(Paris) At 10 years old, Taylen Biggs has nearly 1.5 million followers on social media thanks to her interviews with fashion and entertainment celebrities, an activity that bothers some and involves risks, but that she says “worship”.
Dressed head to toe in designer clothes and chunky sunglasses, the young American gets out of the van that’s taking her to a Paris Fashion Week show and declares with conviction: “I love fashion and I ‘like meeting new people’.
A cameraman follows her everywhere and her father, Josh Biggs, whom she introduces as her “bodyguard,” watches discreetly in the background.
In recent years, the world of fashion has profoundly changed under the leadership of these influencers who have become essential. Increasingly younger and more and more numerous, they can give a real boost to sales.
Moreover, designers are not mistaken and no longer hesitate to give them privileged access, even if it means doing without traditional media.
But this opaque world between advertising and self-promotion carries risks. In 2018, actor and Instagrammer Luka Sabbat was sued by a public relations firm in the United States because he did not post enough photos of sunglasses.
“We can find it amusing, cute […] I find it something disturbing to see a child who adopts adult codes, gestures, facial expressions, a tone of voice,” adds AFP French child psychologist Claire Dahan.
Taylen Biggs has nearly a million followers on TikTok and nearly 380,000 on Instagram. She’s a familiar face at New York or Miami Fashion Week thanks to her short interviews and Shirley Temple-style poses.
Each time, the same process: obtaining sponsors, accessing fashion shows and rubbing shoulders with celebrities. “That’s how it works,” whispers his father, aged 43, to AFP. Before adding working with “different brands”.
Her mother, Angelica Calad, is a Colombian who came to the United States when she was 13. Passionate about fashion, she started posing with her baby, a few months old, on social networks.
Taylen’s laughing, plump face caught the attention of advertisers, and at the age of a year and a half, she posed for a children’s clothing line, Josh says.
It’s the mother who manages her daughter’s social networks from Miami. She is also the one who teaches Taylen, as well as her two little brothers. “We take school very seriously, it’s priority number 1,” assures the father.
The girl started homeschooling a month before school started in Miami, so she could take a long break during Fashion Weeks in Milan and Paris, he says.
“The truth is, I’m not a big fan of the school system, whether public or private. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about homeschooling.”
When asked if their daughter is a business, Josh calmly responds, “People see her through the lens of photos, but, in real life, she’s a child first and foremost.”
However, Taylen, who proudly emphasizes having “participated in fifteen fashion seasons”, sometimes gives the impression of having forgotten it. “I love children,” she says, for example. ” I have a lot of friends. They are so proud of what I do. I don’t feel any different.”
What if she one day got tired of the catwalks? “We will leave the fashion world in a second. Without hesitation,” his father promises.
