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America’s Next Teenage Jewish Fashionista

First Tavi. Now Bebe. Who’s next?

by
Marc Tracy
July 07, 2011
Tavi Gevinson with Anna Wintour last fall.(Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Barneys New York)
Tavi Gevinson with Anna Wintour last fall.(Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Barneys New York)

Today’s New York Times introduces us to Bebe Zeva, an 18-year-old “fashion blogger, journalist, and model.” Her precocious chicness, preternatural sense of self, and being-a-teenage-fashion-blogger cannot help but remind one of Tavi Gevinson, who is all of the above except three years younger and without name-dropping the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek (count me on Team Tavi). Furthermore, when you learn that Bebe Zeva is not her real name—that, specifically, “Bebe” is her pet name and “Zeva” is a corruption of zev, the Hebrew word for “wolf”—you learn that Zeva and Gevinson have, yes, yet another thing in common.

But Gevinson and Zeva have already been discovered. The trick is to buy futures in someone whose value is going to rise. Who will be the next über-hip pre-adult Internet tastemaker? Charting Gevinson, of Oak Park, Illinois, and Zeva, of Miami Beach, Florida, and then performing regression analysis spits out the following results. One of these potentially imaginary people will be the new new thing, soon. Buy now, while their stock is still low!

Zayin Chait, of Metuchen, New Jersey.
Esti Segal, of Sherman Oaks, California.
Shuli Ilan, of Ra’anana, Israel.
Bar Baer, of Newton, Massachusetts.
Adi Oz, of Bethesda, Maryland.
Maayan Levi, of Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
Anat Esmailzadeh, of Great Neck, New York.
Noa Spector, of Beverly Hills, California.
Irit Cohen, of Shaker Heights, Ohio.
Aleph Portman, of New York City.

Who’s your money on?

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.