When you open up social media, it won't take much scrolling to find an influencer. And depending on how finely tuned your algorithm is, you might even find a local one. A junior at the University of Arkansas has leveraged a TikTok following of more than 200,000 into an opportunity to share her love of clothing, faith and even her honors thesis. Ozarks at Large's Brenda Vasquez has more.
Clothing is a freedom of expression — but how can we break barriers for the minority struggling to find fashion made for them? Lily Davis is a junior studying apparel merchandising and product development, and she is breaking barriers through her thesis and her platform.
Davis began posting on TikTok her freshman year and has garnered over 200,000 followers. Davis says the video that blew up was amusing.
“This is actually really funny and honestly embarrassing, but I posted this video that was like what my ex-boyfriend got me for Valentine's Day, and I gained like 20,000 followers from that. And after that, I was like, OK, I'm just gonna roll with it. And it's like continued to grow ever since.”
Davis wasn't sure what to expect with her platform, and she quickly realized.
“It’s a full-time job. You can't just post something. The taxes that go along with it — I did not realize how complicated taxes were, and I've had to open an LLC, so I have to keep track of business stuff for that. It fully becomes a full-time job when you're doing all of that. Having an agency has helped — they read contracts and they handle all of the not-fun stuff — but you have deadlines you have to meet with filming and editing, and then you also have to post things on your platform every day. They say to post three times a day, but it's like, well, I have class. It's a lot. I think people just forget how much work it is and they forget all of the thought that goes into it. And the fact that once something is on the internet, it's on the internet. So that's why I'm a little more selective about what I post. I kind of just post fashion because that's my niche and that's what I feel comfortable with.”
Like every other college student, Davis wasn't sure what she wanted to study. She juggled between health and education until her parents asked: what do you like to do?
“Well, I like to shop. And they're like, ‘OK, well then do fashion.’”
Davis says there is more to her major than people think.
“It is more than shopping, that's for sure. There's two sides of it — merchandising and product development — and there's a lot that goes into it. There's math, there's science. You genuinely wouldn't be wearing clothes right now if we weren't a thing.”
On top of doing social media and working for the Dillard's Collective program, Davis is working on her honors thesis. The focus is on professional wear, specifically for women living flat-chested after undergoing double mastectomy surgery. Davis discovered this topic through one of her classes.
“My honors mentor, Dr. Laurie Apple, talked about it in one of my classes and no one was really paying attention, but I was listening. I'm like, wait, this is really awesome what you're doing. So when Dr. Apple shared the project with me, I emailed her and I was like, I want in. I want to do this for my thesis.”
The surgery is often related to a woman's history or experience with breast cancer. Some women have a double mastectomy after receiving treatment for cancer. Others have the surgery as a preventive measure. Davis says being able to advocate for a minority in our society means a lot to her.
“I just feel really connected to the women that I'm working with. And I find so much joy completing the project. Not any part of it feels like a school project that I have to do. It's truly so meaningful to me and brings me so much happiness.”
She says society has set standards of what it means to look like a woman, and for the women who have had the surgery, they can feel out of place.
“Just hearing how self-conscious they felt about their body, I wanted to do something to help them. Any step that I can take in bridging this gap in the apparel industry will make me so happy. If my two garment designs work for them and they can go into the workplace and have two new tops that they feel so confident in, that is my ultimate goal.
On top of navigating college life and her thesis, Davis has had to find an escape from the chaos of it all.
“Honestly, I really lean on my faith when things get hard. I get really overwhelmed sometimes with everything on my plate. But I sometimes check myself and I'm like, this is such a blessing — to have the opportunity to share my life on social media, reach people through designing fashion for them. All the opportunities I have — I am so blessed to be so busy. And that's kind of what I remind myself. It's like an attitude check. If I'm feeling down or negative about something, how can I turn it positive? Because I'm living such a good life, so full of blessing — what right do I have to be upset or sad or anxious?”
A pitfall of being an influential person online is a lack of boundaries with your audience. Davis says that's something she tries to think about.
“The internet doesn't need to know everything about my life, and I think it can become dangerous when it does — because where do you draw the boundary line? And if you suddenly want to revert back, a lot of your audience is going to be mad. We've seen that with other influencers before when something big happens and they take a step back — people get angry. So I never want my followers to expect a certain thing from me. But I also want them to see my life. So I kind of balance that.”
That balance, on top of school and an internship, is something Davis will continue to get better at over time.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
