I built the winter I always dreamed of.
I am a figure skater from a country that has never seen snow.
A winter on the other side of a screen.
I grew up in Honduras, where the heat sits on your skin all year and winter is something that happens to other people, in other places, on the other side of a screen. That’s where I first saw it — the ice, the lights, a girl in a glittering dress spinning like the cold couldn’t touch her.
Nobody in my world was a figure skater. The geography, the weather, the odds — everything said no. But a dream doesn’t check the forecast. I held onto winter like a secret and carried it everywhere the sun went.
“A dream doesn’t check the forecast.”
And then one day, I stepped onto it.
Real ice, real cold, the kind that makes your breath visible. (First time on the ice — 2011, New York.) I was clumsy and freezing and completely, helplessly in love.
The little girl who had only ever watched was finally inside the picture. That first spin rearranged my whole life. I learned that the things you’re told are impossible are usually just things nobody around you has done yet.
“The things you’re told are impossible are usually just things nobody around you has done yet.”
A fairytale you can wear.
Skating gave me a feeling I’ve spent my whole life chasing — powerful and delicate at once, sovereign, a little bit of magic. Winterina is that feeling, made into something you can wear.
I never wanted it locked inside a rink, or inside one season. I wanted a girl in Miami in July to feel as untouchable as a queen on the ice. So I built the world myself — the pieces, the sparkle, the spell. Not a fairytale you watch from the other side of a screen. A fairytale you can wear.
“Not a fairytale you watch. A fairytale you can wear.”
Every fairytale has its companions.
Mine are two snow foxes. Divine is first light — soft, bright, endlessly hopeful. Baddie is midnight — bold, knowing, a little bit dangerous.
Together they tell the truth about the Winterina girl: she can be sweet and sharp, delicate and unstoppable, all at once. You don’t have to choose one. I never did.
“Sweet and sharp, delicate and unstoppable — all at once.”
Winterina was never really about me.
Here’s the secret: it’s about them — the Winterinas. The women who were told their dream lived too far away to reach.
I’m building this world for my daughter, Ivanka, who fronts our littlest collection. I’m building it in the books I write and the rooms I get to speak in — because a Latina who innovates is its own kind of fairytale. And I’m building it here in Miami, one piece of winter at a time: the boutique, the pop-ups, the life-size foxes at the door.
The winter I dreamed of, made real enough to hold.
Step in. Wear the spell. The fairytale was always meant for you, too.