In the build up to this year’s New York Fashion Week, the phrase “TikToker” had become something of a taboo. The thought of selfie sticks protruding onto runways had spurred a collective pearl clutch from the industry’s old guard. For his first trip to the city’s week of fashion festivities, Mark Boutilier, who was recently dubbed a leader of “the young men’s style council of TikTok” by the New York Times, opted to take a more subdued approach to content creation, rather than chase the limelight.
Mark gained momentum on Tiktok during the pandemic from his dry-witted videos critiquing outfits of his peers he found on the For You Page. Like most things that begin as a joke, it slowly blossomed into a career. When talking to Mark about his TikTok fame, he humbly chalks it all up to timing, citing the oversaturation of people making popular content on the app.
Mark doesn’t look like your typical Gen Z influencer, he doesn’t have a dangly earring or bouffant hair. He’s usually walking around in a brandless vintage outfit, and even if you see him wearing designer, there’s a good chance he found it on a whim while shopping at a consignment or thrift store where he grew up, in a suburb outside of Atlanta. He won’t spend money on some crazy designer pieces when he can buy his favorite, wearable pieces at a reasonable price. When he does spend money on designer pieces, it’s because he cares and wants something because it’s special and he typically has to save his money for months before and after. His favorite, most-worn article of clothing is a pair of old, wide-leg North Face pants. He couldn’t tell you anything about them, but he tends to wear them 4 days in a week and he only paid $25 for them.
While most of TikTok’s popular creators spent their evenings during fashion week at parties with lines down the block, Mark decided to conduct his own sociological research, creating his own list of dos and don’ts for young influencers.
“I’ve learned that it's important to just be very real about yourself, like very organic,” he explained. “I don’t try to push myself to some higher degree than what I am”.
This comment was an astute observation, not so much of others, but of Mark himself, “I feel like a lot of the time I give off the impression that I’m egotistical or elitist or like whatever, and I’m super not. I’m just a dude with bullshit opinions and if you agree with them cool, but if you don’t, you don’t.”
It’s Mark’s down-to-earth honesty that made him a popular creator. While his initial content was mostly deadpan trolling, he quickly learned that with great power comes great responsibility.
“I look back at (the trolling) and at times I definitely went overboard,” he admits. “I probably should have chilled out...it got to a point where people really care about the things I’m saying and react in ways to the things I’m saying, so I can’t just be a dickhead all the time. I have to strategically be a dickhead and teach people lessons and you know be a good samaritan”.
Mark also likes to interact with his Gen Z disciples through Discord and he tries to respond or reach out as many as he can. As his community has grown, it’s often the non-fashion-related conversations that have become the most meaningful.
He described an interaction he had with a fan, “...I guess he was having trouble his first week of school and he tagged me in some fit video like ‘I just failed a test but Mark tell me if you like this fit’, and I just went and DMed him like ‘you’re good, I kinda fucked myself in the beginning of college, it’s not really a big deal’”. He doesn’t necessarily want to be a “suggestion machine”, with people constantly messaging him for his recommendations, as he has come to appreciate the more human interactions like this.
After the Times article was published in early July, Mark was approached by a brand he had previously trolled. The brand offered a typically awful deal that equated to tons of content being made in exchange for little pay. Mark was blown away by the situation as a whole and while a feature in the paper of record can certainly yield financial opportunities, the breakthrough was also a moment of sentimentality. He recalled his mom buying as many copies of the Styles edition as she could. He, of course, also picked one up for himself, at the grocery store next door to his part-time retail day job just before clocking in for a shift.
Outside of “Mark Boutilier the TikToker” there is a very real human being behind the content. When asked about his style, Mark explained the various phases he has gone through, like when he had a stint as an employee at Banana Republic and dressed like a 40 year old man — logically this was followed by a hypebeast phase.
When morphing his style over the years, Mark has taken in his inspiration through osmosis, often without even realizing it. He much prefers this progression to more traditional influences like fashion magazines, which might have been the bible to content creators of yesteryear. When asked what advice he would give to a guy trying to figure out their own style, Mark suggests being curious. “...just start looking at tags, start looking things up if you don’t know what it is, just be curious and see what you can pick up on.. I don’t know, you see a lot and if you’re actually absorbing it, it’s a good way to start”.
He was also a fan of many men’s fashion Youtubers growing up like Magnus Ronning, Owen Hyatt, and Jacob Keller who have all followed similar paths from content creators to designers of their own brands. Mark is now lucky to call some of them his peers, with some people reaching out to give him advice with his own Youtube channel. While Mark is not ready yet to take his leap into starting a brand, he’d like to drop some of his own merch, just to gauge the interest from his followers.
Mark’s other plans for the future are that he has none. He explained that he’s open to anything, “If somebody hits me up and is like ‘be a model’, I’ll be like well I’m 5’9, and I don’t really know how to do that, but like sure I’m down. If somebody wants me to be a stylist, sometimes I can’t put on a good fit to save my life, but I’ll try.”
