Keeping up with Mia Khalifa

Much has been said about the modern day It girl. Shorthand for an ineffable aura — one that embodies the cultural zeitgeist and reflects it back to us in sartorial flare and memeable moments — lately it’s become a bit of a misnomer. Probably because the elusive archetype is so hard to articulate. Yet like most things that are impossible to put into words, such as love or a Hans Zimmer score, it’s easy to feel. You’re just drawn to them. Irresistibly so.

Within five minutes of meeting Mia Khalifa, I get why the fashion world is so hypnotised by her. You just want to be her best friend. She has more than 27 million followers on Instagram and is one of the world’s top TikTok creators, but this isn’t a numbers game. She’s just got it. Not just influence but substance. As she swans around the north London set house for her ES Magazine cover shoot, everybody can feel it. Wherever she goes a trail of light, laughter and — most importantly — fashion follows.

At the start of this year headlines declared that Khalifa had infiltrated the fashion scene; now she’s become it. Just listen to her schedule. After the shoot she’s off for a secret-but-exciting appointment in Mayfair. The next night she’s at the theatre, watching The Effect with new bestie and London’s hottest emerging designer, Dilara Fındıkoğlu. A quick pit stop back home in Miami to refresh her nails and lashes, then — deep breath — front row at Mains next to Headie One and Leomie Anderson (‘I got to give Louis [Theroux] a personally rolled joint!’ she spills), closing Knwls for her first-ever runway appearance, more secret-but-exciting appointments, the GDCS show in Milan and, by the time you’re reading this interview, prancing around Paris Fashion Week.

I finally get to chat to her properly on a rare day off in Whitstable, a couple days after her Knwls debut, in the 14th-century cottage that she rents each time she’s needed in the capital. ‘I need land. I need peace and quiet. I don’t want to see any neighbours. I hate cities. If I don’t have to be in London you will not find my ass there.

‘I love that the wood here is older than America,’ she continues, stroking the wooden beam above the fireplace. ‘I also love being next to a fire, it must be because I was burned at the stake as a witch in a past life.’

No one expected her takeover, and in all fairness, neither did Khalifa. That’s not to say she hasn’t been into fashion — just one scroll through her Instagram will vouch for that. She was pairing Louisa Ballou dresses with green Versace heels, distressed Dion Lee sets with Cult Gaia pumps and Dries van Noten cover-ups with Amina Muaddi mules way before the industry took note. That’s not to mention the Nusi Quero bodysuits, LaQuan Smith gowns and Rick Owens platforms peppered throughout her feed. ‘I wasn’t being paid by any brand, I wasn’t being gifted by any brand, but I was going out of my way to style things and tag the brand and even create my own affiliate links at one point,’ she explains on her stylised posts, adding that she took inspiration from the likes of blogger turned businesswoman Chiara Ferragni.

Fashion is a notoriously gate-kept industry, and as a self described ‘realist’ she didn’t think being part of it was viable. Until a chance offer landed in her inbox. ‘I got the invite to my first fashion show through being a client. I shop a lot at the Off-White flagship in Paris and I guess I shopped there enough to where the manager was like, “I would like to extend an invitation to our fall/winter show. Can you make it?”’ At the time she was at home in Miami with no plans to go to Paris. She dropped everything — booking a flight, hotel and flying herself out there days later.

‘I literally just came to Paris for that and it was so worth it. It was a huge catalyst for brands and people to see that I want to be here,’ she says of her first fashion show in September 2022, exactly one year ago: ‘I want to say thanks to Hermann [district manager at Off-White Paris], and thanks to me and all of the excuses I make for being a shopaholic. It got me somewhere.’

There was something about seeing Khalifa sitting at the show (not even front row, mind) that just made sense. Within a couple of months cult brand Aries Arise tapped the rising It girl to star in a Clare Shilland and Connor Cunningham-shot zine. Shortly thereafter, PR firm Karla Otto named her the Emerging Influencer of 2022. A few months later, data crunching platform Lefty announced that Khalifa created more than $7.6 million (£6.2m) in earned media value during the AW23 circuit in March, even surpassing global stars Zendaya and Kylie Jenner. Name any trending Gen Z brand of the moment, from Shoreditch Ski Club to Heaven by Marc Jacob, and chances are they have worked with her, or at least they want to.

But like I said, this isn’t a numbers game. Yes Khalifa loves the brands, but these brands were also ensnared by the newly appointed It girl’s rebellious charisma, one that had been forged out of unspeakable trauma and adversity. ‘My story is not special, it’s just in the spotlight,’ she says. ‘No girl has ever not been in a position adjacent to mine. I feel like if they actually have heard my story, they unfortunately resonate with it. They relate to low self esteem and to making choices based on seeking validation.’

If you don’t know what story she’s talking about, well, that’s a good thing. It’s a testament to how well she’s clawed back the narrative, a mission she’s been on ever since that infamous 2019 BBC interview. Now viewed more than 17 million times, it was the first time many had heard from the former most-watched performer on Pornhub — and she was here to bring them down. Despite being in the industry for a mere three months in 2014-2015, the 11 videos she made were viewed one billion times. In one she was famously told to wear a hijab, with the controversial scene evoking global outrage and a multitude of death threats. Isis photoshopped a picture of her being beheaded and uploaded it (to which she replied: ‘Better my head than my tits, they were more expensive,’ on Twitter). While her birth country of Lebanon verbally banned her from ever coming back (despite that, she still donated more than £81,000 in 2020 following the Beirut port explosion).

After the uproar she deactivated all her accounts, left the industry and took up a job as a paralegal and bookkeeper. She gradually reopened her social media in 2016 and began posting sports commentary and non-nude photo shoots. Yet by December 2018 she still remained the top-ranked performer on Pornhub. The majority of the views came from the same countries condemning her, a hypocrisy perfectly encapsulated by a line from her cameo in the Hulu comedy Ramy: ‘The men who are yelling at me are the same men who are clicking on me.’ Worse still, according to her lawyers, the company has made well over £40m from her. She made £9,000, and that was pre-tax.

When Khalifa joined TikTok in 2020 she found, for the first time, a completely new audience — women. People started to understand how one misstep can dump you in a firestorm of misogyny, and how the loudest haters are usually the ones covering up their own abuses. As she continued to share her side of the story, an online petition pushing for the videos to be taken down and fairly discussed in court gained more than 1.8 million signatures. Still, it is a conversation she is unwittingly dragged into even to this day. ‘I’m trending on Twitter as we speak right now. The discourse is about me walking the Knwls show and people rehashing all of that, “Oh but she sexualised hijabs”.’

Luckily the dialogue sounds a little different now. ‘Even now there’s people who are like, “You do realise that all of these videos are still being made, the production company that writes them, profits off of them is still doing all of this and has never stopped. She did not invent this, she did not sexualise the hijab,”’ she continues about the current X (formerly Twitter) discourse. ‘Why am I the scapegoat? And why are we not holding the actual corporations that are making this happen accountable? Because now that I’m gone, they’re using Latin women who could pass as Arab and putting a headscarf on them.’ She pauses, collects herself, and states: ‘At least I’m trending with Cillian Murphy. I love nothing more than opening Twitter and seeing my name next to him.’ We both break out into laughter.