User:Castlepalace/Athena Calderone

Athena Calderone

Career
Calderone was initially pursuing an acting career, but it never came to fruition, as she later recalled it wasn't compatible with her personality and it made her unhappy. John Rawlins—Calderone's friend and a former store designer for Bergdorf Goodman—saw her potential, and urged her to continue her education and pursue a career in design instead. She then studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, after which she and Rawlins began working together to start their own firm, Rawlins Calderone Design, in 2007. She was happy with the career change, stating: "It happened so organically, it just felt really right." She launched the EyeSwoon website in 2011. The blog started out on Tumblr and was, at first, intended to only by read by her friends, but it spread to a larger number of readers after one of her friends shared it with his followers on Twitter. Soon after, her work was featured in Elle Décor and Harper's Bazaar, which made her feel lucky.