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"    It takes 30 minutes for Amber Atherton to get from the Topshop show to her car\u2014even though technically, it&amp;#039;s parked just across the street. But Atherton is the textbook definition of street style bait: She has swishy blonde hair, storybook apple cheeks, towering designer heels, and a hot pink crop top. And so a stroll that should take five seconds is interrupted, constantly, by flashes, clicks, and the constant refrain of &amp;quot;Oh, Amber, just one picture, please!&amp;quot;   Atherton agrees sweetly to every request\u2014the Japanese fashion magazine, the German teen blog, the 10-year-old twins with their mother&amp;#039;s iPhone in hand. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m glad to do it, really,&amp;quot; she shrugs once we&amp;#039;ve finally reached the parking lot. &amp;quot;I mean, it is my job.&amp;quot;  Well\u2026 kind of. Like Net-a-Porter&amp;#039;s Natalie Massenet and NastyGal&amp;#039;s Sophia Amoruso, Atherton is a maven of fashion e-commerce, steering the accessory site MyFlashTrash.com towards imminent online domination. Her subscriber base boasts hundreds of thousands of shoppers. She supervises her own factory in China. She boasts angel investors. But Atherton is different than other e-commerce gurus in one key way: Like Victoria Beckham, the 23-year-old is using herself to sell product.   But how? Atherton is neither a model (she quit at age 18) nor an actress. And though she did do a stint on the British reality show Made in Chelsea (think &amp;quot;The Hills&amp;quot; with more crumpets), she&amp;#039;s not exactly a household name\u2014&amp;quot;just a girl who learned how to code websites when I was young,&amp;quot; she grins. &amp;quot;But once you know how to do that, you can do almost anything.&amp;quot;  We spoke with the self-proclaimed &amp;quot;tech geek&amp;quot; on the eve that Flash Trash began shipping to America.   Photo: MyFlashTrash.com According to Google, you&amp;#039;re a model and a socialite and a fashion designer\u2014 [Laughing] Oh, that makes me sound like Barbie! With all her jobs! No. I am a business owner. I started MyFlashTrash.com in 2008. I was 16 and I was at school. Why do that instead of go to field hockey practice? It&amp;#039;s just was always what interested me. My dad taught me how to code. He&amp;#039;s a pilot and his hobby obsession is computers. So throughout my whole childhood, I set up various businesses online. Remember when e-cards were a big thing? That was when I was 13, and I made my own e-cards with animation, and I sold those.  How did you e-cards turn into jewelry? When I was 16, I was living with my parents in Hong Kong\u2014that&amp;#039;s where I&amp;#039;m from\u2014but I would go to boarding school in England during the school year. So I used to buy all this jewelry from markets in Hong Kong, and I would sell it out of my dorm room. And I was like, &amp;quot;I need to reach more people.&amp;quot; So I set up a website where I&amp;#039;d write about trends\u2014basically a fashion blog\u2014and then I had photos of my friends wearing &amp;quot;the trends.&amp;quot; Of course, everything was for sale on the site. Then a jewelry designer named Patricia Nicolas asked if she could sell her stuff on my blog. I said, &amp;quot;Sure, but I&amp;#039;m going to take commission.&amp;quot; Then it just snowballed. More and more designers emailed me saying, &amp;quot;I saw this other designer on your blog; can I sell on it, too?&amp;quot;  Did you go to college? Well I got my first angel investment for Flash Trash when I was 18, so I took a year off and we just grew so fast. I turned my flat in Covent Garden into an office, and just said, &amp;quot;Okay, let&amp;#039;s get to work.&amp;quot; This was in 2011, and I remember watching The Social Network and thinking, &amp;quot;My god, I wish I&amp;#039;d had this movie before I started this company!&amp;quot;  You don&amp;#039;t seem very Zuckerburg-y.  I&amp;#039;m not! I was starting an Internet company and I had no idea what I was doing. Maybe I stayed calm because I&amp;#039;m an Aquarius? How much of your success stems from being on reality TV?  I&amp;#039;m the worst reality TV star of all time. I&amp;#039;m not meant to be on television. I was so awkward, and I was just trying to talk about my business on camera the whole time. I left after a season. But Made in Chelsea was great for business, because it showed me how fast things could spread over the Internet. For six months of my life, maybe a year, I was famous in the UK. People would take pictures of me at Starbucks and on the tube. I would see these pictures all over the Internet, and it reminded me how fast images and trends can travel.  So is &amp;quot;selfie culture&amp;quot; a big part of your business strategy? The success of Flash Trash is fueled by individuals on Instagram and Tumblr. We find these girls who have a hundred thousand followers but they&amp;#039;re not, like, famous. We find those girls and say, &amp;quot;Hey, we&amp;#039;re going to send you some jewelry.&amp;quot; And suddenly we&amp;#039;re getting thousands of orders from Sweden, or somewhere, because we sent jewelry to this one super-blogger out there. And I have to post selfies every day. Is there a downside to that?  Yeah, people don&amp;#039;t see pictures of me reading the Financial Times! A lot of people don&amp;#039;t understand the full picture. They think I went on TV and then set up a company. Every time I tweet something about business, I lose a hundred followers. Not kidding. But every time I tweet something stupid, it gets a thousand likes. But it&amp;#039;s fine, because it&amp;#039;s tactical. We support emerging accessories designers from all over the world, and we run a profitable business\u2014that&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s the most important.  You&amp;#039;re like the new Victoria Beckham! Wait, are you dating a sports star? Oh, that&amp;#039;s hysterical. I keep all that stuff private. But I sent Victoria Beckham a piece of jewelry for Christmas and she sent me a handwritten thank you note. I have it hung up on my bulletin board at home. I look at it every day.   Photo: MyFlashTrash.com  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a25611/amber-atherton-interview/?src=rss>