Olandria Carthen Is Byrdie’s ‘Main Character,’ and Her Magazine Cover Run Is Getting Hard to Ignore

Olandria Carthen has another magazine cover, and this one feels particularly significant. The Love Island USA Season 7 breakout star is the face of Byrdie’s new Main Character Issue, with the beauty publication describing her as confident, magnetic, playful and completely in control of her own narrative.

Honestly, the pictures are stunning. Olandria continues to prove that she can transform from shoot to shoot without losing what makes her instantly recognisable. Give her high fashion, soft beauty, exaggerated glamour or rich brown tones, and somehow she becomes a completely different woman in every frame.

The Olandria Effect Is Becoming a Business

Byrdie Editor-in-Chief Hallie Gould explained that the issue is about people who are not waiting for permission to become culturally influential.

“They’re creating their own moments, defining their own aesthetics, and rewriting the rules in real time.”

Olandria fits that brief rather perfectly. The issue, produced in partnership with Ulta Beauty, also examines how reality television fame becomes a business and explores the beauty trends Olandria and her glam team have helped popularise.

What makes this cover more interesting than simply another beautiful editorial is that Byrdie is explicitly treating Olandria as a tastemaker. The publication even gives her influence a name: the “Olandria Effect.”

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Her Brandon Blackwood handbag collaboration sold out within 10 minutes, and she has already worked with brands including MAC Cosmetics, Barbie, NYX Professional Makeup and UGG.

Byrdie notes that her Ola Dolls do more than follow her online. They support her campaigns, celebrate her fashion moments and show up for each new project. Olandria herself credits their support with helping products associated with her name sell out.

Olandria’s Success Does Not Come at Another Woman’s Expense

There is sometimes a strange tendency online to treat celebrity opportunities as if there is one cover, campaign or endorsement available and one woman receiving it means another woman had something “stolen” from her.

That is not how this works. A publication like Byrdie putting Olandria on its cover is making an editorial and commercial decision about who it believes is culturally relevant to its audience right now.

And Byrdie has put some serious names on its covers. Serena Williams fronted its Spring 2024 issue while launching WYN Beauty, Tracee Ellis Ross covered its Muse Issue, and Kim Petras led its 2026 Music Issue. Olandria joining that company barely a year after leaving a reality television villa is worth recognising.

From Elevator Sales to Cover Girl

Olandria’s rapid rise is even more impressive when you consider how much she has accomplished in such a short time. Before Love Island, she was working in elevator sales in Houston after graduating from Tuskegee University. She told Byrdie that casting approached her multiple times before she finally agreed to enter the villa.

Since leaving Love Island, Olandria has built an impressive editorial portfolio, appearing on covers for EBONY, Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam, Glamour, Rolling Stone Africa and now Byrdie. She also featured in MAC Cosmetics’ MACzine, adding another major beauty editorial to her growing résumé.

Olandria herself says the Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam cover was when she realised the strategy she and her team were building was actually working. Clearly, they were onto something.

Olandria Knew the Pressure Was Different

The strongest part of the Byrdie interview, however, has little to do with clothes. Olandria talks about entering Love Island knowing that, as a Black woman, people would not necessarily allow her the freedom simply to be an individual.

She says she felt that her behaviour would reflect not only on herself but on Black women more broadly. She wanted viewers to see Black women as graceful and beautiful, while recognising that society rarely gives Black women the same room to make mistakes, evolve and receive a redemption arc.

That makes what has happened since the villa even more satisfying. She did not leave Love Island and chase every available cheque. Olandria says she deliberately moved slowly while assembling a team, even knowing that she was losing opportunities in the process. Her priority was building “Olandria, the brand.”

Now she owns her first home, wants to create generational wealth, plans to establish a scholarship fund and is developing ideas for her own body-care business. She would even consider returning to television, but only if she had greater control over her own story.

That is the part I find most interesting. Olandria has been famous for barely more than a year, yet she already seems to understand that viral fame is temporary unless you convert attention into something you actually own.

So yes, the Byrdie cover is gorgeous. But the bigger story is what it represents. Olandria entered Love Island worried about how the world would define her. A little over a year later, one of beauty media’s best-known publications has built an entire Main Character Issue around the fact that she is defining herself. That is one hell of a career trajectory.