CasseyCassey Ho was getting her roots dyed when she started receiving hundreds of ecstatic messages. In a video clip promoting her song “Fortnight,” Taylor Swift was shown wearing the Pirouette Skort, a flouncy, tutu-style skirt with built-in shorts underneath, that Ho had designed for her athleisure brand Popflex. She knew immediately this exposure — one of the world’s biggest pop stars, flaunting Ho’s design — would be life-changing.
“I am just numb. I can’t even scream, I can’t even speak,” she recalls of the moment she realized what was happening. “I am just dead.” Even though it appeared for literally one second in Swift’s video, that brief moment caused the entire inventory of thousands of skorts to be snapped up within an hour, and a week later, over 10,000 customers had placed preorders for the product (to date, Popflex has sold over 50,000 Pirouette Skorts in total).
Then came the dupes.
The Popflex skort caught the attention of a more ominous group: imitators, or more precisely, companies churning out look-alikes of popular clothing items. Within weeks, Pirouette Skort copies — mesh ruffles, drawstring waistband, pastel colors and all — had flooded the web. More than a year later, they haven’t stopped. And there is not much Ho, who built a fitness empire around her popular YouTube channel, can do about it, even as someone with a large and recognizable platform.
