Olivia Jade In Bloom

With her hair tucked beneath a silk bandana and her eyes shielded by a pair of oval sunglasses, Olivia Jade Giannulli embodies the often imitated, never quite duplicated Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy style that we’ve all been obsessing over since February. And while she’s been watching Love Story — and praises both Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon’s performances, as well as the latter’s Rhode campaign — her outfit isn’t meant as an homage. It’s simply the new uniform of the West Village girl, a title which, as of this winter, Giannulli can officially claim.

“I moved on a whim. My lease was up in L.A., and all my best friends live in the city,” the 26-year-old tells me when we meet just weeks before the launch of her beauty line, o.piccola. Watching all six seasons of Sex and the City five times through might have also had a hand. “In my dreams, I would like to be a Carrie.”

Carrie may be the North Star, but true fans know the show was just as much about the constellation of women around her. And on that front, Giannulli’s roster is stacked. The vlogger’s circle is made up of the girls she grew up with in Los Angeles — friendships with enough history, she says, to “call you out on your sh*t” but enough overlap to agree on what makes a perfect Friday night. “We love to go out, have a few martinis, and dance,” Giannulli says. “I love the Corner Store and some of these new restaurants that are fun and bougie and make you feel like you’re living in… Sex and the City.”

Over a cup of green tea at Cafe Cluny, a neighborhood institution, Giannulli slips easily between breezy conversation and thoughtful introspection. This is her first formal interview since her appearance on Red Table Talk in 2020, and in the years since, she’s largely been seen rather than heard — whether she’s getting paparazzi’d alongside her on-again, off-again boyfriend Jacob Elordi or sharing curated snippets of her daily life to her 1.8 million YouTube subscribers.

“If something comes across the wrong way or not as intended, it’s hard to tame the beast. So instead of trying to create or change a narrative, I’ve just let it happen.”

When I tell Giannulli that the image she’s been projecting is that of someone who — despite becoming the de facto face of a college admissions scandal and withstanding the scrutiny that comes with being linked to a man that even the most steadfast of besties would come to blows over — has survived by just remaining hot, cool, and unbothered, the characterization is met with flattered disbelief.

“I’m going to write that on my mirror,” Giannulli exclaims, her cheekbones reaching heights no jade roller could ever replicate. “There was a time where I wanted to completely shut off everything, fall in a hole, and never show my face again. I think it takes perseverance and, honestly, thick skin to keep going.”

Giannulli readily owns the privilege that has long shaped the public’s perception of her. Born to Full House actor Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli and raised in Los Angeles, she spent her days at the city’s most elite private schools. At night, she became “Olivia Jade” — a budding beauty influencer known for her brushed-up brows, highlighter habit, and California-by-way-of-Capri bronzed skin.

By her freshman year at the University of Southern California, Giannulli had amassed more than 1 million Instagram followers, landed deals with brands like Tresemmé, and launched her own Sephora palette. Then came the Varsity Blues scandal.

After it was revealed that Giannulli’s and her older sister’s admissions to USC had been secured through their family’s involvement in the sweeping admissions scheme — a criminal conspiracy involving bribery and fraud to game the college application process that sent both of her parents to prison — she dropped out of college and got the boot from many of her brand deals. Death threats followed, along with years of online vitriol that, in some corners of the Internet, has never really abated.

“I’ve been really afraid to [speak out] just because if something comes across the wrong way or not as intended, it’s hard to tame the beast. So instead of trying to create or change a narrative, I’ve just let it happen,” says Giannulli, who’s willing to discuss her feelings about the scandal but not the circumstances. Still, she kept posting through it — makeup tutorials, outfit diaries, and travelogues on YouTube — and eventually forged new partnerships with brands like Michael Kors, Madhappy, Good American, and Abercrombie.

“I think people think I’m really stupid, which is so fair. I look back at old videos and wish I was more aware of the things I was saying.”

But beneath the silence, Giannulli says she was far from unbothered. “I’m such a people pleaser. I just want people to like me and to make people feel good,” she says. Did the fallout exacerbate these tendencies, I wonder? “Probably, I’d imagine. My core hasn’t shifted that much, [but] given that there was a time when a lot of people were disappointed, I took that so to heart.”

What’s luring Giannulli back into the lion’s den is o.piccola: the collection of bronzing and highlighting sticks she’s been quietly developing with a manufacturer in South Korea over the past five years. (It launches in three shades on May 12 at 5 p.m. ET — direct to consumer.) But if you ask her sister, Bella Giannulli, her founder journey actually began back when they were kids. “She’s been doing my makeup since I was probably like 8 years old,” says Bella, who still gamefully plays guinea pig. (“She’s tested more colors [for the brand] than I could even probably explain. She’s tested them on me, on our mom, on our friends.”)

“She’s my younger sister, so it’s funny to watch her be ‘the boss,’ but she’s been the boss since she was little — that’s always been in her personality,” Bella continues. What has changed, however, is her sister’s demeanor: “I’m watching her personality and comfort online come back. It’s what her fans initially fell in love with when they first started watching her.”

Giannulli is the brand’s sole investor — though she sought out mentorship from elder stateswomen like Anastasia Soare (of Anastasia Beverly Hills), who launched her now-billion-dollar-brow brand all on her own and gave Giannulli advice on scaling and manufacturers — and its only employee. Over lunch, Giannulli flips through website mock-ups and launch imagery on her phone, all of which she personally designed, and explains how she is in talks to expand the current shade range, with fair and deep shades already in testing. And, of course, she’s the brand’s designated spokeswoman, too. “YouTube’s been a really safe space for me. I edit all my own videos and get to control what goes out,” she says. “I’m scared to put myself back out there.”

Now that she is on the record though, surely there are things she’s eager to set straight?

“I think people think I’m really stupid, which is so fair. I look back at old videos and wish I was more aware of the things I was saying,” Giannulli tells me, her nose crinkling into bashful bunny lines. “I totally have my airhead moments, don’t get me wrong. But I also can grind and hustle and am always down to learn.” Even if that means admitting she doesn’t know something: “I’m not the type of person where I feel embarrassed or ashamed to just be like, ‘I actually have no idea what you’re saying to me, if you could break this down?’ I’m just like, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m 26 years old. This is my first business.’”

There’s also the question of those famous cheekbones, which, for the record, are real. “On my mother’s, father’s, sister’s, and brother’s lives, I swear I have never had cheek filler,” she says. (In person, the bone structure tracks. A petite visage, highly expressive smile, and overall Aunt Becky genetics do most of the heavy lifting.) “There’s this one interview of me on the red carpet where people were going crazy like, ‘She’s got to stop filling her cheeks.’ I swear it had to be the light or a swollen face… but I can’t deny it, it did look like I had filler!”

“I think it takes perseverance and, honestly, thick skin to keep going.”

When I ask if there’s anything she’s willing to share about her dating life, however, she won’t indulge. “I will never speak on it, ever,” she says. “That part of my life, I’m a completely closed book. I’m just going to be a mystery.” She credits therapy, which she began around 19, with curbing her people-pleasing tendencies. “When I was younger, I wanted to say my piece a lot more. Now I don’t have that desire at all. I can vent to somebody in my private life about it,” she adds. “It’s just a feeling like ‘Oh, I don’t really want to share that. That doesn’t really benefit anyone. That doesn’t really benefit me.’”

Especially now that Giannulli is trying to build something bigger than herself.“Ever since I was 13 years old, when people would ask ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?,’ I’d say a makeup artist,” she says. “When I made my palette with Sephora, it was confirmation that I knew what I wanted to do with the creative, the formulation. Everything was magic when I was 18.” (Her followers still bug her about that palette, by the way; o.piccola is her way of bringing it back: “I wanted to do an elevated, more adult version of how I would actually use that palette now.”)

This moment — her first time speaking publicly about the brand, on one of the first spring days after a long, drawn out winter that saw her summiting snowbanks in stilettos just a few weeks prior — harbors its own kind of magic, too. As she heads off to an afternoon full of more o.piccola obligations — contracts to review, short-form content to film — Giannulli visibly takes it all in from West 12th’s cobblestone street.

“If the younger me saw where I was at now? That I was actually releasing this, how involved I am, and how much I learned? I would just be really proud of myself for sticking with it,” she says, before adding, “Time heals.”

Top image credit: Albright Fashion Library coat.