Hidden in a row of costume-jewellery sellers and outlets offering cash to punters with poor credit is Fashion Nova, which could soon prove to be a unicorn (a billion-dollar company). It may not be a tech company in the way Facebook or Microsoft is. It does not produce software or rely on algorithms. However, its entire success is built on its dominance of social media and modern internet culture. The company has been instrumental in creating a new model of women’s work, and has cemented the twenty-first century’s new beauty ideals anywhere American pop culture dominates.

Fashion Nova’s impact could not have been predicted when its first store was opened in 2006 at Panorama Mall by the company’s founder, an industrious Iranian-American named Richard Saghian. Saghian may not be a household name like Gianni Versace or Calvin Klein, but his brand has been far more revolutionary in the Instagram era, despite only setting up a website as late as 2013. When the first Fashion Nova store opened, the company was unrecognisable from the one that made it the most googled fashion brand 12 years later. Its humble roots are still visible in Panorama City Mall, where the Fashion Nova store is painted a basic white. The floor is tiled like a public bathroom and the decor has no hint of glamour. It feels like a low-budget outlet store, and the prices match. No item costs much more than $34.99, and when I visit, I am the only man among a dozen customers and staff, all of whom are young Latina or African-American women with fuller figures, many sporting surgically enhanced backsides. The store plays hip-hop stripper anthems by Fetty Wap and Cardi B, a former exotic dancer turned megastar who is also a paid ambassador for the brand.

The music played in store complements the aesthetic of the skimpy clothes that have made Fashion Nova a market leader in ghetto chic and timeless hoochie wear. You can buy similar styles in the store next door, an unbranded clothes shop called Mode Plus, or the budget womenswear shop opposite, called Queens (the menswear shop next door is Kings). The same tight party dresses produced by undocumented migrants for cents and sold for dollars are for sale in all of them, and can be found in any other makeshift store in low-income Latina communities from Panorama City in LA to my native Tottenham in north London. However, Fashion Nova has come a long way from the humble store in the Panorama City Mall. Richard Saghian may have had textiles in his blood – his father ran a womenswear store he worked in himself – but he knew the world was changing, and that if he was going to succeed, he would have to change as well. His first step was to hire people who could show him how.

Bimi Fafowora, the daughter of a civil engineer and an ophthalmologist, was studying sociology with marketing when she saw a post from a small fashion company advertising a vacancy in their marketing team. Stereotypically, children of middle-class Nigerians living in Europe or America are under pressure to achieve professional success as doctors or lawyers, but Bimi had always been creative at heart. Outside of her studies, she photographed young women with modelling ambitions, and when she saw the job advert, she fired off her portfolio.

She was invited to bring her ideas to a meeting with the big boss, Richard, in Northridge. ‘I presented to him some plans to clean up their marketing and brand aesthetic, and I was taken on from there.’ It was an important break for 22-year-old Bimi. ‘At the time I didn’t think of it as a big deal because Fashion Nova were not as big as they are now,’ she said coolly. ‘I grew up in the Valley. I just knew it as a store that was at the mall.’ Back then, she remembered the store selling everything from school uniforms to casual wear. The company had only just launched its website, and one of her tasks was to help update it and create the company’s first list of attractive and popular Instagram influencers to send clothes to.

Bimi’s upper-middle-class tastes clashed with Richard’s street-culture instincts, but she soon caught on. Richard wanted his company to target the kind of curvaceous girls who went to clubs to dance to hip-hop and desired to be on a VIP table – sexy girls who were happy for their sex appeal to be consumed and wanted to be famous. Most importantly, they had to be able to turn heads on Instagram.

The company began recruiting micro-famous brand ambassadors who fitted the vision. Young women with big followings were given free clothes, and those with huge ones were paid a fee to post. They were told to always tag Fashion Nova to help its followers grow and boost awareness. Some ambassadors were also allowed to earn money from selling clothes using a discount code that paid them a commission. Where the company achieved major success was in its aggressive penetration of the hip-hop scene. It paid rappers for a shout-out on songs and signed up artists like the reality TV star turned rap superstar Cardi B to be highly-paid brand ambassadors. It even gave the African-American and Latin entertainers who now dominate American pop culture their own Fashion Nova lines. The company had bought a seat at the table. But it also stole scraps from it too.

Kim Kardashian is the height of American celebrity, with the power to set or signpost a trend. Only a day after she was photographed in a gown made for her by the exalted French designer Thierry Mugler, Fashion Nova began selling a replica.¹ When Kim’s younger half-sister, the even more influential Kylie Jenner, threw a star-studded 21st birthday party, every dress worn and papped was cloned within hours. Fashion Nova was not just fast fashion, it was the fastest. The process of recycling, or stealing, runway designs is well known and widely practised, says Bimi. ‘Celebrities wear these gorgeous gowns, they release it on social media, fast-fashion brands pick up on it, release it to the mass audience. These people wear them for about a day … because on Instagram you can’t wear anything twice.’ As Bimi and I sat on the roof of the Nomad, a luxury hotel frequented by holidaying footballers, she remarked, ‘I think we’re in an age where people aspire to something greater, something higher, more famous, more popular, more loved, and fast fashion has allowed for that. It’s allowed for people to shorten the gap between [them and] unattainable celebrities.’

Whenever Kim Kardashian posted a new fashion piece, Fashion Nova would have a version ready to go within hours. The turnaround time was so fast, many suspected the socialite and the company of working together in secret, a theory Kim denies.² I asked Joel, a talented marketer who worked with Fashion Nova, if he knew whether they collaborated. ‘I really don’t, and even if I did, I wouldn’t say.’ However, what he did reveal was that at one point he noticed Kim’s mum and manager, Kris Jenner, conducting a meeting with Richard Saghian. So who knows what the real deal is? After all, despite Kim feuding with the brand for ripping off the Mugler dress, it was her own sister who was responsible for turning Fashion Nova into a cultural phenomenon with a single picture. In the shot, Kylie is sitting on the edge of her bed, looking over her shoulder at the camera and staring straight into the lens. She is wearing Fashion Nova jeans. The brand is tagged, and the picture has been liked almost three million times. ‘That photo was viral, every tabloid picked it up,’ Joel gushed.

The brand also signed up a string of B-list rappers with huge reach, including Kylie’s ex-boyfriend, Tyga. Joel explains: ‘They’ve penetrated music in a way that no one else has been able to. You’ve got DJ Khaled and Justin Bieber product placement bags all over the video. You’ve got Cardi B, the hottest artist right now, dropping Fashion Nova’s name left and right. You’ve got the Kardashians!’

All of this paid off. In 2021, Fashion Nova surpassed 20 million Instagram followers. Three years earlier, it had become the internet’s most googled fashion brand, and the company posted revenues of $294m.³ Fashion Nova invites aspiring influencers to buy and model its clothes, then tag their photos @fashionnova and #NovaBabe. Over 10 million posts to date have been made by ordinary young women auditioning to get the brand’s attention. Each is hoping to become a paid NovaBabe, an ambassador who receives gifted clothes, the Instagram equivalent of being on the VIP table.

Fashion Nova’s website: Wannabe a #NovaBabe? Do you have what it takes to be a #NovaBabe? Are you the OOTD [outfit of the day] queen who can literally rock anything?! Do you have your own style that is admired by others?? If that’s you, we want you to join our #NovaSquad!

Many aspiring influencers pay for hauls of Fashion Nova clothes to review and model, viewing it as an investment in what they hope will become a job. In reality, they’re providing the company with free labour as promo girls, giving the brand edited adverts they did not have to pay for. The small number of women the company actually hand-picks for free clothes all have a similar aesthetic. They are young, with narrow waists, wide hips and thick lips. They have hourglass figures and wear clothing that clings to their skin: an aesthetic known as ‘Insta baddie’. If these women are black, they looked mixed-race or light-skinned, and if they’re white, they have dark hair and bronzed skin. They fit the casting call for a Kanye West video and look like they share cosmetic surgeons with the Kardashians.

Today, Bimi runs a boutique branding firm that recruits models and provides marketing content for new fashion labels trying to replicate Fashion Nova’s success. I ask her how the brands choose their models. ‘They base it on the look that’s trending right now: the Kardashian look,’ she replies. ‘It’s very curvaceous, mostly racially ambiguous.’ Bimi, a beautiful dark woman, said that one of her clients only wanted to work with light-skinned models: ‘Every time they would cast a model, that’s the aesthetic that they would cast.’

A new wave of pop-up talent agencies like the Londonbased Above and Beyond Group swipe through social media to scout for models and influencers who match this lucrative brief. Their roster looks diverse, but although most are not white, there is a homogeneity of ambiguous beige and light brown. As Bimi remarks, ‘In the nineties, straight long blonde hair and huge boobs and a real thin body was in. I think every age has its trending look.’

Fashion Nova may not have created this trend, but it has reinforced it. Fast-fashion companies throw vast amounts of money and products at the young women they pick to wear their clothes, and they have created a new economy that appears to offer easy jobs to the prettiest girls on the internet. Beauty has always been a commodity, but now it is far easier for women to monetise it themselves – if they have the right look. The belief among many young women that being desirable pays has led them to not only surgically change their shape but in some cases to even fake their ethnicity.

Aga’s pictures also caught the attention of fast-fashion companies and brands investing heavily in influencer marketing. It was then she started to think, ‘Let me try and make more out of this.’ The east Londoner was studying accounting, but saw providing promo as a potential side hustle. She turned her Instagram page into a business account that gives users metrics about who is watching their page, and then began tagging fashion brands including Fashion Nova. Not long after, they started gifting her clothes and so did their arch rival Pretty Little Thing. Aga had the desired aesthetic and the right audience. She also began working as an affiliate for Protein World, a supplements company, who gave her a discount code to promote to her followers. She got paid a commission for everybody who used her code on purchases.

‘Most of the time brands don’t actually pay me, they just give me clothes. They’re like here, here’s the clothes, do whatever you want with them as long as you tag us.’ When I interviewed Aga in 2019, she had 50,000 followers. Months later she surpassed 250,000. At the time of writing, most of the money she makes online is from ads and affiliate work for local companies. She became one of a dozen ambassadors for a London-based chauffeur company targeting those in the inner city desperate to present themselves as successful. The company regularly recruits attractive young women with significant numbers of followers to act as digital promo girls for their large male audience. Each ambassador generates an income from the people who use their discount code. The ambassadors have a uniform aesthetic. Once again, they appear black but light brown or mixed heritage and ethnically ambiguous. Aga fitted in.

In September 2018, the teenager photographed herself in an outfit composed of items she had been given to promote: clothes, phone case, eyelashes, and even hair, which came courtesy of a small Afro hair store based in the East Midlands. In the picture, she is standing in her trademark pose. Her hips are wide and her waist is so narrow it looks like an optical illusion. Her skin is brown, her lips are full and her wavy black hair is in cornrow braids, a popular Afro hairstyle. She is the picture of a confident and beautiful young black woman. The only problem is, Aga is not a black woman at all. She was born in Poland and would become one of the many white influencers accused of ‘blackfishing’.

In November 2018, a young writer named Wanna Thompson fired the first shot and defined the term with the viral tweet: ‘Can we start a thread of all the white girls cosplaying as black women on Instagram?’ The internet exploded. Aga ritually scrolls through Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat the way previous generations used to read the morning paper. ‘I woke up,’ she says, ‘and went on Twitter, and I’m going through the threads when I saw an interesting one. I scroll and randomly see my picture!’ The next thing she knew, her phone was buzzing with messages from friends and strangers to let her know the world was talking about her.

A list was shared thousands of times with the before-andafter pictures of young white women between the ages of 17 and 21 who had transformed themselves from having pale skin, straight hair and narrow features into having brown skin, full lips and wavy hair with the help of dark make-up, contouring and even wigs. There are even YouTube videos showing you how...