It all started with a home lighting setup. Noah Beck, the 20-year-old TikTok star born in Arizona and with nearly 30 million followers, made his first videos for the social media platform improvising late at night in his bedroom.
This happened a year and a half ago, while he was vacationing home from the University of Portland in Oregon, where he was studying business and playing soccer.
“I put nails in my wall to place and hold a flashlight,” he said, laughing as he sat on a patio at the Park Hyatt hotel in Paris, during the city’s recent men’s fashion week. “At the time I didn’t have a ring lantern.”
Fast-forward to the onset and duration of the covid-19 pandemic, the downtime that gave the “creators” of TikTok, as the app’s users are known, a captive audience, and Beck is now one of the most famous people on the platform.
Its rise is marked by popular content trends that proliferate in the TikTok digiverse; videos of short dances, lip syncing, and largely unfiltered moments from the creator’s life.
This is part of the appeal of TikTok: Unlike those who emerged as influencers on Instagram, the world that a TikTok creator presents does not have to be polished and perfect. In fact, it better not be.
But exactly why Beck went ultraviral is hard to pin down, and he’s the first to admit it.
“It’s crazy how fast I’ve grown,” he says. “I’m not sure why. There’s really no secret behind it. I’ve been consistent and posted things that I liked, be it trends or just things that made me happy.”
He’s also candid about one particular motivator: “There’s the attention you get from posting a video, and the serotonin from getting notifications on the phone. That’s what drives us as a generation now. As ridiculous as it sounds.”
The “TikTokification” of fashion
Beyond the regular and frequent posts to appeal to the platform’s algorithm, Beck’s looks (though not so good that it’s alienating or traditionally model-like) and his confidence are a likely draw. (During our interview, two fans who adore him cautiously approached to ask for a selfie or a TikTok; Beck agreed to the former.)
He seems to be very comfortable being visible (often shirtless) to millions of fans and seems to present himself as like-minded and aspirational in the eyes of his fans: dance videos are shot in the kitchen or in front of the closet mirror, often alongside his girlfriend, fellow social media personality Dixie D’Amelio who, for the record, has twice the number of followers on TikTok.
He also joined Sway House, a TikTok creator hub and residence in Los Angeles, in July 2020. There, with housemates who also had popular profiles, his audience grew even further.
In Beck’s case, the past year has become something of a definitive optimization of the social culture and characteristics of Gen Z, and it seems that several players in the fashion industry are taking notice.
Fashion’s recent approach to TikTok is remarkable, but it is not universal. And indecision makes sense. The pairing is fundamentally strange: The luxury goods business has long been built around glossy finishes and the accuracy of big budgets, especially when it comes to imaging, and inaccessibility. TikTok is a low-cost and commonly used tool, making it more effective in reaching younger potential customers to begin with.
At Celine, the brand’s creative director, Hedi Slimane, hired TikTok creator Noen Eubanks for a campaign in late 2019, a move that garnered multiple headlines among consumer fashion outlets. Another star named Wisdom Kaye, known for her style-focused posts, is a model signed by IMG, and has also partnered with Amazon Fashion.
The stars of Tiktok were also beginning to appear in the front rows of fashion week, until the covid-19 canceled most of the face-to-face events.
Although there are many examples of fruitful collaborations in this space, there are also problems to be solved.
Bryan Gray Yambao (known as BryanBoy on the web) has been an influencer since the early days of fashion bloggers in the mid to late 1980s. With more than a million followers on TikTok and established relationships in the industry, he is someone with whom many luxury brands have linked for content creation.
“Some brands have given control to the creators, which I really appreciate,” Yambao said during a short interview at his Paris hotel.
“In my case, when I have worked with Gucci, Dior, Prada or Valentino, they have given me complete freedom about what works for my audience and what works for my account.” But, he added, others are not willing to do without polishing. “If they’re super specific, if they hesitate to give control, if they give you a million hashtags, (it doesn’t) work.”
Continuing, he said, “If you look at the most successful people on TikTok, they do related things. They will never be perfect. They will never show a perfect existence. Some brands are hesitant to put that aside.”
With Beck, the attention and momentum seem to be on the rise. In January, he reviewed Louis Vuitton’s fall-winter menswear show for Vogue.
In March he was photographed for the cover of VMAN, an independent fashion magazine based in New York. In it, she wore smoky eyeliner, fishnet stockings under jeans, and heels. The creative director for the photo shoot was Nicola Formichetti, perhaps best known for his work as a stylist for Lady Gaga.
“It was exciting to work with someone who is very confident and open to exploring and challenging different types of fashion,” said Formichetti. “There is something about Noah. He is the Marky Mark of the new generation.”
Keeping his feet on the ground
The VMAN cover, however, was not without its critics. Some Internet users described the session as an example of “queerbaiting” or an opportunistic marketing tactic in which the LGBTQ + identity is implicit as a sales tool.
This reaction, along with other criticisms (he received a lot of criticism online for taking a trip to the Bahamas late last year in the midst of the pandemic), must hurt, but Beck says he has quickly learned what to do with. face and which ones to pass up.
“I don’t take negative comments personally because they don’t know me personally,” he said, adding, “If someone leaves a hateful comment on one of my posts, I’d love to sit with them for five minutes. If they keep thinking the same thing, nothing happens. I did what I could. ”
“But I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t look at some comments. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t affect me, sometimes.”
In Paris, however, Beck was ecstatic. It was his first time in the city, his first time in Europe, actually. The AMI brand, founded by Alexandre Mattiussi, had hired him to participate in a series of videos aimed at showcasing the brand’s new collection, while following Beck and another social media influencer, Larray, around the French capital.
Naturally, his time in the city is well documented on TikTok, there are videos of the crowds of fans who gathered outside his hotel to see him, the traditional French pastries, and his many costumes – courtesy of AMI (a break from his usual clothes student). A video of him playing football in the Parc des Princes has accumulated more than 11 million visits.
The first of three YouTube videos of his AMI-sponsored trip to Paris is already up on his channel. The first part, with over 350,000 views, is an 8-minute vlog of his journey: “I feel like I’m in ‘Ratatouille’ right now,” he says, wide-eyed, as they drive him around town.
Beck says she sees at least part of her future in fashion, and has even expressed an interest in design. The young man has launched products (hoodies and sweatshirts with the name Ur’Luvd) through his social media channels, but says: “I want to get to the point where people buy the clothes I design, without even knowing that it has something to do with my name. I think that’s for the best. I would probably feel more fulfilled that way. That’s the goal.”
For now, it’s about enjoying the ride while always reinforcing that deeply empathetic factor. “I’m doing the same things everyone is doing,” says Beck. “At the end of the day I take a shower, do a little skin routine, maybe watch some Netflix. I still have a normal life.”