Woman tries to gain Instagram fame by copying snaps posted by the app's most popular users, like Kendall Jenner - and admits it is A LOT harder than it looks
- Fashion writer and author Amy Odell, 29, re-created eight of Instagram's most iconic celebrity images, including Kendall's heart-shaped hair
- She discovered that many 'selfies' required a team of eight including a makeup artists, hair stylists and design director to pull off
Instagram’s most popular accounts are full to the brim of picture-perfect images, from beautifully-styled selfies to stunning ‘candid’ shots, all of which are equal parts envy-inducing, irritating – and totally addictive, helping to draw in hundreds of thousands of followers each and every day. But what happens when a ‘regular’ person attempts to achieve the same level of Instagram perfection?
Enter Amy Odell, 29, Cosmopolitan.com editor and author of the fashion-focused book Tales From the Back Row: An Outsider's View From Inside the Fashion Industry, who set out to spend an entire week ‘living like an Instagram celebrity’ in order to better understand what it takes to reach the dizzy heights of social media success and fame. The answer, she quickly learned, is a lot of hard work – not to mention an entire army of stylists and assistants.
With the help of 'a design director, a photographer, a videographer, a sound person, a makeup artist, a hair stylist, a fashion editor, and a fashion intern', Ms Odell, who has just shy of 6,000 Instagram followers, went about re-creating eight viral Instagram photos taken by celebrities over the period of a week, Cosmopolitan reports.
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Fashion insider: When fashion writer Amy Odell (pictured) re-created iconic Instagram images, she soon found out that many famous 'selfies' actually required a team of stylists
Loving it: To multiply likes, Ms Odell recommends posting a photo of Kendall Jenner's iconic heart hair style
Ms Odell says that her journey began with her wondering why the photos taken by celebrities like Kendall and Kylie Jenner looked so amazing, yet her efforts at similar shots fell flat.
'Why do the ends of their hair never look stringy? Why is it that I want to be them even if all they're doing is standing in front of a fence?' she wrote.
So she set off on a mission to figure out the processes behind the perfect Instagram snap - and, as she soon discovered, the experience is far more complex than simply taking a quick selfie and posting it to the app.
First, there are the props required for the 'ideal' Instagram picture.
Sexy selfie: Kylie Jenner strikes a pose (left), and Ms Odell puts on a similar pair of white jeans, cropped top and also adds lots of lipstick (right)
For one image, Ms Odell had to borrow a white SUV and find a perfectly-formed rose in order to mimic a picture shared by her friend, and social media star Rumi Neely, a designer and model who boasts more than 642,000 followers.
Following the simple rule of 'find a flower and get very serious with it', Ms Odell was forced to enlist an army of helpers who ensured that her pose was just right, make sure she had on the perfect outfit, and checked that her make-up was still as fresh as could be.
From there, things got a little more dangerous however, as Ms Odell moved on to the account of fashionista Amy Song, who has a 2.5 million-strong following.
This tricky shot involved snapping a picture while walking across a pedestrian crossing in Manhattan, with an iconic yellow cab perfectly positioned in the background.
Once again, it was a feat that Ms Odell completed 'without getting killed' only with the help of several stylists and assistants.
Prep time: Ms Odell reveals that each seemingly casual photograph required several steps
Flower power: To copy her friend Rumi Neely's shot (left) Ms Odell (right) borrowed a white SUV, a 'perfect' rose and a pair of very short denim shorts
The look that got the most likes, Ms Odell revealed, was her take on Kendall Jenner's iconic heart-shaped hair selfie, an experience which the writer actually enjoyed most out of all the photo-taking moments.
'It was nice because all I had to do was lie on the floor while people turned my hair into heart shapes,' she explained of the snap, which remains her most-liked photo to date.
In another shot, she struck a sexy pose similar to Kylie Jenner's by wearing a crop top and a pair of 'extremely tight' white pants.
To mimic Kylie's lips, Ms Odell wrote that 'the wonderful makeup artist from La Voila Beauty tried to double my mouth in size using lip liner and gloss for this photo', but but she felt that her oversized pout would be judged by 'normal people who probably looked at my lips and thought I was trying to hide a herpes outbreak'.
Identical imitation: In order to mimic Instagram's head of fashion partnerships Eva Chen's shoe shot (left) Ms Odell (right) had to tie the perfect bow in her shoelaces, which took a long time
Perfect poses: To re-create this look modeled by Chiara Ferragni, also known as the Blonde Salad (left) Ms Odell (right) advises Instagrammers to 'go bold' with accessories such as fringe and a hat
Style stories: Ms Odell's new book, Tales From the Back Row: An Outsider's View From Inside the Fashion Industry, lifts the lid on how to mimic iconic Instagram shots
And, as it turns out, all that fuss may have been for nothing; in her article, Ms Odell calls her attempt at perfecting Kylie's awkward over-the-shoulder pose 'the most embarrassing image of me on the entire internet'.
Though the experiment was fun, Ms Odell said it taught her that she could never done it without her 'team' - and that Insta-fame is not for her, particularly as it makes the seemingly-simple activity of posting a picture to a photo-sharing app into an incredibly complex and arduous chore.
Take her attempt at perfecting a pose made famous by Instagram's own head of fashion partnerships, Eva Chen.
Taken in the back of a cab, the so-called 'Eva Chen pose' looks as though it should take mere minutes - if not seconds - to put together.
Not so, says Ms Odell.
'We've been tying bows for an hour,' she said of her attempt to re-enact the shot.
'It's supposed to look easy, but you always spend like thirty minutes on it, even if it's just a piece of sushi,' she said.
Following her experiment in high-maintenance photography, Ms Odell was almost happy to admit defeat, explaining to her readers that, without her team of eight people, none of the picture-perfect snaps would have been achieved.
'Now that this experiment is over, I will never, ever be an Instagram celebrity,' she concluded.
- I Lived Like an Instagram Celebrity for a Week and This Is What Happened
- Tales from the Back Row | Book by Amy Odell | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster
- Amy Odell Remakes Viral Instagram Photos | Cosmopolitan - YouTube
- Tales from the Back Row: An Outsider's View from Inside the Fashion Industry: Amy Odell: 9781476749754: Amazon.com: Books
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