Kiwi’s journey to fashion and fame
A Levin woman’s life flipped upside down as love led her from the farm to the heart of the global fashion industry and growing internet fame.
When Rosie Mccarthy, 28, moved to Paris in 2013 she knew one person in the country and only had a couple of words in French.
Five years later, she works for fashion giant L’oreal and is a growing French internet celebrity through tapping her fishout-of-water Kiwi expat experiences for her rapidly growing Youtube channel, Not Even French.
It all started when she met her French husband Niels Peyre while on a Fonterra internship in Auckland just over six years ago.
After Peyre moved to America for work and Mccarthy started a human resources job with Fonterra in Hawera, Taranaki, they maintained the relationship across the globe for a year.
Mccarthy said they knew they were falling in love, so the effort was worth it. And when she went to visit him in New York, the couple decided to move to France together so they wouldn’t always be apart. ‘‘My life was flipped upside down. I was just this easygoing rural Kiwi girl. Now, I was travelling to New York and Paris, working for some of the biggest fashion companies in the world.’’
While in Paris, Mccarthy studied towards her masters in business, including paid internships with Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennessy.
In Hawera, work often took her out on the farm and she mainly dealt with truckies and farmers – practical, down-to-earth Kiwis. In France, the same kind of job had her suddenly surrounded by beautiful models and designers. She was responsible for picking $2000 bottles of champagne and staying in 14th century castles.
Mccarthy dreamed about writing a book about it all – people might like an insider’s view of France’s fashion industry from a rural Kiwi girl, she said. So last year, she started Not Even French to practise her storytelling skills, pass on tips and share observations about French culture with fellow expats. Instead, most of her viewers are French – they love how as an outsider she noticed little things about their culture.