Interview With Fashion Writer Iliana Salcido at 303 Magazine

     Growing up Iliana always had a fashion magazine in her hands, she loved to dress up and found her passion for the fashion world through her mom. She collected magazines and loved looking at the beautiful models and how fashionable they were. She soon found a love for writing and found that she became enamored with the thought of being a fashion writer.

“You have to make connections.” Iliana Salcido, a fashion writer at 303 magazine said over the phone, her voice confident and passionate as she tells me about getting into the fashion industry.

One of the ways to make these connections Iliana talks about is joining College Fashionista, where you can find internships and network. It’s really useful and helps with pursuing fashion as a career.I asked her, as a writer for 303 magazine, how did she get to intern at 303 before she was hired.

“I looked up online how to Intern, reached out to the fashion editor, Jennifer Tom and just let her know why I’d be a good fit and why I was interested in fashion. The team was great and they were useful in getting my name on publications to use in the future.”

Being a fashion writer Iliana has done a lot of trend reports, her speciality became thrifting.Thrifting a Trend became a series that she would write about. Iliana would go to small thrift stores like in Denver, Buffalo Exchange, Platos Closet etc. Iliana would loan all these clothes and show people that you don’t have to have a large budget to be trendy. Along with her writing Iliana is a stylist and has helped in styling at 303. She told me with excitement in her voice how great it is to get to help out the styling team at 303 but, how she styles on her own most of the time. 

I asked her what she would like to see more of from the magazine. As a writer Iliana said that it would be great if 303 had feature length pieces about different designers, stylists, just people within the fashion industry.

“I would love to see them going more in depth with the people. I would love to know about the designers personal life and what inspirations the designer drew from their own experiences into their collection.”

Iliana has also done social media managing and tells me how people just don’t want to take the time anymore to read a 3 minute article. Being a social media manager, specifically being on instagram, I have 60 seconds to gain the attention of our followers and direct them to the site. Magazines are all moving online but print magazines will always be needed. Especially for the big fashion Magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazzar.. Magazines are having to learn too with ads, sponsors, fashion influencers. Etc. The fashion industry is changing but a physical tangible copy won't be going away anytime soon and Iliana even wonders if print copies in the future will start becoming collectible Items.

“I think a tangible product will always be wanted, for those who always love having a physical copy, I just think we will see less of it in the future. I think these magazines will become more collectible because someone could run into a copy of Vogue online and the seller could sell it for a lot of money because of its value and collectibilty,” Iliana says.

As an aspiring writer myself, Iliana gave me tips as to how other fashion writers could break into the industry and shares how exciting the fashion world can be through experiences and connections. 

“Remind yourself that what you are doing is valuable, It is ok to demand more from the publication, do not be afraid to be bold. Especially diversify yourself and your skills.”

 I asked Iliana what her best experiences are at 303, she told me she absolutely loves going to Denver Fashion Week and writing about those experiences and sharing it with people who are around her age entering this exciting and daunting career path together. 

"What I love the most about being a writer for 303 magazine is building connections with designers who are around my age, all of us going onto this journey together entering into the fashion world and it being scary, new and exciting but getting to highlight that and see others' journeys take off. That was something I really valued.”