydney, then to Sweden
and Italy (‘or Greece’) before
pinballing her way to Vietnam.
I’ve probably missed a few of
her stops. It’s exhausting to
hear about it, let alone, I would
imagine, live it. The sympathies
cease there, though.
For someone who studied
law, amassing a following of
over 1.9 million pairs of eyes
watching your every post is
quite a departure from court-
rooms and legal stoushes. But
serendipity is a wondrous event
that Pia is mighty chuffed came
her way...I understand you were once a
lawyer and a career in social
media was not part of the plan...
‘There was always a part of
me that wasn’t sure if I wanted
to practise [law]. I wanted to
get a commercial head on my
shoulders then start my own
business. In the background I
had a blog called Slinkii.com.
It was a creative outlet for me
because the law degree was
quite dry. But it was never very
successful. That was until 2015
when I was looking into yoga
equipment and realised yoga
mats were made pretty much
entirely out of PVC. Not very
eco-friendly! I wanted to make
alternative yoga mats that are
made of all-natural fibres so
we spent all our savings on
manufacturing hundreds of
them. We had like 300 yoga
mats in our living room that
I would sell via the website. We
had zero budget for marketing
but Kane has a creative back-
ground, so we started to take
photos and put them on social
media – that’s how we started
and that’s when my personal
page started to explode.’‘It’s really
hard to figure
out when to
switch off’How quickly did it take off?
‘Like a lot of things it was hard
and slow when we started out.
But then I hit 10,000 followers
and it was easier to hit 20,000.
It was easier to hit 100,000
than it was to hit 10,000, you
know what I mean? There’s a
really strong compound effect
that happens when you start to
get a bunch of people who are
engaged in your content.’How much of your success is
down to timing, or a certain
‘look’, and how much of it is
hard work?
‘I’m lucky we are such a social
media-obsessed world right
now. Being at the right place
at the right time is a big part
of it. But also, Kane and I are
both very business-minded.
We understood
that there are
certain brands
that we want
to partner with
which might help
us grow our
following. And
while our friends
were out on a
Sunday having
cocktails, we
would be out
creating content. Yeah you’re
sitting at the beach and taking
photos, but there’s also a lot
of scheduling, negotiating,
planning, styling and post-
production. I work more hours
now than I did as a lawyer!
When it’s your own business,
it’s really hard to figure out
when to switch off.’You work so closely with your
boyfriend, Kane. How do you
balance business with pleasure?
‘By 8PM we try to drop our
phones, get off social media
and just sit down and chill and
have dinner together – make
sure that we are boyfriend andgirlfriend and not co-workers.
But I’m sure you can see from
our YouTube that we don’t take
ourselves that seriously even
when we are working.’I can imagine the comments
you’d get from trolls on some
of the images you post. How
do you deal with that aspect of
social media?
‘I don’t get a lot of those [sorts
of ] comments – I think that’s
because I don’t entertain them.
I think most people who are
writing things like that are
just looking for a response.
They are trying to antagonise
and I just don’t engage in it at
all, so it doesn’t feed it.’Surely they’d get
buried by your
fanbase anyway!
How does it feel
have people you
don’t know stand
up for you?
‘It’s unbelievable.
There is nothing
more heart-
warming than
reading all their
comments. I think if you put
positive posts out there, then
it resonates with people and
they’ll share how they feel.’Do you still have any pinch-
yourself moments?
‘All the time! We don’t take
any of this for granted. We
do little silent screams, happy
dances and things like that,
especially when we’re travelling
to all these beautiful places. It’s
like, how did we come to this
and call it work? Obviously it
is really hard work, it’s not all
just lying around on the beach
and having fun, but it is a cool
career path to go down.’ #celebrity
COSMOPOLITAN SEPTEMBER 2017 95