Jaclyn Smith, or as the internet knows her, lollfashiondump, is begging TikTok to realise she’s over 18. The freshed-faced fashion influencer is actually 22, and on her fourth TikTok account, “They banned me for like, age restriction things, and then they’d be like ‘oh, send your ID,’ and I’d send my ID, and they were like, ‘this is fraudulent ID, so'”. She’s been posting on the platform for about three years now, but hadn’t been able to substantially pass the quarter million mark on any of her accounts. That is, until four or so months ago, when she suddenly started gaining tens, and then hundreds of thousands of followers.
Drawn in by her figure-eight glasses and the hint of a Long Island accent, I started following her back in the summer, when she was hurtling towards one million TikTok followers. I was initially captivated, as many were, by her clothes, but stuck around because I simply couldn’t look away.
This growth spurt of sorts has not come without a few growing pains; Jaclyn says there’s moments where new followers find an outfit or an interest of hers to come out of left field, but the OG girls know that’s just Jaclyn– “I do feel like there’s a part of me that only a few people recognise on the internet,”. When she peppers in personal details– like mentioning her boyfriend of six years– her comments light up with demands to know more.
Jaclyn is pretty up-front about her online presence; she makes get ready with me videos because she likes them, yes, but also because they do well with her audience; even though she’s always been a fashion girl, she has adjusted her style of videos to cater better towards her newer audience, who followed her much later. This hasn’t been that much of a shift, however– Jaclyn’s content has always been more about her fashion than herself: “to be honest, I don’t like, talk a lot about my personal life.”
Her approach to clothes is reflected in her chatty, slightly scatterbrained videos, soundtracked by the plastic-on-plastic sound of her two-inch long acrylic nails, that she also does herself.
The nails started during COVID– after she found herself “clinging onto that last set of nail salon nails,” Jaclyn began to teach herself how to do her own nails. Now, despite her impressive artistry, she does mainly her own sets, “well, I don’t have a licence or anything”. Her nail videos are now nearly as popular as her fit checks, even gaining the stamp of approval from controversial (but undoubtedly famous) influencer James Charles.
It’s hard to put a name to Jaclyn’s personal style, but you’ll know it when you see it; Her comments oscillate between comparisons to Chappell Roan and beloved children’s fashion icon Fancy Nancy – the comparison to the former seems to be mostly based on “that we’re both just pale with curly hair,” but even Jaclyn’s mom sees a bit of the resemblance. “I don’t understand it that much but I’m okay with it”.
Her personal style icons? “Definitely Helena [Bonham] Carter, Betsey Johnson, and Vivienne Westwood, for sure.” Despite clear references to the aforementioned sartorial legends in her own outfits, the lollfashiondump aesthetic is something rare, and her followers seem to think so, too; videos following a step by step guide to dressing like lollfashiondump that Jaclyn created have garnered tens of thousands of likes on TikTok.
We talked fashion grails “there’s this one acne studios popcorn necklace that I am gonna buy one day,” TikTok fashion archetypes – while office siren and old money prep got the lollfashiondump stamp of approval, Jaclyn finds the clean girl aesthetic, perhaps unsurprisingly, a bit copy and paste: “they look like they smell so good, though!”, and what the next big thing will be– surprise, it’s jeggings!
Based in Long Island, Jaclyn’s world doesn’t begin and end with fashion; she’s in the middle of getting her master’s degree, and has hopes to teach high school English – the book she reaches for the most? “The Bell Jar, definitely”. She is conscious that she doesn’t share that much of her personal life on the internet, but excitedly just got her first “big girl job,” which she says has been a bit of a challenge dressing for, but has helped her appreciate the power of business casual.
Whether it’s a career in secondary education or jeggings and sneaker wedges, the future looks bright for Jaclyn. It’s very easy to preach individuality, but hard to live it; Jaclyn hopes that lollfashiondump will inspire other fashion enthusiasts to take some risks – “just start with the one piece you’re more worried about, and build up the confidence”– because the reward is great.
Images via Jaclyn Smith