Olandria Carthen was standing in a condo with a beach view, wind battering the glass behind her, whispering into her camera so the fitting team in the next room would not hear her. She had been sitting on this secret since December, and she was finally letting it out: she was a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit rookie, already in Florida on shoot day eve, while the rest of the world assumed she was at the Grammys. For anyone who has ever watched a dream quietly outpace their own expectations, that whispered reveal lands hard. The shoot itself was the next morning, cold and windy enough to make standing in the water feel like a small act of courage, and Carthen had exactly one day before she had to fly back home and get to the next thing.
Six months of grinding, one rack of swimsuits
At the fitting the night before the shoot, Carthen moved through a rack of swimsuits she had personally prioritized, trying each one and bringing her team in for a verdict. A sparkly brown piece got particular attention. ‘I really feel like brown looks so amazing on my skin,’ she said, ‘and once I self-tan tonight, I really feel like it’s going to really bring it together.’ She lost count of the looks somewhere in the middle of the session. The crochet number was saved for the wet look.
Shoot day arrived cold. The glam team finished her curl pattern and layered on a glowy base before the group loaded into a van between looks, huddling against temperatures that had no business showing up at a Florida beach shoot. Carthen went into the water at least once. She was not certain it made it onto the camera, but she was certain it happened. By the time she was in the final look, a crochet knit bikini, the team was doing last-minute touch-ups in the van and she was already calling it a success. The day ended with a bacon cheeseburger, which she described as the only correct way to celebrate.
What she kept coming back to, between looks and between locations, was the timeline. Six months. That was how long she had been working at this pace: Paris, then Florida, carpets stacked against shoots stacked against flights. ‘When I find myself being hard on myself,’ she told the camera, ‘I have to remind myself like, girl, you’re doing amazing.’
Vanity Fair, a photo booth Oscar, and a very backless dress
A few days later, Carthen was in a different city preparing for the Vanity Fair Oscars party, and the energy in the room had shifted from beach-cold adrenaline to the organized chaos of a full glam team arriving in waves. Nail technician Ginger laid out four options: a clear white cat eye, a milky white tip, a nude-pink base, and a wave-accented cat eye. They landed on the white. Hair stylist Shanti built a sleek updo with a few pieces falling. Makeup artist Esther, who Carthen affectionately called ‘the bully’ because she does not want a single head movement while she works, arrived shortly after.
The dress was all-white, sheer, backless, and sideless, with a diamond necklace running down the spine. Matthew, part of her styling team, held it up for the camera and delivered the evening’s best line: ‘We found where the Titanic lady threw it.’
Carthen got to Vanity Fair feeling small, as she usually does walking into rooms she is still relatively new to. People approached her all night telling her they had been watching since the beginning of her journey. She got into a photo booth and strangers started handing her their Oscars. She held one. She noted it was extremely heavy.
For the Fashion Trust event that followed, the team built a completely different look: a denim dress from Area with a long train, a short shag-cut wig that Shanti styled on a whim while Kamura handled makeup, and a grunge eye instead of the red lip the team talked her out of. The accessories debate ran long enough that they almost missed the carpet.
The rack of swimsuits waiting in the next room
Somewhere in a Florida condo with a wraparound balcony and a lot of natural light, that rack of prioritized swimsuits was still standing in the next room while Carthen whispered into her phone, six months into a career that was already moving faster than she had imagined.
By the time she wrapped the last interview on shoot day, declared herself officially a Sports Illustrated rookie, and ate the bacon cheeseburger, the rack was gone. The pictures were somewhere on a hard drive she had not seen yet. She was already on the next flight.
