”Interning post-college was the easiest decision I’ve ever made,” exclaims Catherine Smith, founder and CEO of Plan de Ville. The site, one of fashion’s newest (and most exciting) e-commerce platforms—and dubbed the Retail Rising Star by Fashion Group International—specializes in emerging and undiscovered designers.

Smith’s business (like any successful one) solves two problems: one, emerging designers struggle to obtain liftoff in the climate of major department stores and e-comm giants who don’t have the time or the appetite to invest in risks; and two, the high-end customer and the entry-level luxury consumer are frustrated by the style sameness in their social circles and in the stores they frequent. In other words: why should a woman purchase a designer dress or jeans she knows her friend is bound to buy as well? And why should a customer new to spending at the luxury price point empty their savings on an item that’s bound to feel less special when two other women in her office own it in three colors?

Smith and I are sitting in Plan de Ville’s new office and showroom in Manhattan’s fashion district, just two years after she founded the company out of her downtown apartment. She’s every bit as chic as you’d hope the person buying for one of the industry’s key online retailers would be. However, she exudes an elegance and an ease rarely found in millennials, and partners calm, collected confidence with equal parts humility and grace.

At just shy of 30 years old, Smith’s career trajectory from college to corner office is inspiring. Even as her friend, I’m stunned at how far she’s come in such a short time. An internship after college at W magazine lead to an assistantship at Yigal Azrouel—she’s a loud-and-proud ”professional coffee getter.” Thanks to her time spent low on the totem pole, she can rescue a garment bag from the depths of a corporate messenger center or a package lost in transit–and those skills are part-in-parcel of how she runs her business. The pivotal Devil Wears Prada scene where Miranda Priestly tears apart Andie Sachs during a run-through comes to mind as Smith connects the problem solving skills she learned in internships with her current talents as a buyer, founder and CEO.