The A-List Antidote

Australian comic Celeste Barber shot to fame by re-creating celebrity shots on Instagram – now the fashion set are getting in on the joke. She speaks to Phoebe McDowell about fat rolls and feminism.

- Phoebe McDowell

Celeste Barber is most comfortable when she’s half-naked, lampooning pictures of impossibly good-looking A-listers doing ridiculous things. There’s little she won’t try. Whether standing bikiniclad in a handcart, pretending to be Emily Ratajkowski on a Segway, or attempting a Lady Gaga yoga pose on a surfboard (only to topple off, legs flying), she has become the antidote to the manicured Instagrammers who regularly saturate our feeds.

It all began in 2015, when Barber staged her own version of the infamous picture of Kim Kardashian reclining on a hill of rocks, wearing only stockings, underwear and ankle boots. After uploading the pictures side-by-side as a joke, Barber went from 8000 to 50,000 Instagram followers almost overnight. Fast-forward three years, and she has 5.1 million followers, a fashion fan in designer Tom Ford and now a book as well to show for it.