Interview with Isabella Soto
Founder and Curator of 8vo Ático
A while ago I had the honor of talking to Isabella about her brand 8vo Ático (Spanish for 8th Attic) where she has been curating pieces for over five years now. We had an incredibly inspiring and insightful conversation about her story, business, identity, and the future of her brand.
Isabella is an incredibly sweet soul and I did my very best to capture that when editing our interview. I am so happy I get to share her unique voice and story with you. Enjoy reading!
Read our conversation here:
What inspired you to start 8vo Ático?
I didn't plan to start 8vo Ático at all, I think it was something that the opportunity just came to me. I'm a very niche person, I love niche things, and I always saw this gap in the market where things would be a little bit more curated.
You have these incredible (online) retailers that have so many pieces of clothing and I wanted something more curated, more concise.
I wanted it to look like you were shopping 8vo Ático, not like, oh “I'm gonna go to this site and I'm gonna shop these pieces”.
So, yeah, I think it's kind of how I started and why I started it - and I started almost five years ago already, which is insane.
Can you share the story behind 8vo Ático’s name?
It started with something and then it transformed into something else.
At first, I wanted to have a small space, almost like an attic, where you could go and shop in person and have the curation of the pieces. I think that's when the name attic (Ático) came because that means attic in Spanish.
A then, because I don't want so many brands within my collections, (I also wanted to call them collections), I was like, what's a nice number to have that doesn't seem like you're only having two brands, but it also doesn't seem that you have 58 brands. So, I was like, “Hey, eight sounds good!” I'm also very visual, so like the shape of the number.
Could you share more about your unique rotating strategy?
Because I am the type of girl that would not love when I would go to a place and 50 other girls would have the same outfit, I tend to curate the brands, and then also while I curate the eight brands, I tend to change them for next collections.
Some brands do overlap if I love the brand. For example Saks Potts.
Is there a specific time frame in which you rotate the pieces?
It depends. It started very seasonal, but I started seeing that I was over-buying, which is the first thing that I did not want to do.
I'm starting to notice every single year they were bigger collections, and they were just going by so fast that by now I'm taking my chance and just seeing whatever brand pops up, I reach out to them.
How would you say that you as a person or your identity influences 8vo Ático?
I think it came to a point where we merge into the same thing. I am the brand and the brand is definitely me. That's why I think it's also not everyone's cup of tea regarding style, because my style, it's very specific to what I do.
I say that I put things together that make no sense, but at the end, somehow, they work.
Of course, sometimes I do have to put some things that are more globally likable, but it's a hundred percent me and the brand.
Is there any memorable moment that stood out to you during the past five years?
Well, I think it was a full circle moment when I started going into the Scandinavian brands because I was completely obsessed with Saks Potts.
Before I even started 8vo Ático I went to Copenhagen, looked for the brand, the brand was nowhere to be found.
It was only found in smaller stores, they didn't have their own store. So for me, that was the brand that brought me to the Scandinavian fashion and put that “alarm” in my head.
And two years later, they're reaching out to me for me to stock them in my website. And that for me was just the nicest validation in the world that I was doing something different because they do the most different and cool things. And to be invited to Copenhagen Fashion Week by them was also amazing.
Would you say that your style or 8vo Ático is influenced by a specific culture or country?
It definitely has a lot of that thinking outside the box mindset of the Scandinavian fashion, but at the same time, because I'm from Latin America, I always wanted it to look a little bit sexier as well.
So I would say I kind of wanted for it to look weird to put it that way, but weird in a good way. And also that it looks good on the body and it's flattering and makes you feel good when you're putting it on.
Do you feel like your approach has changed from five years ago to now?
Oh my god, so much. I look at my first collection and I was only 25 years old when I started it?
So, for me, I think I've merged myself so much more into the fashion world. And just seeing so many other things, traveling a lot more, that I now see my first collections and I think, okay, they're sweeter. I was definitely trying to tailor to the bigger market and people liking most of the pieces.
And then slowly I started transitioning to just also defining my personal style and being like “No, I'm not gonna buy things just because I know they're gonna sell. I really want to buy things because I believe in them”. And to try and teach people that you can make a cool outfit with different things and not always with the statement pieces that everyone has. So yeah, it has evolved immensely since I started.
What advice would you give someone just starting out? Would you tell them go for the main market? Or would you tell them to niche down more?
Maybe it's easier if you start in a broader range of pieces and a broader style, and then start to narrow down and define if you like doing the buying and you like being this creative person or you just want to be an entrepreneur, which is something that I did not want to be.
I think that's why I struggle so much with the business part and the creative part. But I mean, if you are a business mind, 100% I think you would tend to go with a broader more mainstream type of collections.
And then if you're more creative, you probably will go a little bit more niche for sure.
Do you have anything planned for the future? Or is there anything you want to do, any direction you want to go in?
I'm at a point with 8vo Ático where I'm trying to figure out what the next step is. I feel that every two years, I think, okay, where am I going, what am I doing with the brand?
I feel that I definitely do want to incorporate a little bit more of the storyline behind 8vo Ático and maybe share the newsletter type of thing that is going on.
If you could travel back in time, would you do it all over again?
Okay, it’s so funny when I’m asked this. I, because deep down, even though it doesn't seem like it, I'm not a risk taker. I like to play it safe.
So I always say that if I went back, would I do it exactly the same way that I did it? Probably not.
I would have really gone through the more working for someone, working for a brand, getting my knowledge more established and getting more skills by working in corporate America, to put it that way. Getting more connections, and then transitioning to doing my own thing.
Because in the end, I always knew that I wanted to do my own thing. But I definitely think it would have saved me so many missing puzzle pieces that I was like, “How do I even get to this point?”, because I didn't have the tools. And I had to figure them out on my own, which, at the same time, I'm very grateful that I was able to do that.
And that I know that I'm capable of making things work. Even if I don't know how to, I'll just make it work. So it's something that I think brought out a skill in me that I had no idea that I had, that I probably would not have known that I had it if I was working for corporate America for such a long time. But I would definitely think I would play it a little safer starting out.
Thank you Isabella <3