Fitness influencer and Elite model Cindy Prado has added another hyphen to her job description — creative director of women’s apparel for the cannabis and lifestyle brand Jeeter.
Friendly with the company’s cofounders Lukasz Tracz and Sebastian Solano, Prado said they hired her to model the label’s debut apparel line, which was unisex. Now with an estimated $500 million in annual sales, the Desert Hot Springs, Calif.-based cannabis brand debuted in 2018. Dwyane Wade has since joined the company’s board of directors.
During the initial Jeeter photo shoots, she would wind up cutting up the shirts, making other tweaks, adjusting shorts and “basically change the clothes so they would look more like girl clothes,” she explained. “And mind you, I was just a model. I was not supposed to be doing that.”
But they were receptive and decided to have her pitch in with the then yet-to-be-developed women’s line. “They are a team of all men. Their male line is incredible and the quality is great,” Prado said, adding that before she started working with the company she liked some of the men’s items so much that she had asked them for some products.
Having worked with “hundreds” of fashion brands for 10 years, Prado said she has been “giving her two cents” to Jeeter’s design team about fit and shooting over sketches, which are then digitalized in-house. Given the amount of clothes that are showered on her by publicity-seeking brands for modeling and posting, Prado said she has a good sense for the fit, materials and her preferences. Her fitness knowhow has also translated since Jeeter’s new line is athleisure and the functionality of the garments to allow wearers to move with ease was essential, she said.
Guess, Bebe and Nine West are a few of the brands that Prado has worked with. So far, her fee per post can range from $2,000 to $15,000, depending on the company. Declining to identify brands at the high end of her pay scale, she described two as an American athleisure line and another as a product line. Having practiced judo and dance growing up, she said she “got super into fitness and sports,” as she got older.
After being rejected by modeling agencies due to her 5’6” height, Prado said she turned to Instagram, bought a camera and ample clothes to model. With 3 million Instagram followers, Prado said that she tries to show her real life in her posts, such as the morning wake-up and “what really goes down” when shooting for posts, like being asked once to shoot in the snow, despite being based in Miami. “So I bought a snow machine and I made it snow on my balcony. The [faux] snow was everywhere and we were slipping all over the floor. It’s not snow. It’s actually soap,” she said. “I think people like seeing all the mishaps and things that go wrong, and feeling like they are my friends. I try to speak with them like there’s actually someone on the other side of the phone.”
Being fit has three parts: moving — however you like to, not necessarily just by working out; food choices, and taking care of your mental health, Prado said. Her next exercise will be rolling out a jewelry collection this year, after months of development.
