In November 2020, a specific pair of leggings sold by a French company Seasum for $25.99 went viral overnight, thanks to the popular hashtag #TikTokMademeBuyIt, which encourages users to try out items and hacks. The style, featuring a honeycomb-like texture and an indentation on the lower back that simulated a pulled-up thong, was lauded by users for its comfort. But what truly sets these leggings apart from the millions out there was its unique ability to transform anyone’s derriere. One of the first users to share them was Lauren Wolfe, a TikToker with over 500,000, who claimed that her “butt does not look like that” normally. The video now has over 250,000 likes.
Since then, the hashtag #TikTokLeggings has garnered over 630 million views on the app, 60k reviews on Amazon, and “booty-lifting” dupes from other brands. Even Lizzo is a fan. Picture a pair of leggings that mix the comfort of activewear with the appeal of shapewear, featuring an intentional wedgie that carefully separates your buttcheeks, giving anyone a derriere made for its own reality TV show.
For months now, the success of the TikTok leggings has puzzled shoppers who want to understand how regular butts become superbutts in them. The company claims that the key to its “butt lift” comes from a four-way stretch fabric that “conforms and contours with each pose and movement.” But is that actually what’s going on?
Textile expert and assistant professor of textile development and marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology Preeti Arya doesn’t buy it. Arya says that the technique used in these leggings is “west knitting,” the most common type of yarn technology used today, mainly because it allows the garment to stretch even if the fabric doesn’t have elastane. On Seasum’s website, the leggings are described as having a “special mesh textured fabric,” which Arya says may be “just a modification” of regular west knitting that allows for a textured appearance, altering the shape of the legs to look more full.
Although the company highlights the “textured fabric” as one of the signature factors for the leggings’ “butt-lifting” capabilities, textile expert Preeti Gopinath says there’s no lifting happening at all. Instead, it’s about the design, which draws attention to the wearer’s butt crack. “It’s very rare that you find leggings that have that ruching at the [back] seam,” says Gopinath, who’s the director of the masters of textiles program at Parsons The New School for Design. As opposed to regular leggings, which Arya notes is typically sewn in a way that allows the seam to sit “right on top of the butt line,” these Seasum leggings gather fabric from within the butt-crack to define the two cheeks, giving the illusion of a derriere so big that it’s stretched out the legging’s fabric. The V-shape waistline in the back also exaggerates the scrunching at the seam. Arya calls the Seasum version “a genius design.”
While it seems the whole cyberspace has tried the leggings, not everyone is a fan of them, especially people who wear them to work out. Some user reviews describe the backside seams ripping open, or stretching out to create holes. At the end of the day, clever design can’t compete with an actually powerful butt and its movements.
The activewear boom is a key factor to understand why these leggings went viral. Before the pandemic, activewear had already been on the rise, with brands like Lululemon, Athleta, and Outdoor Voices leading the market, valued at $155.2 billion in 2018, according to ReportLinker. It’s expected to hit $547 billion by 2024. TikTok is also ripe for items like these to go viral, fostering communities where niche trends and products are becoming the new mainstream.
Neither Arya or Gopinath believe the leggings are particularly magical. Instead, they point to the triple-threat construction — textured knitting, scrunched back side seam, and dipping waistband — as giving the appearance of a lifted backside appearance, rather than actually lifting it. Arya says, the real body part these leggings affect isn’t your butt, but rather your brain: “It’s all an optical illusion.”
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 14: Dua Lipa attends the 63rd Annual GRAMMY Awards at Los Angeles Convention Center on March 14, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy )
Who says you have to be any wear near a body of water to wear a bikini top?
On Friday, Dua Lipa shared her latest night-out look on Instagram, including a neon orange suit by David Koma London, paired with a black bikini top, featuring silver gemstone flowers.
The “Love Again” singer took a cue from one of summer’s biggest swimwear trends: the floss string bikini. As its name suggests, the top features thin ties that wrap around the midriff in a crisscross pattern. Judging by the trends shown during this year’s Miami Swim Week and worn by celebs like Lady Gaga and Kylie Jenner, flossy separates are a post-quarantine must-have.
Over the past year, the British-Albanian performer has championed many Y2K trends, including creative variations of the going-out top, donning halter, backless numbers and blinged out camisoles à la 2000s-era Paris Hilton.
But let’s not forget that summer is almost halfway through, and sharp tailoring is also upon us. As the American workforce returns to IRL offices, the fashion suit is primed to become one of the season’s must-haves. During Paris couture week, street style photographers captured a blazer-heavy vibe, with influencers and celebs pairing structured blazers with tulle skirts, combat boots, and ditching their undershirt for a naked-like look.
You can recreate the unusual swimwear and workwear combo for your next night out with some of the options below.
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Intrigued? Same. But where does one buy a belly chain for an upcoming tropical vacation (or, for that matter, a backyard hang) other than from a DIY shop on Etsy or straight from Chanel? There are some jewelry brands that have been working on supplying us with belly chains. Missoma, Bagatiba, Petit Moments, and more Instagram-favorite brands are all now offering body jewelry for you to test out this summer.
To help get your collection of belly chains started, we rounded up 16 modern styles ahead.
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Bagatiba Princess Belly Chain, $, available at Bagatiba
Princess Polly Baby Girl Chain Belt, $, available at Princess Polly
Casa Clara Emily Belly Chain, $, available at Revolve
GISENA Dainty Simple Belly Waist Chain, $, available at Etsy
When American track star Allyson Felix arrived in Eugene, Oregon this past June for the Summer Olympic Trials, the five-time Olympian and holder of nine Olympic medals wasn’t just vying for another opportunity to compete. She was also determined to use the Tokyo games as an opportunity to upend another standard.
Ahead of the 2021 Olympic Games, Felix announced the launch of her new women’s lifestyle brand, Saysh, as well as the release of its signature sneaker, the Saysh One. The shoe is meant to be worn for everyday use and to fit women’s soles, which, according to Felix, differ in proportion and width, with women, statistically, having skinnier Achilles heels. Among professional athletes, getting your own shoe deal is a lucrative career-defining milestone, and most star athletes end up collaborating with big companies, such as Nike or Adidas. For Felix to found her own sportswear brand is not only uncommon, it’s nearly unprecedented for athletes of her caliber and fame, a statement for women everywhere who see themselves reflected in her fight for equality — on and off the track.
“This Olympics for me is a lot bigger than trying to run fast,” she says. “There’s been so much adversity to overcome.”
Back in 2019, Felix shocked the sports world when she accused Nike — her official sponsor at the time — of discrimination. In a New York Times op-ed, Felix narrated how the company offered her 70% less money when she re-negotiated her contract after becoming a mother. “I felt pressure to return to form as soon as possible after the birth of my daughter,” she wrote, explaining how after she underwent an emergency C-section at 32 weeks because of life-threatening pre-eclampsia, she was expected to prove to Nike that she was more committed to the track than her own health. At the time, two former Nike athletes, runners Alysia Montaño and Kara Goucher, shared similar stories in a New York Times investigation. (Nike has since updated its policies so as to not penalize sponsored athletes who “decide to have a baby.”)
Felix went on to sign with Athleta, which she says showed her that “things could be done differently.” Now, she’s on her way to the Olympics sponsored by both Athleta and her own company, donning both brands throughout the event. “I’m so, so proud,” the entrepreneur says. “This is something that I never thought I’d do.”
To launch Saysh — named after the term “seiche” that describes a standing wave which forms in enclosed bodies of water such as lakes — Felix knew she needed more than her athletic experience. Although she’s one of the most decorated athletes of all time, designing sneakers required the help of fabrication and engineering experts. But Felix didn’t want any experts; she wanted women. With the help of sportswear veteran Tiffany Beers, Felix enlisted Natalie Candrian, a Swiss designer with over 20 years of experience working in sportswear, who had left Nike to work independently in 2013. “I got to design and build something for women,” says Candrian. “I don’t think I’ve got to do that before.”
After the first meeting, she had two feelings she wanted to evoke through the shoe: flow and grace. “I thought, ‘What is an equivalent in a fashion piece that gives you the feeling that it’s an easy piece to wear?’,” says Candrian. “To me, it’s the wrap dress from Diane von Furstenberg.” The wrap dress, a fashion staple of the the 1970s, revolutionized the way women dressed, offering a practical but glamorous look that allowed women, who were moving into the workforce en masse, to move freely and to dress chicly without too much fuss. Candrian says that the DVF wrap dress is “something we can all wear, no matter your age, no matter who you are, no matter what you’re up to and where you live.” That’s what the Saysh One was created to do for women.
Candrian says that women-centric design is not yet a reality inside the sneaker world. Even when sneaker brands like Nike, Rebook, and Adidas market their shoes for women, Candrian says they are almost never designed with a woman’s foot in mind. Instead, they are sized-down versions of men’s shoes.
But the Saysh One was created around a woman’s foot, designed for both performance and everyday wear. They are also fashionable: a textured toe box with matching laces with a hugging heel, sleek white soles, and the Saysh logo on its back. The toe box is shaped with flowing lines in a darker shade that reminded Candrian of track lines from the first time she designed them on paper. She says it’s an homage to “Allyson’s turf and office.”
Back in June, Felix had a chance to test them on the track at the Olympic Trials, after Candrian and a team of two former Nike engineers helped Saysh build a spiked version of their namesake model. It’s 3.7 ounces, the lightest shoe Felix says she’s ever run in. Now, she could break the record as the most decorated Olympian in history wearing a brilliant decoration of her own design.
Felix is set to debut her Saysh One spikes at the 2021 Olympic Games on July 30.
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For all the now-well-known benefits of working from home, there are still certain small phenomena that can only occur in a physical office: rambling conversations at the espresso machine, scooting over in your roll-y chair to pester a favorite colleague, the particular type of friendships that form when you put a random assortment of people together for eight hours a day. But while we might lament having to maintain those connections digitally, imagine meeting a new colleague face-to-face just a handful of times before partnering with them to start a company.
Such was the case for Cary Lin and Angela Ubias, founders of Common Heir, a clean, plastic-free, high-performance skincare brand. The company’s chief executive officer and chief product officer, respectively, had been set up on a “blind phone-call date” by a mutual friend shortly before COVID-19 struck, leaving Ubias in Austin and Lin in L.A. Through countless online-coworking-sessions and repeated requests to “hop on a quick FaceTime,” the two beauty industry vets were able to successfully launch their Vitamin C serum, a concentrated formula to improve skin texture and brighten dark spots, in the form of a biodegradable, plant-based capsule.
Ahead, we’ve teamed up with Pandora Jewelry — whose Signature I-D Bangle was designed to be a reminder of what drives you — to share Ubias and Lin’s secrets for remote collaboration, how other women have shaped their journeys, and how they’ve reframed imposter syndrome and used it to their advantage.
Where did the idea for Common Heir come from?
Lin: “I had the inkling of the thought for Common Heir for several months after working in the beauty and consumer goods industry. I was walking on the beach in Santa Monica and picking up some plastic trash after having worked in the industry putting out millions and millions of products. It just hit me that I didn’t know where any of it ended up, and I started thinking about creating a brand that was going to make a meaningful difference that didn’t use any plastic packaging, something I really wanted that didn’t exist.”
Ubias: “I always call it a love match. Just in that first half-hour phone call, my face hurt from smiling so much — because both of us came from the beauty industry, we’d somehow identified the same white space. I was toiling away nights and weekends on Common Heir until May 2020, and I just found myself feeling passionate about the work I was doing there, not so much the work I was doing in my longterm role. The pause that the pandemic created for a lot of us was this opportunity to become hyperaware of the mark we’re leaving behind. Working on other people’s brands has been great, but this was an opportunity to work on something that feels like a representation of me and Cary.”
Common Heir was initially made possible because another woman connected you. How else have women in your personal and professional lives helped shape the brand?
Lin: “The reason we called the brand Common Heir is literally because Angela and I were looking at our own founder story. We don’t have this whole ‘childhood friends who met at camp and decided to do this together’ story. We genuinely did not know each other, and our personal and professional lives have been pretty different. But we wanted to focus on what we have in common, that feeling from that first phone call, which was like, ‘she understands.’ It was all about passing things down, inheriting things, and realizing that we have something we can give. Even though we’re so different, this is something we can work on together because we both really care.”
Ubias: “Immediately after college, I fell into working with amazing, really strong female founders and CEOS, and that’s certainly shaped who I am today. So there’s never been a second thought about how to pass that forward, because it’s so innate to my experience. With Common Heir, we’ve had so many amazing women around us who were so supportive and passionate. You can feel that emotion and the heartstrings running through the brand.”
Given the added challenges of a global pandemic and not being in the same location, what was the glue that held your relationship together as you launched your brand?
Ubias: “It was 1000% clear, open, and honest communication and what felt like being overly communicative at times because we didn’t have this foundational relationship to fall back on, like knowing how this is how this person works so I can benefit-of-the-doubt it — there was none of that. It sounds very cheesy, but to build the bond you need with a cofounder, there’s a personal aspect there, so it was making sure to do daily check-ins where we’d have Zoom open and work together or saying, ‘I’m feeling stressed about this, can we hop on a FaceTime.’ Without that, it would’ve been so easy for things to fall apart.”
Lin: “We’re both motivated to do things that are very different. We’re not rebels, per se, but we were both hungry to do something genuinely innovative in the space, and we thought that this wasn’t going to get built the way we envisioned if we didn’t do it. Macro-level, that’s what kept us going. Instead of achieving a big vision all at once, we hit little milestones and had little moments of grace that kept telling us, It’s a sign, we should keep going. Like, ‘Oh, we were able to raise a little bit more [funding], let’s get a photo shoot done.’ Or ‘Oh, it turns out we can do a photo shoot over text message.’ All these little things led us to, I guess we’re launching now.”
Celebrating wins while starting a business, no matter how small, sounds crucial for staying motivated. How do you like to celebrate your victories?
Ubias: “I tend to operate on a reward-based system, so it’s like ‘do this difficult thing, there’s a reward at the end.’ It wasn’t easy building this during the pandemic with such uncertainty, all these imposter-syndrome-driven things and actual tactical problems. We could only really look at the day ahead, more small-scale, tangible bits. Being able to check those off… that’s really important to celebrate because sometimes when you’re in the thick of it, you can only see what you can get accomplished today. That’s something I struggle with, just how grand some of the celebrations should be for launch or this or that, because Cary and I are both hyper-motivated individuals. With that territory, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve and find efficiencies. But I have a great network of friends and family and loved ones that will force me to take a step back and celebrate.”
Lin: “As a startup in the zero-to-one phase, think about a car — it can’t go without initial gas, you kind of have to generate your own momentum. You have to generate your own happy moments. It’s important to remember like, If we knew about this a year ago, we’d be super excited to get here. On some level, because of how scrappy it was when we started, it’s very existential in your first year as a business. It’s very hand to mouth. I think I always want to keep that humility in mind, that we could’ve so easily not been here.”
You’ve spoken about dealing with imposter syndrome, something a lot of women struggle with. What’s been helpful for you in working to overcome it?
Lin: “This is really top of mind for me, because we’ve recently had to go out there and seek fundraising. There’s massive imposter syndrome, and having the double whammy of being minority and female, sometimes it never feels like you’re what they want to invest in, that you’re convincing them. But other female founders that I look up to, I know they’re dealing with it as well, so we’ll pump each other up. And I’ll look at Angela like, ‘Yeah, we do know what we’re talking about.’ When we look at what we’re good at in our careers, this is a great expression of our talents, but we’re also first-time founders. There’s a massive fear of failure if you’re the token investment in someone’s fund that’s beauty or that’s minority — it’s a lot of pressure.”
Ubias: “I’m in a constant state of imposter syndrome. Once I accepted that, it shifted my thinking, in that it means I’m always going to have an opportunity to learn and grow and challenge myself. If you aren’t having some level of imposter syndrome, you might think you’re perfect. Part of me taking the leap to become a founder was wanting to challenge myself for my own growth and development. Everyone, regardless of career or title, feels this at some time, so talk about it and don’t make it this taboo thing, because it doesn’t lessen you. It doesn’t invalidate your experience to say, ‘I’m struggling with this today.’ Nobody actually knows what they’re doing, so it’s all okay.”
What advice do you have for others, especially those who are also women and a minority, who might be interested in starting their own beauty venture?
Ubias: “I’m not someone who took a really traditional path to beauty. I certainly didn’t go to school for cosmetic chemistry. In beauty specifically, that looks like a barrier to entry for a lot of folks, but it isn’t. There’s something to be said for rolling up your sleeves and putting in the hard work, and if it’s something you have a real passion for, reach out to people who are doing what you want to be doing. Because I can almost guarantee those people are willing to open doors and bust down barriers, because they already had to do so much to get to that visibility level. A lot of people genuinely want to help and are willing to open doors if you just take the chance and don’t get too in your head about things.”
Lin: “We don’t want to be the first and only. When we were growing up, there weren’t many founders who looked like us who we could look up to. So I want to encourage folks that if we can do it, they can totally do it. We’re not that special.”
On Thursday, Schiaparelli, the French fashion house behind Gaga’s black-and-red gown and gold brooch from Inauguration Day, announced a partnership with the “Rain On Me” singer’s nonprofit Born This Way Foundation, which works to support the mental health of young people. As part of the partnership, Schiaparelli recreated Gaga’s dove brooch that the fashion house made for Gaga to wear to the Inauguration, originally designed to be a symbol of hope and peace. The recreation — which is available in four different sizes, starting at $795 and topping at $2,150 — is now for sale in Schiaparelli retail locations, as well as Dover Street Market and Bergdorf Goodman. Of course, that’s a pretty penny to spend on a brooch, but, then again, getting the Gaga loo doesn’t come cheap, especially when 100% of the proceeds will be donated to her foundation.
The dove symbol has long held a place of importance for the century-year-old Schiaparelli brand. According to a press release, the dove motif was first inspired by artists of the Dada and Cubism movements of which Elsa Schiaparelli was a part of. Specifically, a painting by Picasso called “Caged Birds,” from 1937, inspired the original Schiaparelli dove. Elsa herself wore a dove pin of her own design when she left Europe for the U.S. to escape World War II. It was a symbol of hope then, just as it was meant to be on Gaga on January 20.
“It is with great pride that we are able to contribute to Gaga’s foundation and the remarkable work it has done in the lives of young people everywhere, moving them towards more freedom, kindness, and love,” Daniel Roseberry, the house’s current creative director, stated in a press release.
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