When I.AM.GIA launched its Blare tracksuits, it was a Hail Mary.
Last year, just prior to Black Friday, Alana Pallister, the company’s founder, sold her house to fund the purchase of 300,000 units of the stretchy tracksuits, and the company needed them to do well.
Less than five months later, the brand has sold 1 million units of the collection, now available in 44 colors and patterns.
This weekend, I.AM.GIA is aiming for a Coachella takeover. The Blare will appear both on- and off-stage, including with a custom set created for Sexyy Red, who is performing on Friday and during Coachella’s second weekend. The custom Blare tracksuit features “Sexyy” across the jacket and back. The brand also created custom leather jackets for the performer.
I.AM.GIA has also partnered with Sexyy Red on merchandise that will be sold on festival grounds, via YouTube and on I.AM.GIA’s e-commerce site following the event.
“Sexxy has been wearing the brand from the very beginning. … We’ve had a really close relationship with her, and to receive the opportunity to support her at Coachella is the biggest honor,” Pallister said.
In addition to dressing Sexyy Red and her dancers, the brand is bringing 17 creators to the festival and has gifted more than 1,000 other community members attending, aiming to turn Sexyy Red’s set into a sea of tracksuits.
The brand is treating Coachella like a “mini campaign,” Pallister said, planning to capture content from the moment its guests board the Sprinter van that will bring them to the desert on Friday morning.
“We will livestream Sexxy’s performance — of fans going crazy for her, really hyping her performance up and supporting that relationship,” Pallister said. “But building ‘Gia’s world’ is always most important. She’s a Coachella party girl, having the time of her life. And then, after the fact, is when we start to talk sales.”
Pallister launched I.AM.GIA in 2017, and the brand quickly built a roster of celebrity fans. An early hit was its Pixie Coat, a teddy-style jacket worn by Selena Gomez, Emily Ratajkowski and Bella Hadid, among others. By 2024, the brand — inspired by model Gia Carangi, whom it treats as a muse — introduced the Blare collection, which Pallister said was “all about Gia in her loungewear, living her best Y2K life.”
The Blare quickly gained traction, with artists like Ice Spice performing in its tracksuits. Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat have also been seen in the Blare set.
“The business had gone through some harder times financially. We had a leadership team that came in that wasn’t quite the right fit, business-wise, but then the Blare had started to take off. … I sold my house and invested every single ounce of money that I made from that into buying the Blare, and then I went to the executive team and said, ‘OK, we have, 300,000 units of the Blare. We need a strategy for Black Friday.’ And me, Mel [Floyd, the brand’s CMO], and the team got together and built out an initiative to make it go 10 times more viral. And it literally saved the business,” Pallister said.
To drive the product’s popularity and support funding the stock, the brand seeded to hundreds of affiliates and launched on TikTok Shop. Affiliates earned 5% commission on sales, a rep for the brand said.
“There were so many people who already had the product, who are genuine customers, who also became affiliates. So overnight, we had a massive surge [in sales],” Floyd said, noting that the number of affiliates increased from a couple of hundred to 2,000 to 20,000 in a week. “TikTok is really more about the everyday person. It’s not polished content; they’re not models; they’re not influencers who are getting paid to post about it. They’re everyday people who really love the product.”
Today, I.AM.GIA has 470,000 followers on TikTok and 1.5 million on Instagram.
According to Alexander Rawitz, head of research and insights at Creator IQ, the brand’s social momentum has significantly accelerated. “Over the last 12 months [March 2025 to February 2026], I.AM.GIA has seen a surge in both its creator community and content creation, driven largely by organic momentum on TikTok. The brand has scored big not only with celebrities, but also with fashion creators looking to achieve an ‘off-duty model’ look via its range of stylish jumpsuits,” he said, referencing the Blare collection.
His forecast for I.AM.GIA at Coachella is particularly promising: “Given three factors — the brand’s HoH [half-year over half-year] momentum, its popularity on TikTok and its particularly impressive growth in post count — I expect I.AM.GIA to emerge as one of the key brands to watch at Coachella 2026.” The brand saw a 121% increase in earned media value and a 141% increase in post count from the first half of 2025 to the second half of the year.
“I.AM.GIA is doing far more than riding a single viral moment,” Rawitz said. “This is a creator community that’s actively accelerating, with more creators posting more content and generating more buzz with each passing month. And the TikTok story is particularly telling,” he said, pointing to a 280% year-over-year increase in EMV on the platform and a 347% increase in post count.
“I.AM.GIA has cracked the code on what the platform’s fashion community responds to right now. … The ‘off-duty model’ aesthetic translates perfectly to Coachella’s visual language and injects a new element into the relatively staid, predictable world of festival fashion. Add in I.AM.GIA’s track record of celebrity and artist seeding, from Ariana Grande to Doja Cat to Sexyy Red’s organic collaboration, and you have a brand where cultural credibility and creator momentum mutually reinforce each other.”
As the Blare has taken off, it has also become a collectible. “We’ve got the Blare fans now, [independent] of GIA fans. It’s like the Blare is its own entity. They have five to 10 colors in the sets,” Pallister said.
According to Floyd, 16- to 26-year-olds make up the core Blare customer, though she has also seen a “mom in her 50s rocking her Blare at the supermarket.” Customers wear the sets to lounge, travel and even go clubbing, she said.
In early March, the brand hosted a three-day pop-up in Los Angeles dedicated solely to the Blare, where customers — some of whom reported owning 25 Blair sets — lined up as early as 2:30 a.m.
Week in review
- Kosas followed in Rhode‘s and MAC‘s footsteps in tapping men to promote its latest launch, the Lip Pulse Glassy Lip Plumper Gloss. Rob Rausch, a star of the Peacock series “Traitors,” is featured in the campaign; the winner of the most recent season of the reality show also worked with MAC in early March, in tandem with its Sephora launch.
- On Friday, the MoMA Design Store debuted the MoMA Matisse Sunglasses collection in partnership with L.A. eyewear brand Akila and the estate of Henri Matisse. The collection features bright colors, neutrals and, for the truly adventurous, frames with Matisse’s iconic leaf shapes from his 1953 work “La Gerbe.”
- On the heels of its mega-popular collaborations with Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse, Touchland is now teaming with Minnie Mouse on a sanitizer case. The brand’s previous collaborations have sold out in under 24 hours.
- Sarah Creal has introduced a new blush, the Coming In Hot Blush, in six shades. As is always the case with Creal’s formulas, the product was clinically tested on women over 40. And it was made to address Creal’s observation that women her age need a blush that delivers both long-wearing color and moisture.
- Actor Claire Holt, known for roles in shows like “Vampire Diaries” and “Pretty Little Liars,” launched Saint Sirène, a brand debuting with three white T-shirts at $78 each in three silhouettes. There’s the Girlfriend, a slightly cropped, A-line tee; the Boyfriend, an oversized, boxy cut; and the Best Friend, with a classic, tailored fit.
- Megababe has launched a Google form to collect messages of support for Artemis 2 astronaut Christina Koch. The initiative is not tied to any Megababe product, but rather simply aligns with the brand’s mission to celebrate women and help them feel confident. It will compile and deliver the messages it gathers to Koch when she returns to Earth.
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