Tavi Gevinson sat in a west suburban cafe consuming cheese pizza, hot chocolate and a fruit roll-up — the type of meal you’d expect from a 13-year-old, reports The Chicago Tribune.
No idea that since she began blogging about fashion from her suburban bedroom at age 11, Tavi has become an international sensation, viewed as one of the most popular — and controversial — figures in the world of high fashion.
No idea that when she’s not studying for a science test, having sleepovers with friends or attending summer camp, the eighth-grader can be found in the front row at New York’s Fashion Week, adorning the cover of ultra-hip Pop magazine and helping to launch a new fashion line for Target.
The daughter of a high school English teacher, Tavi combined her razor-sharp writing skills, precocious attitude and Internet savvy into a high profile in the fashion community, using her youth and small size as bold exclamation points.
“She’s only 13, but Tavi Gevinson has the fashion world enraptured,” gushed Harper’s Bazaar in the introduction to a column Tavi penned, making her the youngest writer published in the magazine.
Like a pint-size suburban superhero, Tavi passes her days as a typical middle school student before transforming by night into a celebrated author and star of her blog, Style Rookie. She posts photos of herself dressed in cutting-edge outfits and serves up sophisticated musings on the latest fashion trends, drawing nearly 30,000 readers each day.
She’s a teen phenomenon that would have been impossible before the Internet, but her success is not just virtual. Tavi has recently leapt into the scene on which she comments, submitting to a photo shoot in London, hanging with elite fashion designers in Tokyo and hobnobbing with singer Gwen Stefani, actress Chloe Sevigny and other celebrity guests at a Los Angeles event.
Photo by Chicago Tribune.