The Vanilla Girl Aesthetic Is TikTok’s Latest Fashion Trend

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There’s a new It Girl on TikTok.

Her name is Vanilla girl, and she is characterized by two characteristics: She is comfortable and clean. Dress only in neutral colors such as white, cream, or a very light brown, she might like a cozy loose knit sweater over leggings with short Uggs. His hair was slicked back, and his skin free from heavy makeup maybe just lip gloss, eyebrow pencil, and cream blush. As she welcomes you into her home, she offers you a homemade latte, a white boucle chair to sit on, and a blanket to cover your feet as the scent of sugar cookies wafts in the background. She is beautiful, refined, and, above all, easy.

He’s also almost as likely to be white. Of the seemingly endless TikTok videos tagged with vanilla girls and vanilla girl aesthetics, almost all of the most popular ones feature blonde women. Several creators praised TikTok megastar Alix Earle popularized viewthough he didn’t find it and doesn’t seem to use hashtags in his videos.

But with his silky blonde hair and big blue eyes, Earle totally fits the mold, and it’s hard to find a creator who likes a trend that doesn’t go with this look, although there are several videos showing how to pull off the style even if you’re a*gasp *brunette.

The popularity and specificity of the trend has many on TikTok saying the quiet part out loud: This feels racist.

It feels like WASP, merchant, purity culture repackaged for Gen Z, one Black creator@troublepuffs, said about the trend.

One Notable Black TikToker, @OliviaLayne6says that the name is vanilla and the example used to demonstrate it mainstream media trending articles make it seem as if the trend is only for beautiful, thin, fair-skinned women.

Olivia said she saw comments on TikTok saying anyone could be a vanilla girl, but pointed out that the trend seems like a repackage of the same TikTok trends we’ve seen before, like clean girl and gentle girl aesthetic.

And no shading, I’m not making fun of this style, I’m just asking how many ways are you going to say you like beige? she says.

Aiyana Ismail, assistant editor at Teen Vogue, sign in to TikTok that after she got a PR pitch on the trend, she decided to start her own: the brown girl trend.

The new aesthetic just came down, he says. Stephanie McNeal