What exactly was the situation when you filmed and uploaded the video?
We had gone out all night, we were in Vegas for the [NBA] Summer League and met up with some friends, went out to the club, and then around 5:30 in the morning we were headed to get breakfast and ran into Kevin Hart’s tour manager. He took us to breakfast, so by the time I was heading home and in the cab and filmed that, it was around 7:30, 8AM. The whole start to finish of filming took maybe 20 minutes. I wasn’t thinking that was prime [time when] everybody else was waking up and going to work. I posted it and went to sleep, and by the time I woke up, it had already hit a million views. The whole day was just me trying to comprehend what was going on.
The reason it led to that whole [heels] discussion was, I was proud of myself because I still had my heels on and we had been out since 11PM. I don’t know what possessed me to pull my phone out and start talking, but I did. I was having a fun and playful chat with a friend, just joking. That’s why I made the throwaway comment about not looking my age because sometimes I find that I’m one of the older people in the group, and I make these jokes. I guess my joke didn’t come across, which is okay. And I said, “Oh, I have to show the shoes. I can’t do this and then not show off the shoes.” So I got to the hotel room and finished the video and went to sleep. Then I realized maybe I shouldn’t have shown the shoes.
Why not?
I’m totally joking about that, but obviously that was the first thing that everybody started mentioning. I will say, I have no regrets. I am on a style journey and I’ve been really conscious about overconsumption when it comes to my closet. This trip just happened to be one that I brought some stuff that I never wear. I was like, “Okay, Rachel, you have to wear it. You have these in your closet, you got to wear it.” I have had those shoes sitting in my closet for over two years. I got them from Bloomingdale’s and they sat in my closet, and I was finally like, “This is the trip, Rachel. This is it.” And boy, was it.
How did you feel once the video started going viral? Did your phone blow up?
It’s funny, I actually don’t have my social media notifications turned on my phone. I learned early on that social media is not a place that needs to be taken seriously all the time. You have to have very healthy boundaries with it. So I tell people that if you’re messaging me on social, unless I’m actively in the app, I’m not going to see it. Which makes it even more funny that when I woke up I didn’t have any notifications exterior to the app. I just happened to log in TikTok and saw a million views and all those comments.
Why do you think people had such a visceral reaction to it?
Well, I think whether the shoes are cute can be debatable, and that’s fine. I always say fashion and art are polarizing and I’m okay with that. In all seriousness though, I think that the main reason is because this is such a divisive year and there are so many different things that people are arguing about. This is a subject that was fun and people were able to unite over [it]. A lot of the [reactions] I saw were funny. It was just a few particular creators who put the video out there with a negative connotation, which invited in some of the hate and negative comments. It was easy for me to tune that out and decipher through that. I never turned off comments on the original post because I’ve given that comment section up to the internet gods.
How many TikTok followers have you gained since?
When this whole thing started, I barely had 3,000 followers. Now I’m at around 31,000. The most exciting thing to me about the followers is that they might come to get a joke or to see the video, but they stay because they like the content. I’ve been working so hard over the last year to really understand how I can translate this career and insight that I have in a way that’s interesting to an audience and also shows people who might want to work in this field that it’s possible to do it, especially if you look like me. Even though this video was random and a one-off, it has actually brought a really good core group of new followers, and I feel very honored about that. I don’t mind how they got there, I’m just happy that they’re there.
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