When Taylor Swift uploaded a YouTube Shorts video to promote her new album on April 19, Blogilates founder Cassey Ho was getting her roots touched up at a hair salon.
“I was so ugly with my hair in the bowl and a towel over my head, but my husband, Sam, kept calling. He was like, ‘You need to check your messages,'” she told Business Insider.
So she did, and she quickly discovered that Swift’s video featured a clip of the musician playing pickleball while wearing the $60 Pirouette Skort from Ho’s brand Popflex.
“I wish I had screamed or jumped. I was numb,” she said. “That was my reaction. Couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Nonfunctional.”
Ho — a fitness influencer and entrepreneur — said she was equally shocked when fans alerted her that Swift had also seemingly referenced the Popflex skirt in a track on “The Tortured Poets Department.”
“Lilac short skirt, the one that fits me like skin,” Swift sings in “imgonnagetyouback.”
While Ho can’t confirm whether Swift was specifically referencing her design, the lyric has only made the experience more exciting for herself and her employees.
“Our entire team has just been living in this Taylor dream from Friday into this week. It’s just been so cool,” Ho said.
A post shared by Cassey Ho (@blogilates)
Swifties can’t get enough of the skort, either. According to Ho, her brand’s inventory of the Digital Lilac shade Swift wore was wiped out in minutes. She said Popflex has now sold 7,000 of the skorts in preorders.
“The Taylor Effect is like nothing else in the entire world. It’s insane,” Ho said. “We had our biggest sales day of the year and our second biggest sales day ever. This is also the first time we’ve taken preorders. We normally don’t do that, but people really want the original.”
In the early days of Ho’s career — when she posted videos of herself doing exercise routines on YouTube — Swift’s songs often played in the background.
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Those “Pop Pilates” routines, as Ho dubbed them, skyrocketed her into internet stardom, and Swift took notice.
In 2014, Ho received a direct message from Swift’s team inviting her and her sister to a Secret Session, or a private listening party where Swift showed fans her then-upcoming album “1989.”
“We were just nervously there, and Taylor walked out with her red lips, short hair, a crop top, and a pleated skirt,” she recalled. “Then, she walked up to our little group and said, ‘Cassey, I love watching your videos.’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?'”
Swift then shared a message about doing one of Ho’s workout routines on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in 2019.
Omg Taylor! You did!??? Ahhhhh!!! I’m legit dying right now! Your music has helped me get through so much. Thank you for doing the challenge!!! I hope your abs are sore! 💪💪💪
“People assume I must have sent the skort to her, but absolutely not,” Ho told BI. “I have no contact with Taylor. I don’t know her address, nothing.”
But given their connected history, Ho thinks Swift may have seen one of her promotional videos for the skort.
“I think she was Tay-lurking,” she said.
While Ho is ecstatic about Swift wearing her skort design from the perspective of a business owner and Swiftie, she’s also grateful for another reason.
Since releasing the Pirouette skirt nearly three years ago, Ho said she has dealt with numerous online retailers copying her design and selling cheaper versions.
“It’s happened two times on Shein and a million times on Amazon,” Ho said. She called out Shein in a July 2023 blog post after noticing that the fast-fashion retailer was selling a similar skort, which was no longer available on the site as of Friday.
Ho also said she’s seen new knockoffs popping up now that Swift has been seen wearing the original.
“I’ve already seen sites using my videos and Taylor’s video in ads on TikTok, which direct to sketchy sites,” she said, adding that she’s working to get those listings removed.
But in the meantime, she said, Swift wearing the original feels like the “ultimate karma” against shops that have stolen her work — something Swift herself is deeply familiar with.
“She is the ultimate inspiration for taking control of a bad situation,” Ho said.
A post shared by Cassey Ho (@blogilates)
But even as knockoff Popflex skorts appear online, Ho and her team are celebrating.
In addition to a dinner party she’d like to host in the future, Ho told BI that she’s also distributing $4,190 bonuses to each of her employees — a number she picked by taking the date Swift posted her video, April 19, and multiplying it by 1,000, or the number of times she’s “felt so lucky over this past weekend.”
“I don’t know what you call this. Maybe an invisible string, I guess,” Ho said of her journey with Swift. “But the past few days have been a beautiful dream. I’m just so grateful.”
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