Gown, Balenciaga. Earrings, Jennifer Behr. Necklace, Erickson Beamon. Sandals, Malone Souliers x Tabitha Simmons.
Nara Aziza Smith is still a fantasy. Even as she’s Zooming from New York for our interview, all the hallmarks of the videos she makes for her 10 million-plus TikTok followers are apparent. She’s still in her hotel bed for our early-morning chat. Rather than designer fashion, the uniform she typically wears to prepare late-night kimchi jjigae (“So easy to make,” she relays, before launching into a recipe most would never dare to replicate), she’s wrapped in a plush white robe. The signs of her doting model husband, Lucky Blue Smith, are visible: She’s logged into his Zoom account for the call, and his name dangles like a locket on the side of the screen. Off TikTok, Smith’s voice is like meringue: the airy ASMR touch she employs in her videos is hardened into something solid, if not just as sweet.
Dress, brief, Michael Kors Collection. Hat, Gigi Burris Millinery. Necklaces, Erickson Beamon.
Smith has rocketed to fame on the back of videos of her making increasingly elaborate items from scratch, like bubblegum or PB&Js with homemade PB, J, and bread. She recently became the first person to wear a Chanel runway sample while making DIY Nutella. Smith’s videos are so elegant they make the Stepford wives look more like the chaotic 20-somethings of Girls. Her perfection has also made her an unwilling avatar for conspiracy theorists who believe she is marketing gold spun out a movement that sees women as merely homemakers. Smith, who strongly rejects this association, has a much simpler ideology. “I’m just a girl,” she tells me.
Dress, earrings, necklaces, shoes, Miu Miu. Necklace, Erickson Beamon.
A girl, in a wonderful way, can be anything in Smith’s world. She claims the title frequently: She was a “pants girl,” she says, who once rejected dresses; she is a “silhouette girl” who’s lately been into Bottega Veneta, Miu Miu, and Elsa Hosk’s Helsa; she’s a “fiction girl” who likes to read Sarah J. Maas before bed.
Dress, boots, Loewe. Earrings, ring, Harry Winston.
First, though, Smith was just a girl. She was born in South Africa and raised in Germany, where a model scout discovered her when she was only 14. At one time, Smith was even, surprisingly, a party girl. “I always giggle at comments that say, ‘You should be in the club living it up,’” Smith says. She’s laughing because she already has. “I was traveling the world by myself at 14,” she adds. “I went to clubs when I was 16. You can drink a lot earlier in Germany. I’ve been there, done that, and it just wasn’t for me.”
The 23-year-old mother of three met Lucky in 2019 and immediately locked in to their relationship. “When he asked me to be his girlfriend,” Smith says, “I didn’t say yes. I literally said, ‘I take this very serious.’ And he was like, ‘Me too.’” Smith’s TikTok was once the domain of generic lifestyle content and a home for her influencer partnerships. But she gained a massive following when she initiated a recipe for her children’s peanut butter and jelly in the way only she can. (“I started by making some really simple sandwich bread,” she begins.)
Dress, earrings, Chanel.
It doesn’t take long with Smith to discover how entirely miscast she is as the woman internet trolls would have you believe is regressing feminism a half-century. Of all the girls she might identify with, I might suggest adding one more to the list: working girl. She and Lucky split the day’s child care in half, leaving her to make her content from scratch in the second half of the day. She edits her videos after getting her flock to sleep and tries to be in bed by 10 P.M., but just as often, she’s still texting her manager at midnight as ideas come to her. (Then it’s her manager’s turn to put Smith to bed.)
Dress, Oscar de la Renta. Earrings, ring, Chopard. Flats, Gucci.
Smith’s allure is in her ability to hold all these contradictions at once. She is the adoring stay-at-home wife and mom to a loving, supportive husband who treats her as an equal, and would almost certainly take her to Greece if she wanted. She is making homemade hot dogs while simultaneously traveling the world for work and sitting front row at Gucci. What, like it’s supposed to be hard? Smith cheekily tags her multi-hour cooking videos #easyrecipe. “I genuinely think they’re easy,” Smith says. “I don’t think they’re hard at all.” Her effortless approach seems to spill into every aspect of her life.
Gown, Marc Jacobs.
During her photo shoot with ELLE, Smith and the team had to pivot to solve an on-brand predicament. As with the videos she posts online, family life and career simmered into one. Smith brought her six-month-old daughter, Whimsy, to set. “Towards the end of the day, she was losing it,” Smith says. “She did not want anyone but me to hold her.” Rather than send off her youngest, Smith finished the photoshoot holding Whimsy just out of frame while posing for closely cropped headshots. Soothing a fussy baby during a pivotal moment at their job isn’t everyone’s idea of aspirational, but Smith is making her own version of idyllic from scratch.
Dress, hat, Prada.
Hair by Orlando Pita at Home Agency; makeup by Grace Ahn at Day One Studio; set design by Rachel DeLoache Williams; produced by Dana Brockman at viewfinders; special thanks to Green Thumb Organic Farm, Water Mill, New York; and to Lisa and Mona for giving us access to their private garden.
This shoot appears in the November 2024 issue of ELLE.
Chloe is the former beauty director of ELLE.com. She’s written for GQ, Air Mail, Into the Gloss, and Fashionista. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband, Cam, and son, Otis.
