From The Straits Times    |

On Twitter, she is oh-so witty; on Instagram, she’s pictured perfectly coiffed, while wearing a perfect Oscar de la Renta look almost everyday. So yes, I wondered, what is Erika Bearman, popularly known as @OscarPRgirl, actually like, in real life?

The PR maven is the face and voice of the @OscarPRGirl Twitter account and all things Oscar de la Renta on Facebook and Instagram too. But is she really as approachable as her online persona? After all, short and sweet is the rule on Twitter: Will Erika Bearman be more chatty beyond the 140 characters?

When I arrived backstage and spotted Bearman, any misgivings that I may have had vanished instantly; the moment that our eyes meet, she grins while shooting a friendly wink at me.

Erika Bearman: There’s no difference between Oscar PR Girl and meg

Erika Bearman (Oscar PR Girl) backstage at Audi Fashion Festival 2014. Image: Wesley Kow/ herworldPLUS

She walks away from the hubbub backstage to say hi, even before we’re formally introduced for the interview. She looks around for a less noisy place to chat; in the end, we end up standing beside the photo wall because it’s surprisingly cold at the makeup section with the seats and Bearman is wearing only a sweetheart gown with nothing to cover her bare shoulders.

“Are you comfortable?” says Bearman, several times. Instantly she’s the hostess with the mostest, even in a chaotic backstage setting: “Because this is fine with me.”

As we get into the interview proper, I also realised that Bearman is in full multi-tasking mode all the time, as befitting of her position as Oscar de la Renta’s senior vice president of communications.

Halfway through our interview, she spotted our photographer heading our way and she stops to greet and acknowledge him, smiling and quipping, “is he your guy? You have to pick a good [photo]. You’ve some good ones right?” When she hears an announcement via the speakers, she finishes her sentence then cuts short our interview rather apologetically: “I think I have to go; I’m so sorry.”

In our very brisk 10 minutes with Bearman, she lets on about the “big controversy” when she dyed her hair blonde and why there are “no downsides” to being Oscar PR Girl.

Erika Bearman: There’s no difference between Oscar PR Girl and me

Erika Bearman (Oscar PR Girl) backstage at Audi Fashion Festival 2014. Image: Wesley Kow/ herworldPLUS

herworldPLUS (HWP): What did you picture the Oscar PR girl to be like, when you had first tweeted as her in 2009?
Erika Bearman (EB): “You know what, honestly I would love to say I’d some master plan for what it was going to be but I really didn’t. The idea was to provide an inside look at Oscar de la Renta; I would also be a tour guide, a narrator in some ways [to the Oscar world]. A lot of me personally came into what Oscar PR girl is. It’s changed and evolved according to what I think our audiences want, be it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It’s very much responding to what people want in the community.”

HWP: What are the biggest differences between Erika Bearman and Oscar PR girl?
EB: “No difference really. It’s very authentic to me. I do Twitter myself, Instagram myself. My team helps me with Facebook, Pinterest, the blog. I see everything that we post, we write; I edit constantly. I don’t really think there’s a difference between Oscar PR Girl and me. It’s funny, someone asked me the other day if I have my own personal Twitter account; I don’t. Mostly the things I want to put out there, I do through that voice [of Oscar PR girl], through that lens.”

HWP: Take us through an average day as Erika Bearman.
EB: “There’s no average day. First and foremost, my responsibility is to Oscar. Oscar PR Girl is only a very small piece of the job that I do. I’m the head of communications, I oversee advertising, advertorial and press. I oversee celebrity dressing, events worldwide like this [the Oscar de le Renta show at Audi Fashion Festival 2014] and then social media.

Oscar PR girl is like 10 per cent of my job. It’s a fun 10 per cent. Everyday is different. On Thursday before we came here, we were showing Resort, and we got on the plane and came to Singapore. We’re here today, leave tomorrow, go back tomorrow to New York. We’re going to shoot our ad campaign for Fall 2014, this collection [that we’re showing]. It’s super fun, very busy.”

HWP: You’ve mentioned in past interviews that being stalked may be the downside to being OscarPRGirl …
EB: “No, I love it. It’s funny; yesterday we had lunch and these young women came up to me and said, ‘we stalk you’ and I was like ‘I love that, I love you’. Because it’s good to have fans, you know? I’m grateful. I love that I get to do this, it’s so fun. Oscar is wonderful, everything about his world is exactly as it seems: Beautiful, glamorous. To be a person to be in that world, is really what’s it’s all about. [There are] no downsides.”

HWP: Looking back to all the Twitter drama when you went blonde … What prompted your decision to return to your brunette roots?
EB: “It was a big controversy! It’s so silly. I realised people get very emotional about hair. Everyone has strong opinions about how you look, ‘you look better like this, you look better like that’; everyone wants to tell you what to do. Nobody knows but you; you’re the only person who can say what’s right, for you.

Anyway, I’m glad I did it. It was something I’d always wanted to do, forever, since I was a little girl. I saw Madonna’s Truth or Dare documentary; I wanted to look just like Madonna, to have white hair and black eyebrows. That was one of the reasons that I did and you know, I’m happy that I did. It was never going to be a long term thing. I’m a brunette at heart; but it’s fun, for a change [to have blonde hair].”

What’s amazing about social media is that everyone has an opinion, a voice. But I think in the end, the good outweighs the bad. It’s a platform for anyone to create a brand, to say who they are. It’s very powerful for big brands like Oscar to have their own ways of publishing content. To say, this is who we are, this is what we do. It’s amazing.”

HWP: You’ve travelled a lot with Oscar de la Renta and work so closely with him. What is it like, working with the designer?
EB:
“He’s extraordinary. Apart from being the legendary designer that everyone knows Oscar as, he’s just an incredible human being, he’s taught me so much. Everyone always says ‘Oscar taught you about fashion’. Oscar taught me a million things about fashion but what’s really important to me is what Oscar taught me about life. Oscar lives in a way where he appreciates things and he loves people. He enjoys every moment of his life, who he’s talking to, his work.”

The Oscar de la Renta catwalk show was held on May 18, 2014 as part of Audi Fashion Festival 2014 at Tent@Orchard.

For more information, go to www.audifashionfestival.com. Get updates on AFF 2014 on Facebook atwww.facebook.com/AudiFashionFestivalSingapore, on Twitter @AudiFashionFest and Instagram @AudiFashionFest and by following the hashtag #affsg.