HEROLI
Norwegian creator — luxury, designer and affordable fashion in the same outfit. Fashion, beauty, jewellery, travel and dining.
Take time to...
At 37 I was diagnosed with skin cancer. What changed me wasn't the diagnosis — it was what I did after.I stopped waiting. For the right time, for things to settle, for permission that was never coming. I started taking the time instead: the trip we kept postponing, the dinner without an occasion, the good outfit on an ordinary Tuesday.Three words. They decide how I spend my days.
Who am I
My name is Anette. I'm 48, Norwegian, married and a mum of two, with a passion for classic everyday fashion. Most of the people who follow me are women in their mid-thirties and up. I am one of them. I'm ginger-ish with freckles. I share inspiration in style, travel and food — always with a Scandinavian sense of simplicity.We travel as often as we can, and a lot of what I share comes from those trips — what I packed, where we ate, what was worth the detour. The rest comes from an ordinary week at home.I have a full-time job too. What I share grows out of my everyday life, alongside work and family.I started at an age when many people think it's too late. It never is, and it isn't about age. Take time to — whoever you are, wherever you are in life.
What I offer
I create content with a Scandinavian touch — rooted in my own style and everyday life.I put luxury, designer and affordable fashion in the same outfit. The expensive piece is elevated, the affordable one looks like it cost more — and the result is something people can actually copy. That's why the profile works for both ends of the market: purely affordable, purely luxury, or the two combined.I have the age and the skin most beauty brands are still learning to speak to. Not a limitation — the reason the work lands.The idea behind Take time to grew out of the changes I started making in 2015. It's only now I'm putting a name to it — and it's the frame everything I post sits inside. A partner doesn't get placed next to it. They get placed inside it.A consistent visual standard. A brand that works with me knows what to expect from the content I create.
Instagram collaborations
Brand partnerships and ambassadorships
UGC creation
Event presence and hosting
Personal shopping and styling
Speaking — the Take time to story
Reach out for rates, a media kit or a chat about working together.
Selected Collaborations
NA-KD, VILLOID, DISSH, ELEH, MESHKI, Lovechild1979, Björn Borg, KAFFE, Lancôme, BABOR, AGMES JEWELRY, BONHEUR, Julie & Josephine, Mockberg and others.
Take time to — My story
My name is Anette. Some of you may know me as @_heroli. I am 48, and this is the story I have spent a good ten years getting ready to tell.Not because it has been a secret. But because it took time. That is how it is with the things that matter most — they need time before they are ready to be shared.But now I am ready.I already had the answer when we left.It started with a mole that had changed a little. We didn't think much of it. A biopsy was taken, and then it was a matter of waiting for the result.We had been talking about Paris for a long time. It was the dream, and it had been far too long since we had done anything just the two of us. So we made up our minds while we waited, and booked the trip.Then the answer came. Malignant melanoma. On my leg. I was 37.At first they talked about day surgery. Then it was decided that it had to be done properly, with reconstructive surgery.I knew it was serious. It sat there the whole time, at the back of my mind, whatever else I was doing.The trip was before the operation. So we went.I didn't think of it as a philosophy back then. We had made a decision, and we stuck to it.We walked along the Seine. I bought shoes and clothes I didn't need, and ate whatever I felt like. I don't regret a second of it.When we came home, it turned out to be bigger than anyone had prepared me for.The operation was more extensive than I had imagined. The staff looked after me the whole way, and I lay there thinking it would probably be fine. The healing took weeks, and my whole leg was wrapped, from toe to thigh.The dressings had to be changed constantly, so I saw the scar after only a couple of days.At first I only saw the size of it. It was much bigger than I had pictured. The stitches. The skin that had closed around something I still hadn't quite taken in.Then I saw the shape.It looked like a heart.Not a perfect heart. Not a neat, drawn heart. But a real one. The surgeon had done a wonderful job, and no one had designed the shape. It simply turned out that way.But it didn't end there.Since 2015 I have been back many times. Biopsies that had to be taken. Moles that had to be removed. None of them have been as serious as the first one — but you don't know that until afterwards.Seven times I have sat through the days between the sample being taken and the answer arriving, with that feeling in my stomach. The one that settles in and doesn't let go until you know.There is nothing you can do about it. You can't plan, you can't decide anything, you can't start anything new. Everything stands still until you get the answer. And it doesn't get shorter each time. It gets heavier, because now I know what it could turn out to be.While we wait, we try not to worry too much. That is easy to say and hard to do.I have freckles everywhere, and I cannot keep track of them myself. The dermatologist has become a fixed part of my life. Even now, when everything is fine, I feel it in my body before every check-up. My husband notices it too. He keeps an eye on things, quietly and consistently. We are in this together, and that means everything.But it wasn't the diagnosis that changed me. It was the choice I made afterwards.The rest of 2015 went into getting well. Then came 2016, and 2017, and 2018, and that is where it really happened. Not as a decision I made on a particular day, but little by little. We started doing more things. We started spending more time together.They were not big things. It was the trip we would otherwise have postponed. It was the thing we had talked about doing for years and finally did. It was trying something we hadn't tried before. And in between, life carried on the way it does — check-ups, small procedures, children growing up, ordinary days that had to be got through.Because that is how it is. You don't wake up every morning thinking "take time". You have to decide to, and then you actually have to do it.Instagram wasn't on my radar in 2016. We had small children, and the time went to other things. But in 2017 and 2018 I started paying attention. I saw what other people were doing, and after a while the thought was there.I had lived a life where I, like many of you, waited. For the right moment. For the courage to arrive on its own. For some kind of permission to take up more room, try more, be more.I'll just finish this first. I'll just wait until things settle down. I'll just, I'll just, I'll just.The Law of Jante had done its work for many years — that small voice telling you not to think too much of yourself, not to put yourself forward, not to try something you might not be good at. In the end you stop noticing that you are waiting for permission. You think it is your own choice.But I am not going to put it all on the Law of Jante. I was perfectly capable of putting things off on my own.I was tired of that voice.And I decided something I had never decided before: I did not want to stand there one day and regret the things I never tried.So I started @_heroli on Instagram.I didn't name it after myself. Heroli is HERman and OLIne — my children. The two most important people in my life. It was about looking after what matters, while we still have it.I know — it doesn't sound like much. But for me it was one of the most frightening things I had done. Putting up pictures of myself.Is it embarrassing? Am I too old? What will people think?My husband pushed. He was there the whole way and thought I should try, and I don't think I would have done it without him. That is how we have become — one of us backs the other when they want to try something.In the end I cared less about what other people might think, and more about what I would regret if I never tried.And once I had started, something more happened.We travel more, and we walk more. I exercise. I read more. I put on the good outfit on an ordinary Tuesday instead of saving it for something that may never come. We go out to eat, my husband and I, without it having to be an occasion. We cook proper food at home and sit down together.And I look after my skin. Not because I am afraid of it, but because I know what it can hide. I go to my check-ups when I am supposed to, every time.I don't spend much time on what has been, and not all that much on what might come either. Most of all I try to live the day I am actually in. To some people that probably sounds boring. But those are the choices I make.Today you can barely see the scar.You have to know where to look to find the outline. I think that is a good image for all of it. Things heal. Not everything disappears, but it softens. It just takes more time than you think when you are in the middle of it.What I really want to say is this.I think many of us are waiting. For the right moment. For things to settle down a bit. For us to be ready.The trip you put off until next year, and then the year after that. The conversation you didn't have. The dream you put in a drawer because the timing wasn't right. The life you thought you would start living once things calmed down.And it is not only about the good things. It applies just as much to the appointment you never book, and to what you keep pushing away because you would rather not.We all know how that feels. And suddenly ten years have gone by."One day, I will." You can say that sentence for twenty years without anything happening. Swap the two words around and it reads "day one". And then it isn't something you are waiting for any more. It is today. There is nothing to prepare. You just begin. And it doesn't have to be big things — what makes you happy right there and then is enough.I don't believe life is one long run of highs. Some people go around waiting for everything to succeed, and are disappointed every time it doesn't. It isn't about everything going well. It is about making sure there are more good days than bad ones, and about doing something about the bad ones when they come.I stopped listening to that voice. Not because I became brave. But because I understood that waiting is also a choice.That is a choice I no longer make.I try to make time for the people and things that matter to me. I still need reminding, too.That is why I share these little films and images. Some reminders come from my own life. Others may speak to something important in yours. A person you miss. A hobby you love. Looking after yourself. Something you have wanted to try for years.We each have our own things we keep putting off. My hope is that, every now and then, one of these reminders helps you make room for yours.Take time to... You get to finish the sentence.Anette @_heroli
About malignant melanoma
Malignant melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer. It often begins in a mole that changes in shape, colour or size.Wherever you live, your national cancer society will have free information on what to look for and how to get checked. It is worth looking up the one in your own country.