Images and Article from nypost.com.
Fashion may have its newest star, but the world will have to wait a few years until Kaia Aragon finishes school — elementary school, that is.
Nine-year-old Kaia Aragon has gone viral on TikTok for her stunning original fashion creations. Her mom, Tonya, boasts a TikTok account of her daughter’s original designs, @middle.mom, with 582.9K followers and 22.6M likes. Among those fans? Famous adult fashion icons, including Vera Wang, who sent the young talent a handwritten note.
Wang commented on one of Tonya’s TikTok videos and later sent Kaia a handwritten note, along with a purple backpack. “So excited to see you are already pursuing your dream of becoming a fashion designer! Congratulations and all good luck,” Wang signed the note.
Kaia told The Post she’s been designing “for a while now,” and just started sewing in November 2021. Her first project was a cat bed. But she quickly escalated to completing her own outfits.
“I like that depending on what you’re wearing it can make you feel confident and brave,” the youngster from Colorado told The Post.
Kaia’s career began last Christmas when she was gifted a dress form. Right away, she grabbed a piece of scrap fabric, went into her room and pinned it to the form, sewed it together and walked out in her own design about an hour later.
“It kind of blew me away,” Kaia’s mom Tonya said. “I thought the dress form was for decoration. I didn’t realize she was actually going to use it.”
But the talent didn’t come from nowhere. Tonya said her daughter has always had a knack for style.
“Since she was young enough to pick out her own clothes she was always very meticulous about the items she would pick,” the proud mom said. “She would always go over the top with accessories and she would mix and match things that didn’t make sense to me but would make sense after she put it on.”
“And she did not get that from me,” Tonya said, eliciting giggles from Kaia. “That is all unique to Kaia.”
Kaia still creates most of her designs alone, but she has a large team supporting and working with her: The Aragon family has fostered 14 children and still remain “very, very close” with 10 of them. “I count all 10 of them as biological,” Kaia made sure to clarify.
She has dreams of starting her own fashion company with her siblings and friends.
“My friends and my big sister would be the designers because that’s what we wanna do and then my brother said he would do hair for our business,” she explained.
The requests have already come pouring in from friends asking for outfits and strangers putting in orders for wedding and prom dresses. But for now, Kaia still prefers to design for herself.
While Tonya loves to see her daughter’s skills grow, she doesn’t want to lock her daughter into the fashion business anytime soon, she said.
“She does this because it makes her happy, and the minute you turn it into a business it’s something she has to do. She’s only 9, she’s in third grade, she should absolutely have the opportunity to change her mind if this isn’t something she wants to do forever.”
“She’s at the point in her life where she should explore a million other things that she enjoys,” she added.
And while she’s been receiving a lot of encouragement, Kaia isn’t letting it get to her head.
“Right now I’m just doing this for fun,” the little fashionista said.
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