A petite powerhouse. A magnanimous rock star with a gentle spirit. A passion for women’s empowerment and, likewise, luxurious, five-inch heels. A mother, a wife, and CEO of Elite World Group, Julia Haart is here to refashion (pun intended) the talent industry in her own way by shifting the power structure to put brands and talent on a path to economic and creative freedom.

Elite World Group boasts a network of 48 global agencies representing over 5,400 of the world’s most dynamic talents, including actors, athletes, artists, musicians, models, and virtual avatars, to name a few.

Haart’s intellectual take on embracing technology and sustainability has set her worlds apart from many in the fashion business: she embraced the future while leveraging commerce, marketing, and technology. Her drive to succeed and her due diligence have paid off in building Elite World Group as the premiere talent media conglomerate.

Julia is not only a prodigious yet fashionable CEO. She also is the star of Netflix’s unscripted series My Unorthodox Life – a visual page-turner and totally binge-worthy! As cameras follow Haart, her family, and her professional cosmos, her journey unfolds, leaving you rooting for her in the most “you feel like you know her and never met her” kind of way – yet wanting to see what’s next in her extraordinary world.

One of my favorite quotes is “favor fortunes the bold,” and Julia Haart perfectly embodies this with her bold mission, which is favored with fortune, fortunately, in every way!

Your passion for shoes is unmatched. Your premiere collection debuted in Paris in 2014 and was certainly one of its own kind, but more importantly, comfort was the necessity. May you please share your fascination with the construction, and how you engineered such a lofty goal?

Love that question! So…my entire life, in my old world, I was always attracted to fashion – something I’ve loved since my first memory of fashion at age five. My family had originated from Moscow, and we were in an Italian internment camp. There was a five-year old boy who ran errands for the camp, and he would receive a penny here and a nickel there for his efforts. He bought me a little Italian handbag – when I was five – that I had treasured and kept for over 30 years, and somehow between all the moves, it was unfortunately lost. That was the beginning. And since that moment, fashion to me was self-expression, art, beauty, and culture. It just drew me – shoes particularly, as I am five feet tall, and if that’s not complicated enough, I’m also a size four shoe. Between the two, it was a. almost impossible for me to find shoes my size and b. I wanted to wear super high heels, but they were tortuously uncomfortable.

When I came out of my world, it was all about freedom! Freedom for myself, my children, and freedom for women! That was the dream. I’m not a politician. I do not know how to change the world through policy, but I did it my way, and my way was through fashion.

My idea was to eradicate the concept that women must choose between comfort and beauty. We had two to three patents pending so that the [shoes’] pressure points were more evenly distributed across your entire foot, omitting the front. We created what we call Cloud 9 technology. A deeper shoe mold was conceived whereby we created a gel insert which was anti-shock and cooling. This provided a sense of “Walking on Cloud 9” while wearing five-inch heels. That was the idea: Eradicate the concept of suffering for beauty.

You joined La Perla in 2016 as Creative Director. Did you imagine that the brand would witness such  impressive success during your tenure? And did you always ascertain that your values and vision would align squarely with founder Ada Masotti’s?

Honestly, I had a very short stint at La Perla. I came in in 2015 and had a co-branding collaboration with them, and in the same year, I took over as Creative Director – with tenure through 2018 and two collections under my belt when I transitioned my career. I think “why” made such a big difference – and “why” there was so much press about it is because it put La Perla on the map again. Asking about Ada Masotti is exactly the right question. The reality is that from the time Ada Masotti started the company, and until the time I came on board, all the Creative Directors, all the owners, all the CEOs were men. How are men designing lingerie for women? I will never understand it.

I was the fifth Creative Director of La Perla under Silvio Scaglia’s ownership and the idea was to transform La Perla into a full fashion brand. My thought was: Why would anyone want to wear La Perla fashion? It must be something unique to La Perla. So I came up with the concept where you have clothing not only according to your dress size, but also your cup size.

The idea was that if we were going to do ready-to-wear, it had to be rtw that only La Perla could do. I think that’s why it received such accolades and so much press and so many consumers bought the clothes because this didn’t exist before. Again, the whole idea was eradicating discomfort for women. You shouldn’t have to suffer to feel beautiful. My first campaign for them was “Burning the Bra.” I find bras to be tortuously uncomfortable.

At La Perla, we began to design bras that were wireless and incorporated stretch in the design of luxurious material that was comforting to a woman’s body. It was about harnessing technology and giving women confidence and comfort in the service of fashion and beauty. Giving women everything: Beauty, luxury, and comfort!

So much of your personal synergy shines through in your latest endeavor E1972. How did you challenge yourself in the design process and what is your favorite part of the entire production?

We started in 1972 and launched two weeks before the pandemic. It was not the most brilliant time to launch a fashion brand, but we will relaunch in February 2022. Looking forward, our E1972 app will be available with the ability for you to scan yourself, obtain your measurements, and create a made to measure couture piece delivered to your door without ever leaving your bedroom.

Design is my passion, my love…I need it like I need oxygen. I can’t survive without it. That I have learned. I love predicting trends. I love feeling what the Zeitgeist is. The most important aspect of relaunching this brand was utilizing technology in the service of making women feel good about themselves no matter their size – using the scanner technology to help women. This is the way to deliver women the most beautiful clothes imaginable. The second side to this is that I’m trying to think of creative ways to make fashion more earth-friendly if I can. One of the ways we practice sustainability is by non-mass production. We only create after we receive orders. There is zero waste. There is no inventory sitting in a warehouse. There is no garbage. There is no steam and smoke and whatever exhausts from manufacturing machinery unless we need it. I will continue to investigate and embrace new ways of this philosophy to incorporate it into everything  we do.

You stress the importance of social media influence and self-branding to your models, are they very receptive to your push for self-empowerment?

You know what’s really beautiful? This is the first time in history where we as a towering media conglomerate company can promote not just a model that’s a typical 5’10 archetype. What this empowers me to do is represent deep sea divers and mountain climbers. I represent women in their fifties and seventies. If you have an audience and a passion and you have excellence in expertise, people are looking to you for advice and guidance. I will help you build a brand from that. I will help you monetize it so that you achieve financial independence. If you build yourself into a brand in the digital space, you will create longevity in your career and financial independence. You will no longer have to wait to be chosen for a job. You can just go and get it yourself. That to me drives the purpose of everything I am doing at EWG. I want an army of financially independent women who never have to wait their turn or ask permission.

You possess a very long-game, assured vision on technology and how it will affect the future of modeling. When did you sense the compulsion to embrace it?

That’s one of the best questions I’ve ever been asked in my life, because the long game is very important. The reality is people think that things happen overnight. They don’t. It took me eight years to leave my community. Eight years from the minute I decided to walk out the door to when I actually did. Planning is extremely essential to goals and your mission. It must be kept top of your mind at all times. That mission is the only reason I took over Elite. When Silvio, my husband, first asked me to take over Elite, I said no for a good nine months. To me….what I thought of was the modeling industry; women standing in line…waiting for some guy to choose them, and that made me feel objectionable, and I did not foresee doing that. He insisted that I do my due diligence to make a change. So, I decided to take on the challenge and did my research. At that moment, it hit me that we are standing at the precipice of tremendous change. Social media is the influencer. If I bring in the producer, the director, the photographers and videographers, and help my talent by teaching them how to monetize their digital presence, we can have our army of independent women. And that’s the only reason I took over the company. I never would have done it otherwise. That has been the plan from day one: to transform ourselves into a talent media conglomerate.

Who are a few of your favorite designers, and what would you like to see more of in fashion?

Honestly, I am very democratic and open to all designers. I am genuinely happy to see so many new designers emerging. They should have a place and a chance alongside the more established ones. That’s very important. What I would like to see more of is comfort. Not only do we want to look beautiful, but we also want to feel comfortable. Incorporate stretch. Have women test your clothing before it makes it to a door. Make sure that a woman can move her shoulders and her arms, can sit and walk and be in the boardroom. Sit in a business meeting without feeling stifled and stuck. Make the clothes comfortable!

IG: @eliteworldgroup

Web: www.theeliteworldgroup.com