Rachel Pizzolato woke up at noon on the final day of Miami Swim Week to a hotel room she described, without exaggeration, as atrocious: open ramen on the floor, leftover food from days prior, clothes and gear packed in chaotic layers. It was Day 7, and both she and fellow model Madison were running purely on fumes and the promise of coffee. That particular kind of exhausted-but-still-going energy that closes out any big professional week was written across everything they did that morning, and somehow it made every moment funnier.
Trash bags, crimped hair, and five designers deep
The day opened with a coffee run, a studio shoot in the hotel, and Madison stepping out in a thrifted jacket and cowboy hat that Rachel could not stop complimenting. Hair and makeup came next, and Rachel made a deliberate choice: no more standard beach waves. She asked for a crimp, something she had been waiting the entire week to try, and the result left her genuinely giddy. Styling was handled by Just Kendra, and makeup followed at LA Makeup Artistry, where Rachel noted the running joke of arriving with a deeply tanned body and a notably less tanned face after a week spent mostly backstage.
By the time the shows started, the pace picked up fast. Rachel walked her first look, kept the piece as a gift from the designer, and kept moving. She walked a second look from an Italian brand, which she announced with theatrical enthusiasm, leaning into her own Italian heritage. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth. At one point she called the final look she was assigned ‘delicious,’ a word she repeated twice as if no other descriptor would do. She both opened and closed one of the shows, a detail she was visibly thrilled about.
The backstage friction was real too. She was rushed and called repeatedly to the wings while, as far as she could tell, nothing was actually happening yet. ‘GIRL, LITERALLY NOTHING’S GOING ON,’ she said out loud, to no one in particular, and kept walking.
A torrential downpour and the earliest exit in Swim Week history
At 9:26 p.m., it was over. A torrential downpour had shut things down early, which Rachel marked as an unprecedented milestone: Miami Swim Week ending before midnight, something she insisted had never happened in the event’s history. Rather than treating it as a disappointment, the two models grabbed the moment. Hair and makeup still intact, they found a hallway with working outlets and made content while thunder crackled outside.
Madison, who graduated from Auburn University with a degree in animal science and had been modeling full-time for four years, introduced herself to the camera between lightning flashes. She mentioned that she crochets, bakes sourdough, reads, does Pilates daily, and had brought one of her own clothing designs to Miami. Rachel found her camera charger buried somewhere in the chaos and declared it a personal victory.
For all her early skepticism about the event’s new management, Rachel landed in a different place by the end. ‘This is the fastest we’ve ever gotten done,’ she said, noting that names were called clearly, walks were mostly on time, and the coordination was tighter than she had expected.
The plan for the night: Italian food and chocolate chip pancakes.
The jacket that made the whole trip look effortless
Madison’s thrifted jacket, layered over a simple outfit with a cowboy hat, sat on a chair in the hallway where the two waited out the rain.
Rachel’s friend Cara had offered her place for the next two days, which meant Rachel was not flying home yet. The flight back was only two hours, she noted, which somehow made staying feel even more indulgent. She was, by her own account, not remotely ready to leave Miami, open ramen and all.
