121 MINUTES WITH ...Allegra Pinkowitz

The Brandy Melville employee and TikToker has become the most popular girl in Soho.

- BY MADELINE LEUNG COLEMAN

WHENEVER Allegra Pinkowitz is working a shift at the Brandy Melville store in Soho, rehanging rows of low-slung sweats, pointelle camis, and caps that say NANTUCKET, she feels the stares beaming in on her. Little groups of younger girls—she says that “they're usually in eighth grade, maybe freshmen”—stop short at the sight of her and start whispering. “I try to smile—like, ‘I don’t bite!’” she tells me on a recent Wednesday afternoon, gripping a Celsius at a Joe & the Juice in Soho. It used to rattle her. But now Pinkowitz understands that all these strangers want is a photo with her, or a compliment on their outfit, or even just to come up and confirm what they and their friends all know: “Are you that girl from TikTok?”

Pinkowitz is 17. She just finished her junior year. She lives in Brooklyn with her mom, a fraternal twin she says she’s not close with (because “he’s a boy”), and a little sister who wants to use her makeup. She likes hanging out at a friend’s house and making TikToks of herself dancing and lip-syncing in the subway station on her way to school—which is what made her famous with middle-school girls. Her followers like her style (tiny shorts, tank tops, baby-doll dresses, and a gold A-initial necklace), the fact that she works at one of their favorite stores, and, more broadly, that she lives in the city. “A lot of the comments are like, ‘Oh my God, you live in New York,” says Pinkowitz. “It doesn’t really have anything to do with what I am doing. It has to do with where I am doing it.” Now she posts a video like that nearly every day, often with a Stanley tumbler or a huge Starbucks drink in her hand. “A lot of people from other states follow her because they kind of associate her with New York,” says Eleanor Broadman, a 14-year-old who lives in Manhattan. “They're like, ‘Oh, New York is all trains and Starbucks.’ And I think that’s really cool.”