Rachel Pizzolato was already sweating through a 14-minute walk in Miami heat before she had even reached the Emma Savahl casting call, sandals in one hand and black heels tucked under her arm for the runway ahead. Miami Swim Week is one of those weeks that looks effortless from the outside and absolutely isn’t, and Day 1 made that clear within the first hour. Pizzolato, a model whose Victoria’s Secret content had recently gone viral and pushed her follower count from 2.5 to 2.6 million in the span of about a week, was not just here to be seen. She was here to finally book Emma Savahl.
Two years walking for them and still manifesting a booking
Pizzolato had walked for Emma Savahl for the previous two years without an official booking, and this trip carried the weight of that streak. She showed up in leggings she described as stunning, a shirt she had owned for years, sandals, and a Skims dupe top she sourced from a brand called Glamour. She put on makeup for the casting despite knowing models typically go bare-faced, and was unapologetic about it. The casting itself was running numbers well into the hundreds. She was number 103, behind a group already ticketed up to 50. Rather than spiral, she reframed it quickly: ‘I’m at least going to get content. I don’t really care if I get casted. If I get casted, that’s cool. But let’s just go ahead and slay that runway.’
By 3:30 p.m. she was done, hot, and sweaty. The two of them landed at Pura Vida, where Pizzolato ordered a salmon bowl and a Vitamin Water while her travel companion Madison went for a spicy tuna bowl and an immune booster drink, an insurance policy after a round of illness on the flight down.
Blister kits, kettle corn, and a Walgreens run in the rain
The afternoon dipped into pilates on yoga mats, which devolved almost immediately into a bird dog tutorial that neither of them executed correctly and both of them found hilarious. By 8 p.m. the rain had arrived and the humidity had fogged up the camera lens. They walked to Walgreens anyway. Pizzolato stocked up on liquid bandage and skin-toned bandages for her feet, which she explained blister from a habit of sizing down half a size so heels stay locked to the foot on the runway. She picked up setting spray, too, convinced that makeup artists backstage rarely use it and that she would need to handle that herself.
Back at the Airbnb, she laid out the full haul: Dot’s garlic parmesan pretzels, Trolli gummies for the sugar hit before a walk, sweet and salty kettle corn, dark chocolate Milano cookies, dragon fruit and coconut cream Dove spray, Method coconut body wash, and dry shampoo, because, as she put it plainly, ‘We are not washing our hair every single day during this thing. Absolutely not.’ Dinner was meatballs, chicken, cauliflower, mac and cheese, and zucchini from the Walgreens hot bar, eaten in front of a movie.
The girl outside who stopped everyone mid-sentence
On the walk back from the casting, Pizzolato spotted a young woman named Ava Courtland through a window and immediately stopped the entire group to go ask her name. She had a quality that apparently could not be ignored, and Pizzolato pointed her toward the third-floor casting line on the way out.
Day 2 was already stacked: a 10 a.m. casting for Madison, another show casting on the schedule, and the Preciosa show casting to sort out. The salmon bowl was long gone, the feet were bandaged up, and the week had barely started.
