By Claire Leibowitz, Marketing and Outreach
The @gwu.fitcheck account spread around campus over the last couple of weeks, stirring up excitement as students have seen themselves featured. The videos contain short clips of students in unique outfits that reflect the GW student fashion culture.
The account was created around Monday, September 20th by two individuals who prefer to remain anonymous in order to keep the focus of the account on fashion and confidence. They are people with fashion interests but no concrete affiliations to classes or clubs around clothing and design.
“I keep up with current trends and designers. I like Met Gala fashion, too. We’re also pretty good Depop hunters,” one of the owners mentioned.
The two enjoy taking the videos, but their social media experience has been centered around their private Instagram accounts. To advertise content, the two let their videos run their course on the Tik Tok “For You Page” and through friends sending videos to each other. The owners of the account classify the account as community-building: a way for people in the same classes, clubs or friend groups to reach out to each other and point out something cool.
I was fortunate enough to contact and sit down with the account owners and hear their intentions, experiences and future plans.
Q: What was your inspiration for starting the account?
A: It all started with a conversation in the [Science and Engineering Hall], talking about the account Boston University has and the New York street style photographer in Brooklyn who posts people, and we were like “our school has the same vibe as the other schools that do it, we have people who take time to pick out what they’re wearing and what makes them feel confident. We could do this and celebrate what everyone’s putting their time into.” We thought: if everyone feels confident and looks good, why not see if they want some fun with it?
Q: What are your criteria for a featured outfit?
A: We look to see if it’s unique. It doesn’t have to be cute necessarily, but whether it’s cool or out there. That’s what we look for. It’s not a featured outfit, it’s what people are wearing at GW, and we want to get a good scope of what the community is wearing. We try to get a wide variety of features.
Q: What is your experience with consent for the clips?
A: In the beginning, we wanted to get more candids. We weren’t sure where it was going, so we didn’t want to ask people. At first, people who recognized themselves in the videos would comment “that’s me that’s so cool!” but other people would be like “oh make sure you’re asking.” Now, we go up and ask people and say “hey, we run this, are you okay with being in it?” At the end of the day, the most important thing is if others are comfortable with being online. We also want to keep it on the down-low, though. We sometimes show them the account to give examples of what we have done. Sometimes, people know our identities, but we never have formal introductions. It’s a quick interaction, we don’t want to impede on anyone’s day.
Q: What does an interaction look like?
A: We know in our college days, everyone is rushing somewhere, everyone is rushing to get things done. It’s a 20-second ordeal, we give the lowdown, explain why we approach them and do it.
Q: When you film someone, are you walking to class, or do you wait in a certain spot to seek people out?
A: We usually see these outfits walking to class. We sometimes do some walkarounds. We do a lot separately. We send it to each other and say “this is really cool.” There’s only so much of campus we cover together, and only so much time where we’re both free, so it’s who we see in a day. We want it to be all about what’s going on at GW.
Q: What are the featured students’ reactions?
A: In the beginning, they were kind of confused, but they thought it was fun or funny. Recently, we’ve noticed people have been like “Oh My God, I’ve been waiting to get featured!” or “Oh I follow you! I’ve seen your videos!” which is overall really nice.
Q: What’s your expectation for the account?
A: We don’t have any. Our first video got 20 likes. For our second video, we decided we’d be happy with 40. We were so excited when it got 44. So our initial expectation, I guess, was 44 likes. Overnight, though, we got up to 400 likes, and now we’re in the thousands with around 60k views on that video. Now, we’re just seeing what happens. It’s exciting. It’s a nice break from the day. We want to keep it going to see what we can do. We want to see the cool outfits we can find. A lot of people say, when we approach them, “that made my day!” Our expectation is to call out a good outfit.
Q: What are your hopes for the account?
A: We want to get people excited about seeing themselves and their friends. We don’t have big goals and dreams. We have some fun videos lined up. I’m excited to prolong this throughout the semester and year to see how outfits change through the seasons and how trends rise and fall at GW. We also want to see if there are some GW-specific trends. It has only been a week, though, so we’ll see. But now that we’ve started the account, I feel like I notice outfits more and appreciate style more, so I’m excited for more of that.
Q: What are your biggest challenges?
A: We don’t want to get worried about looking at likes and views. If a video doesn’t do as well as the others, we notice it. “Oh, it’s not doing as well as the other one; was it the song? What was it?” We also get worried we don’t have enough clips for a video. Also, we don’t want to delete comments. People are usually resoundingly good, but there are somewhere we wonder if they should be deleted. People comment something like “this isn’t fashion” or “those outfits aren’t cute.” We think they’re cute, and they represent GW. This isn’t for you. If you don’t have something nice or constructive to comment, then don’t comment.
Q: What is one thing you are most looking forward to?
A: I’m looking forward to seeing the great outfits across GW. Hopefully, we continue to see different outfits and meet some different people.
Sitting in Kogan, they had actually seen–and waved–to some students they had filmed earlier in the day, emphasizing the community-building aspect the account aims to achieve.
In order to get your feature, remember to feel confident and comfortable! Don’t be something you’re not. The owners want to capture GW culture, so it’s important to reflect what you want and how you feel in your personal style.
The owners have chill expectations for the future of the @gwu.fitcheck account. Followers can continue to expect “[a celebration of] what everyone’s putting their time into.”
