Georgette Pollock-Johnston styling model Atlanta Applin. Photo / Supplied
Georgette Pollock-Johnston styling model Atlanta Applin. Photo / Supplied
Georgette Pollock-Johnston used to style popstar Rita Ora in New York. But lately she has become famous on TikTok for a very different reason.
Last month, a DIY fix-it job on her boyfriend’s car tyre ended up not only going viral, but generating headlines around the globe.
In the last week, her TikTok views were sitting at a whopping 6.2 million, but the 28-year-old insists she is focused on her day job in fashion and not influencing.
“Believe it or not, it all started on my way to style a photoshoot … I’d borrowed my boyfriend’s SUV because I had so many clothes to take with me and when I pulled up to the location I misjudged where the kerb was and shuddered at the sound of metal on concrete ... I definitely almost cried,” Pollock-Johnston tells Spy.
On her way home from the shoot she called her “wheel guy”, as she admits -”shock horror” - it wasn’t her first kerbed wheel.
As he couldn’t fix it for two weeks, she decided to take it upon herself to use an old trick her mother Meegan taught her. She purchased some black nail polish to paint the rims while waiting for the wheel to be repaired.
One of Pollock-Johnston’s friends does hilarious DIY TikTok’s.
“So, I thought it would be funny to film myself painting the rim with black nail polish to help other serial kerbers out there. I did a quick voiceover and clicked “post” then went back to work,” she says.
A few hours later she had 650k views and so many angry comments from people absolutely appalled that she would do such a thing to her boyfriend’s car.
“I couldn’t believe how many people were so invested in the narrative of the video,” she says.
A few days later she had hit more than 2 million views and woke up to friends in New York asking if she’d seen the article about her TikTok in the Daily Mail. Other news agencies followed the story and the result is now more than 6 million views and growing.
There are a few quirks and ironies to this story.
Of course, she told boyfriend Raj, whom she says now calls her “The Kerber.”
The fashionista who, on her mother’s side, comes from a famous line of fabric merchants, has a whole new following of “petrol heads”. Her father is Rally NZ Chairman Peter Johnston.
So, is the talented stylist, who as well as Ora, worked with J. Crew, Gucci and Elle Magazine in NY - going into fulltime influencing?
“Although I’ve made a couple more follow-up videos explaining the whole situation to my new petrol-head viewers, no, I am using the platform as I always have for my styling and my studio and event space, Studio Cassini in Newmarket.”
A bit like TikTok, her studio is a blank canvas she transforms into whatever she or her clients dream up for photo shoots or parties. The studio has had everything from hen’s dos, and pamper sessions to her favourite, a Versace-themed birthday party.
Ora was also impressed with Pollock Johnston’s last-minute sewing DIY skills on her outfit before the Met Gala. Will she work with the popstar again when she is next in town with her husband Taika Waititi?
