If you hadn't heard of Ice Spice by February 2023, you might be a boomer (myself included). The 23-year-old Bronx-born rapper is suddenly everywhere and New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2023 was basically one big Ice Spice parade.
It's been pure ascension since the overnight success of Ice Spice's hit single "Munch" in August 2022.
Ice Spice was swiftly featured in tentpole publications like The New York Times and Vogue, hung out with Cardi B (there's that Bronx connection), and made waves with a guest appearance at Rolling Loud 2022.
In October, she released smash single "Bikini Botton" and, by the time surprise EP Like..? arrived in late January, the Spice Cabinet was packed wall-to-wall with obsessed fans (and thyme, I assume).
Throughout it all, Ice Spice demonstrated an aspirationally effortless personal style. See, she's got a knack for tapping the Y2K trend without making it look like cosplay.
Ice Spice, born on January 1, 2000, is actually really good at reframing millennium-era fashion through her own inimitable lens, mixing new-school statement pieces with the crop-tops, whale tails, and low-rise jeans of decades past.
It likely helps that Ice Spice is too young to ever have experienced Y2K clothing first-hand: she's immune to all the old stigmas and faux-pas, instead experiencing it all fresh which thus allows her to bend the aesthetic to her own will.
The fashion biz has taken notice.
Ice Spice appeared in a Nike campaign, modeled Ivy Park's Park Trail collection, and, by the time the NYFW 2023 shows rolled around in February, she'd plunged right into the fashion establishment.
Ice Spice sat front row at Dion Lee and Coach FW23, for instance, rubbing shoulders with comparably viral luminaries like Julia Fox and Lil Nas X.
Hard not to see the cultural throughline from the "Old Town Road" singer to Ice Spice. If only Doja Cat had been there: it'd be like the Mount Rushmore of virality.
Ice Spice also attended an exclusive Tommy Hilfiger dinner, tacitly underscoring her indelible stamp on youth culture.
Only a few hours later, it all gets kinda crazy once Ice Spice performs at the afterparties for afterparties for LaQuan Smith and Tia Adeola.
The LaQuan Smith event pops off but the Tia Adeola party practically explodes, as Ice Spice's Munchkins stormed the stage and left security sweating.
She was hustled off-stage before the set was supposed to end but what else should you expect from the self-crowned Princess Diana?
Indeed, the public is following Ice Spice as closely as it once did Diana, except it's all good news for Ice Spice.
She veritably owned NYFW, and in some cases was a bigger story than the actual runway shows themselves. If anyone's looking for a sign that Ice Spice has arrived, let this be it.
