Kylan Darnell can’t walk out of her sorority house without being stopped by fans. She can’t actually walk out of any house without it happening.
Darnell, 21, is the standardbearer for a lucrative new kind of fame. She is a thirdyear student at the University of Alabama, a member of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority and the “Queen of RushTok”, the frenzied corner of TikTok which charts the trials of aspiring sorority girls during their August recruitment, or “rush week” and the campus lives that they go on to lead.
“I love my sorority,” said Darnell. “I’ve definitely met my bridesmaids. And it’s also given me a career.”
Darnell has more than 1.3 million followers on TikTok and makes six figures a year. In fact, she added: “I’ve made six figures in a month.”
Sororities are social organisations, typically allfemale and secretive, on college campuses for which members have to go through a formal recruitment process.
These groups are most entrenched at universities in the south — Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Georgia — and were often established at the same time as the colleges themselves in the 1800s.
They are associated with eliteness and exclusivity, indicators of class, wealth and, historically, whiteness (the University of Alabama de-segregated its sororities only in 2013). Students pay membership fees, as well as costs for living in the houses, which can amount to up to $5,000 (£3,725) per semester. Until very recently their members were well known only to other people at the same university.
Then, in August 2021, RushTok went viral. Polished young women posted videos about what they were wearing to rush week — Hermès bangles, athleisure and florals — and then shared the elation of acceptance and the emotional turmoil of their inevitable rejections. For viewers online, it became a bloodsport with blow-dries.
Today #RushTok has 128.2 million posts on TikTok and 1.5 billion views, and is in what fans call “season five” as if it is a reality TV show, with new “characters” breaking out and old ones returning.
As a result sororities are seeing a surge in applicants and brands are racing to recruit them to sell their products. Sororities have become influencer factories.
Darnell is impossibly charming, bouncy, upbeat and sweet as pie. She also looks like a prom queen. The combination is commercial gold. “The amount of stuff companies send to our sorority house is insane,” she said, speaking between classes. “Boxes and boxes of make-up and hair stuff, giant boxes of Zeta-personalised Poppi [a fizzy drink].”
Rush week’s process involves PNMs (potential new members) attending interviews and parties. After each round, applicants are cut, leading up to “bid day” at the end of the week during which PNMs open an envelope with, they hope, an invitation from a sorority.
Once they are in, there is considerable pressure to uphold the sorority’s culture.
Darnell talks about the “rules”, mainly around conduct, though she is sworn to secrecy on the specifics.
There was always a fascination with the secrecy and glamour of sororities but it has been supercharged by social media. Dance routines filmed outside enormous antebellum sorority houses and featuring chapter members with matching outfits, mountains of blonde hair and sparkling white teeth can now get millions of views.
Lorie Stefanelli has been a “sorority consultant” since 2013. Based in New York, her company Greek Chic coached 13 girls in 2023. This year, they had 40. She is planning to employ at least five more consultants for 2026.
“Girls want to be in a sorority more than ever,” said Stefanelli, who charges between $1,500 and $3,000 to help her clients prepare their outfits, social media and applications, as well as training them on “how to mind their Ps and Qs.
“I say no crying ... firstly because I don’t want them to ruin their make-up,” she said.
“But also if they go in with a sourpuss face it’s going to be a turn-off for the sororities. I instruct my girls to smile and act excited.”
For clothes, it’s lots of pastel, florals, ruffles and pretty sun dresses. “And appropriate,” Stefanelli added. “We don’t want to be showing everyone our goodies. Not too short, not too low.”
Maureen Lehto Brewster, an assistant professor of fashion merchandising at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, said she is “not surprised” that RushTok blew up in 2021, adding: “To see something that was so about hyper-femininity and hyper-consumption, it was this object of cultural fascination, it was shocking.
You can look at it as being in partnership with trad wife content going viral.”
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