Chiara Ferragni Italian Instagram Star Born 1987 in Cremona

Early life

Chiara Ferragni was born on 7 May 1987 in Cremona, Italy, the eldest of three sisters. Her father worked as a dentist. Her mother, Marina Di Guardo, is a writer from Sicily who also held the post of deputy director at the fashion house Blumarine. Ferragni studied at Bocconi University in Milan, although as of 2016 she had not completed her degree.

At 16 she was signed by the Beatrice modeling agency in Milan. She worked as a model for a couple of years before leaving, saying she had other goals she wanted to pursue.

Career

In October 2009 Ferragni started a fashion blog, The Blonde Salad, together with her then-boyfriend Riccardo Pozzoli. The blog became the base for a wider business. In 2014 her ventures took in about 8 million dollars, mostly from the footwear line sold as the Chiara Ferragni Collection. That August she appeared as a guest judge on the thirteenth season of the American television competition Project Runway, and in April 2015 she was on the cover of Vogue Espana. Forbes placed her in its 30 Under 30 list in 2015.

In 2015, while she was working with Tod's, the company was sued for copying the trademark of a small luxury handbag designer, and Ferragni was named in connection with the case after an exchange with the company. She designed costumes for the fourth edition of Intimissimi on Ice in 2017, and on 26 July 2017 she opened the first Chiara Ferragni Collection shop, in Milan. In June 2020 the rapper Baby K released the single "Non mi basta piu" with Ferragni as a featured artist.

During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, Ferragni and her husband, the rapper Fedez, ran a fundraiser that collected 3 million euros in 24 hours for the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. In April 2021 she joined the board of the Tod's Group. In May 2021 she presented a collection made with Nespresso on her social media accounts, marked by a temporary pop-up cafe. She appeared in the documentary Chiara Ferragni - Unposted in 2019 and in the television series The Ferragnez in 2021. In 2022 she announced a fragrance line with the company Angelini, a project the company later dropped.

Public controversy

At the end of 2022 Ferragni partnered with the confectionery maker Balocco on a pandoro, a traditional Italian Christmas cake, sold under her name. In December 2023 the Italian Competition Authority concluded that buyers had been led to believe that purchasing the cake supported a charity linked to research at the Regina Margherita hospital in Turin. The regulator found that no part of the sale price had gone to the hospital, though Balocco had made a separate donation of 50,000 euros some months earlier. It fined Ferragni and companies under her control more than 1 million euros. The affair became known in the Italian press as Pandorogate.

Several brands ended their collaborations with her afterward, and she left the Tod's board, with the company removing her in March 2024. Milan prosecutors investigated her on suspicion of aggravated fraud, and in January 2025 a court ordered her to stand trial. The proceedings began in September 2025. In January 2026 a judge ruled that the case amounted to simple fraud rather than aggravated fraud. Because the complaint behind a simple fraud case had been withdrawn, after she paid a total of 3.4 million euros to the parties involved, she and a co-defendant were acquitted. It was not clear at that point whether prosecutors would appeal. In June 2025 it was reported that the eyewear group Safilo had brought a claim against her for 5.9 million euros over an alleged breach of contract.

The affair also led the Italian government to pass what is often called the Ferragni Law in 2024. It sets rules for influencers with more than one million followers, aimed at preventing misleading advertising and false charity appeals.

Personal life

Ferragni and Fedez, whose legal name is Federico Lucia, began a relationship in September 2016 and married on 1 September 2018 in Noto, Sicily. They have two children, born in 2018 and 2021. The couple separated in 2024.