- Taylor Swift recently posted a video showing her wearing a $60 Popflex sports skort.
- Cassey Ho, an influencer and skort designer, told Business Insider it was a dream come true.
- Ho said Swifties have since cleared existing inventory and 7,000 skorts have been pre-ordered.
When Taylor Swift uploaded a YouTube Shorts video to promote her new album on April 19, Blogilates founder Cassey Ho was having her roots touched up at a hair salon.
“I was so ugly with my hair in the bowl and a towel on my head, but my husband, Sam, kept calling. He was like, ‘You need to check your messages,'” she said. she told Business Insider.
She did, and she quickly discovered that Swift’s video featured a clip of the musician playing pickleball while wearing Ho’s $60 Popflex Pirouette skort.
“I wish I had screamed or jumped. I was numb,” she said. “That was my reaction. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think. Non-functional.”
The Taylor effect: athleisure version
Ho — a fitness influencer and entrepreneur — said she was equally shocked when fans alerted her that Swift had also apparently referenced the Popflex skirt in a track from “The Tortured Poets Department.”
“Short lilac skirt, the one that fits me like skin,” Swift sings in “imgonnagetyouback.”
Although Ho couldn’t confirm whether Swift was specifically referring to her design, the lyrics only made the experience more exciting for her and her employees.
“Our whole team lived Taylor’s dream from Friday until this week. It was so cool,” Ho said.
Swifties can’t get enough of the skort either. According to Ho, his brand’s inventory of the Digital Lilac shade Swift was wearing was wiped out within minutes. She said Popflex has now sold 7,000 pre-order skorts.
“The Taylor Effect is unlike anything else in the world. It’s insane,” Ho said. “We had our biggest sales day of the year and our second biggest sales day of all This is also the first time we’re taking pre-orders. We don’t normally do that, but people really want the original.”
An invisible rope between Ho and Swift
Early in Ho’s career — when she was posting videos of herself doing exercises on YouTube — Swift’s songs were often playing in the background.
These “Pop Pilates” routines, as Ho dubbed them, catapulted her to internet stardom, and Swift took notice.
In 2014, Ho received a direct message from Swift’s team inviting her and her sister to a secret session or private listening party where Swift showed fans her upcoming album “1989 “.
“We were standing there, nervously, and Taylor came out with her red lips, short hair, a crop top and a pleated skirt,” she recalls. “Then she came up to our little group and said, ‘Cassey, I love watching your videos.’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’
Swift then shared a post about performing one of Ho’s workout routines on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in 2019.
“People assume I must have sent her the skort, but absolutely not,” Ho told BI. “I have no contact with Taylor. I don’t know his address, nothing.”
But given their connected history, Ho thinks Swift may have seen one of her promotional videos for the skort.
“I think she was hiding Tay,” she said.
The big picture
While Ho is thrilled that Swift is wearing her skort from a business owner and Swiftie perspective, she’s also grateful for another reason.
Since releasing the Pirouette skirt nearly three years ago, Ho said she has dealt with many online retailers copying her design and selling cheaper versions.
“It’s happened twice on Shein and a million times on Amazon,” Ho said. She called Shein a blog post from July 2023 after noticing the fast fashion retailer was selling a similar skort, which was no longer available on the site as of Friday.
Ho also said she’s seen new knockoffs popping up now that Swift has been seen wearing the original.
“I’ve already seen sites use my videos and Taylor’s videos in ads on TikTok, which redirect to sketchy sites,” she said, adding that she is working to have the listings removed.
But in the meantime, she says, Swift wearing the original feels like the “ultimate karma” against the stores that stole her work — something Swift herself is deeply familiar with.
“She is the ultimate inspiration for taking control of a bad situation,” Ho said.
But even as knockoff Popflex skorts appear online, Ho and her team are celebrating.
In addition to a dinner she would like to host in the future, Ho told BI she is also handing out bonuses of $4,190 to each of her employees – a figure she chose by taking the date to which Swift published her video on April 19, and multiplying it. by 1,000, the number of times she “felt so lucky last weekend.”
“I don’t know what you call it. Maybe an invisible rope, I guess,” Ho said of his journey with Swift. “But these last few days have been a beautiful dream. I’m so grateful.”
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