“In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes,” Andy Warhol once famously said, but even he probably didn’t realise just how right he’d end up being.
Across social media, viral videos send people’s stars into the stratosphere, before they come crashing back down to earth even faster than they ascended – like, where exactly is that yodelling kid or those girlies who didn’t know how to flush a toilet?
Right now, it’s the turn of Hailey Welch, or as you might better know her, the ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl, to have her quarter-hour in the spotlight. The Tennessee native went viral as she was interviewed in the street for online channel Tim & Dee TV about a series of sexual topics, including the best sex position.
The last question, which asked one thing that makes men go absolutely wild in bed, saw Welch answer “Oh, you gotta give them the HAWK TUAH and spit on that thang,” and now, it’s plastered up and down the feed and all over your FYP.
Having already proved herself a smart cookie with that answer, our sex positive, newly-crowned queen of the summer is now capitalising on her newfound fame with a line of official merch. Teaming up with family-run Tennessee-based company Fathead Threads, Welch’s collection is made up of a series of trucker hats bearing her catchphrase, with caps selling for $32, or just over $40 for a signed version.
Welch’s move comes after her video spawned a stream of knock-off merch items, including tees, sweats, hoodies, keyrings, door hangers, Pokemon style cards, stickers, and greetings cards: type ‘Hawk Tuah’ into Etsy and the listings sprawl into the thousands. Even Tim & Dee are peddling Hawk Tuah caps and tees of their own, but, of course, Welch isn’t seeing any of those profits.
But will Welch only get her 15 minutes of fame? Right now, rumours are swirling that she’s signed up with a Hollywood agent, but whether that’s true or not, this new venture suggests a foray into fashion could be on the cards. Welch is just a little too late to star in Marc Jacobs’ actually pretty genius campaign which saw the designer enlist people seen in viral videos across the last couple of years to slip into his collection.
In the original ‘Hawk Tuah’ video, she’s seen wearing a Prada triangle necklace around her throat: could an appearance on Mrs P’s front row next season be on the cards? Stranger things have happened: remember that time she invited literal digital avatar Lil Miquela to her show? Exactly.
Get your hands on Hawk Tuah merch straight from the official source here.
