With an Instagram feed that has twice as many followers as her TikTok account, influencer Matilda Djerf’s style seems to evoke a bygone millennial era.
Instead of choreographed dances or lip syncing, her content consists mostly of curated photos in a neutral palette. Images of her walking her dog through a field or lounging in the shade of a tree in a sundress showcase her idyllic Scandinavian lifestyle. But the 26-year-old is still a Gen-Z trendsetter…especially when it comes to hair.
Her decision to adopt her signature voluminous, curly blowout with 70s-style face-framing bangs came years before celebrities like Emily Ratajkowski or Kendall Jenner were appearing on red carpets with curtain bangs en masse. Since then, the hashtag #matildadjerfhair has organically earned a total of 160 million views on TikTok after going viral in 2021. Now, Djerf is parlaying her power over beauty trends into her own hair care venture.
Djerf Avenue Beauty debuts on Mar. 27 with two styling products, a gel and mist that retail for $27 and $22, developed to create the founder’s namesake look. The line will be unveiled at a physical pop-up in New York’s Soho neighbourhood on Greene St., and will be sold there exclusively for three hours before being available for purchase online.
“Bangs weren’t really a thing back then when I cut them [in 2017], but I had seen all these archive photos on Pinterest of people with bangs,” the Swedish influencer, who sports a Farrah Fawcett-inspired do, told The Business of Beauty. “I didn’t know that it would eventually become a trend.”
Hair care is the latest addition to Djerf’s burgeoning lifestyle brand that began with her four-year-old fashion and homeware label Djerf Avenue, which has attracted Sofia Richie and Glossier as partners. The hair styling products are the start of a larger hair care line that will span products like shampoo that are currently in their testing phase. She noted that the beauty arm of her business is specially called “beauty” rather than “hair care” to “leave more room to explore” other categories.
“Everybody says it’s a lifestyle brand and we want to find a sexier name instead of lifestyle. We haven’t been able to find that yet,” said Djerf.
Selling the Swedish Dream
With higher margins on beauty, the brand is aiming to keep pricing in the “mid-segment,” said Rasmus Johansson, Djerf’s partner who co-founded the brand with her. The goal is to reach both existing fashion customers and a wider range of new shoppers with the accessible price points.
Djerf Avenue Beauty’s New York-centred launch is meant to reflect the importance of her US customers, who drove 35 percent of the brand’s $35 million in revenue in 2022 and 50 percent in 2023 for a 32 percent increase in the US over that time period. Though the company operates a US subsidiary and warehouse, it is decidedly Swedish: The products are produced in Sweden and 90 percent of it remains owned by Djerf and Johansson (the remaining 10 percent is owned by a mix of local investors including Pernilla Nyrensten, founder of Swedish outdoor clothing brand RevolutionRace).
“US customers are so fun. It’s always so fun to meet them. They’re always so chatty, so welcoming, so warm,” said Djerf, who always attends her US pop-ups in person. She is also planning to open a permanent physical store in New York by 2025.
“We have tried the pop-ups and we know that people are showing up and purchasing,” said Johansson.
While Djerf’s follower count (3 million Instagram and 1.5 million TikTok followers) may be dwarfed by mega influencers like Addison Rae or Charli D’Amelio, her commitment to growing a sustainable beauty business seems to be focused on having control rather than licensing out her name. Beyond that, both Rae and the D’Amelios’ makeup ventures have already come and gone in the span of three years. In Djerf’s case, she is trying to prove that aspiration can still sell. Even without tens of millions of followers, her aesthetic has taken on a life of its own on TikTok, inspiring a wave of user-generated trend content with advice on how to copy her hairstyle and fashion.
“For us, it’s about growing this company in a healthy way. If you want a healthy company, you also need patience and you need to be able to take the time it needs,” she said.
As for her own hair, Djerf is not interested in starting any new trends soon. “I’ve found home in my hair now. I’m stuck with this,” she said. “Maybe in the future, fast forward a year and I’ll sit here with black hair or something, but I don’t think so.”
