Rachel Pizzolato was standing backstage at a Miami Swim Week runway show, hand shaking, staring across the tent at a Dalmatian named Pongo, when the full weight of the day hit her. Outside, a Miami downpour was soaking everything. Inside, it was, as she put it, ‘hot and sunny, we’re at the beach.’ The show she was about to walk was Megan Thee Stallion’s.
A day of fittings before the main event
Day four started with a wardrobe scramble in the rain. Rather than risk the blowout, Pizzolato and her friend Madison called an Uber, which she acknowledged was the only rational call when your hair is your armor. By 12:47 PM, the first round of fittings was done. The confirmed roster for the day included Beach Bunny Bikinis, Black Vanilla, a label she referred to as CA, Enes, and two more shows booked for the following day. By 2:15, she had added Normal Culture and a brand she called CI Swim to the list. Madison, she said more than once, was the one keeping the whole operation from unraveling.
Between fittings, the two of them found a coffee shop and ordered large lavender lattes with almond milk and worked through two croissants with pistachio filling, which Pizzolato called ‘probably the best croissants I’ve ever had.’ It was the kind of small, grounding moment that the rest of the afternoon would eventually make feel very distant.
Pongo, full glam, and the moment Megan walked in
Arriving at the Megan Thee Stallion show around 3:20, Pizzolato and Madison discovered they had been placed back-to-back in the lineup, a coincidence she flagged immediately: they had landed in the same slot at every single show during the week. The makeup team gave her dark eyes, a layered lip combination she called her ‘juicy’ look, and a set of nails that genuinely stopped her mid-sentence when she saw them. Body oil. Shoes. The works.
Then Megan Thee Stallion walked into the room and the backstage tent went loud.
Pizzolato’s assigned runway partner was Pongo, a full-sized Dalmatian she described as ‘the best dog ever, ever, ever, ever.’ She had walked with small dogs on leashes before, but a Dalmatian at a Megan Thee Stallion show in full glam was a different category of assignment entirely. Practice runs backstage did not go smoothly. Pongo had opinions about the direction of travel. Pizzolato decided that if she just strutted confidently enough, he might follow.
He did not end up making it down the runway with her. But she did.
The moment just before the music hit
Backstage, waiting in line, Pizzolato held Pongo’s leash one last time and looked at the runway ahead.
After the show, she was direct about the whole day: ‘This was such an amazing opportunity.’ The abs, she noted, ‘are on fleek.’ Pongo, wherever he ended up, had already done his part.
The rain had not stopped outside. But inside, somewhere between a lavender latte at 12:47 and a Dalmatian named Pongo at 3:20, Day Four had become the kind of day you stop trying to explain to people who were not there.
