QUEEN of the TIKTOKRACY

As you read this, countless aspiring It girls are striving to capture that perfect alchemy of style, taste, charm, and fizz that creates fame and fortune seemingly overnight. Sofia Richie Grainge shows them how it's done.

-  MAER ROSHAN

Last July, Sofia Richie Grainge was on vacation, enjoying a much-needed respite from her taxing wedding and honeymoon, when she suffered a minor maritime mishap. Zooming around on an eFoil, a Jetsonsesque electric surfboard that levitates above the water, she lost her balance and was thrown onto the board, emerging from the collision with a champagne-colored bruise around her left eye.

That evening, on a yacht trip around the island where she was staying, the 25-year-old influencer took to Instagram to share some photos of her shiner, which she wryly captioned "Wakeboard 1, Sof: 0" and which, somehow, chicly matched her coral-colored Chanel frock. By the next morning her accident was international news. On Instagram, where Richie Grainge has amassed an astonishing 10.8 million followers, her black eye photos quickly racked up nearly a million likes. Some worried fans fretted about her health. Others hailed her for a bold fashion choice. "Leave it to Sofia to make black eyes cool, enthused one commenter. "Where can I find a black eye like that?"

By the time we meet up a couple of weeks later, at a tony Brentwood coffee shop, the bruise has largely faded. "I'm glad you survived!" I joke as she slides into her banquette, trailed by her assistant and her manager. "Can you believe that?" she says, giggling. "People were like, 'Sofia got a black eye, so I want a black eye. I was like, 'No, no, no! That's a bad idea." But she has also learned over the last several months how to seize opportunities when they present themselves. A few days later she posted on TikTok a makeup tutorial inspired by the surfboard smack heard 'round the world. "I think you've all heard of my incident," she said before instructing her 3 million followers in how to erase unsightly blemishes with the aid of a YSL Touche Eclat concealer pen.