Wearing a tutu to the car dealer or snipping her hair down to a boyish pixie cut at the local barbershop comes instinctively to Karla. She’s Holly Golightly in Alaia wedges, only breakfast is at Starbucks in the ‘burbs’ instead of Tiffany’s. Her parents let her know that she could do whatever she set her mind to, telling her, “If you want to be an artist, let’s go get paintbrushes.” The artist in Karla wears many hats – she designs accessories and paints – but her mastery of dressing takes precedent at the moment. She touches thousands from all over the world with her daily style reveries on her savvy blog, Karla’s Closet. They look to her for the way she embraces her curves and the total ease with which she inhabits her own sartorial personality, girly but elegant.

Karla won her high school’s best-dressed award, but her classmates wondered what she was wearing when she had the confidence to show up in heels and layered socks or a high-waisted skirt and baseball cap while the rest of the school was in Hollister and Uggs. She says the homogeneity that surrounds her has pushed her towards individuality. Karla is a total anomaly about town in a ’70s vintage jumpsuit that her dad thinks looks like a curtain. Her neighbors wonder “where she is going” when she is not necessarily going anywhere special.

Karla and her dad have a lot in common despite their disconnect on onesies. He came to the US with twenty dollars and now owns the company that wouldn’t give him a job when he first came to America. A chip off the old block as they say, Karla has the wisdom and drive to pave her own way. Alone in Simi Valley, in the words of Tolstoy, she is creating art and a brotherhood with her freedom of expression, which is her favorite thing about this site.

If you like Karla, you may also enjoy Hannah Dilworth, Laurel St. Romain and Langley Crisman.