Wife For Likes
For Sofia Richie Grainge, Wifehood Is The Ultimate Rebrand
Prior to her nuptials last year, there was little public interest in the budding style icon. Now, she’s everywhere.
Last week, Sofia Richie Grainge announced her pregnancy in Vogue. In the accompanying photo shoot, her tan bump peeks out of a range of monochromatic looks, her expression always demure. She’s happy, she says, that the secret is out and she can once again be honest with her followers: “I can’t wait to open that door back up.” But Richie Grainge wasn’t always the kind of it-girl who made big announcements through Vogue exclusives or had legions of followers yearning for updates. That’s a recent development.
For most of her career as a public figure, Sofia Richie didn’t stand out as a cultural force. She was always seen as Lionel Richie’s daughter or Nicole Richie’s sister. For three years she was the girlfriend of Scott Disick, which made her a member of the Keeping Up With the Kardashians extended universe. But that all changed in April 2023, when she tied the knot with a decidedly not-famous music executive, Elliot Grainge, in a lavish ceremony. Through a series of gorgeous and well-timed posts, the world saw Sofia Richie, the lukewarm nepo-baby, bloom into the resplendent Sofia Richie Grainge, the it-girl wife.
It all started with a sumptuous Vogue spread. The young bride had approached Chanel to design her wedding dress, which turned into a three-look project that also included rehearsal dinner and after-party frocks. Upon reviewing the looks, Anna Wintour, in her infinite it-girl-spotting wisdom, asked to cover the final fitting for Vogue. The behind-the-scenes footage went live the day before the wedding.
The day after the nuptials, a 96-image story about the wedding gave us a high-definition and up-close look at every little detail: the seven-minute walk down the aisle in the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, the frothy arrangements of white flowers to contrast the black bridesmaids’ dresses. We learned that yes, Cameron Diaz and Princess Olympia of Greece were in attendance, both dear friends. Of course, Lionel Richie sang at the reception, and Elliot Grainge pulled some strings to get one of Sofia’s favorite singers, Stephen Sanchez, to perform too. Vogue included action shots of Sofia jumping around to Good Charlotte, her friend-turned-husband by her side. A shining socialite’s fairytale wedding.
In a fit of inspiration, the bride decided to join TikTok the week of her wedding as @sofiarichiegrainge. (She maintains that this was not part of some greater strategy.) Throughout her wedding week, she posted Get Ready With Me’s that offered a more intimate and casual counterpart to the high-wattage editorial. The media started calling the Richie-Grainge wedding Gen Z’s Royal Wedding, not because Richie and Grainge are particularly noble zoomers, but because the event eclipsed everything else on people’s feeds.
And so, the world was introduced to Mrs. Sofia Richie Grainge. As one of her commenters said: “Do I know who Sofia Richie is? Not a clue. Have I watched every single wedding video of [hers] and am completely obsessed? Yes. Yes I am.”
The “Sofia Richie Grainge Effect” has since emerged as a catch-all term to describe the link between the young socialite’s rebrand as a wife and its impact on her power to influence. Four days after the wedding, she garnered over 45.4 million views on TikTok. Now, nine months later, she has 3.6 million followers and 73 million likes. Her trio of Chanel bridal looks triggered a 500% spike in search interest for “Chanel wedding dresses,” and when her makeup artist name-dropped the Nudestix Nudies Blush Stick in Sunset Strip — Richie Grainge was appointed the brand’s beauty director six months before her wedding — sales soared an estimated 1,115%.
The brands hit the ground running. A new partnership with London-based perfumer Jo Malone plastered Richie Grainge’s face across social media just weeks after her wedding. The effects of the partnership, Jo Malone’s VP of marketing told Glossy’s Sarah Spruch-Feiner, were outstanding: “Richie Grainge’s Reels post went live in advance of Mother’s Day on May 11. Over Mother’s Day weekend, the brand saw an immediate boost — new customers were up 13%, and traffic to the brand’s site was up 118%.” Spruch-Feiner also reported that makeup brand Glossier worked with Richie Grainge on a Glossier Edit that, according to Glossier CMO Kleona Mack, produced a lot of first-time buyers for the brand: “nearly 50% of customers who purchased [from Sofia’s edit] were new to Glossier.”
Jo Malone and Glossier were just the beginning. Since the wedding, Richie Grainge has also inked deals with makeup brand Hourglass, Prada Beauty, and jewelry brand David Yurman. But most exciting is her current work on a forthcoming lifestyle brand, which she’s working on with co-designer Cass, to be called SRG after her new initials. She told Porter that she is very passionate about “fashion, beauty, and interiors” and that the brand SRG will also have a community element as well as personal recommendations.
In short, SRG promises to embody the young bride’s impeccable (and marketable) taste. The wedding served as proof of concept — it didn’t just show off her sense of style; it also gathered the audience and gave people a version of Sofia that they can both relate to and aspire to be. Her brand partnerships confirm that it can all be converted into cold-hard cash. The future of SRG will reveal how far it can all go.
So far, she’s moving forward with her signature balance of casual openness and well-mannered remove. “I’m not going to publicize my child on Instagram,” she told Vogue. Her daughter might not make it onto her feed, but the world around her will: Richie Grainge is in the midst of renovating her house, and there’s a baby shower to throw. We have yet to meet Mrs. Richie Grainge the homemaker and hostess, but it seems she’s waiting in the wings. For now, we’ll at least see her navigate maternity wear: “I’m about to have some fun with it now that I can spread my wings and fly.”
The zeitgeist has been on her side: Last spring saw the rise of the fashion world’s obsession with “quiet luxury,” a fashion subculture fixated on deciphering the subtle style codes of the absurdly wealthy. It pairs with the “old money” aesthetic, a romanticized take on how people of generational wealth dress. Both the old money and quiet luxury styles prioritize “classics” over statement pieces and “timelessness” over trends, words that came up constantly during Richie Grainge’s post-wedding press tour. “I wanted it to feel timeless,” she told Town & Country. “I pored over photos of classic royal weddings and pulled in little things that I wanted.” She told Who What Wear that she’d been working with stylist (and friend of her sister Nicole) Liat Baruch for the past three years on cultivating her “timeless” aesthetic, and she’s not giving it up anytime soon: As Richie Grainge told Vogue, her maternity wear looks a lot like her signature style, plus room for a baby bump.
The week of the wedding, @databutmakeitfashion found that Google search interest for “quiet luxury” increased to an all-time high of 1,230%. Richie Grainge’s style choices found a home among a growing number of consumers already interested in channeling a similar look. SRG became so synonymous with quiet luxury that when people like Kylie and Kendall Jenner stepped out in classic looks, they were slammed for “copying Sofia Richie old money style.” Something about Sofia Richie Grainge’s preference for timeless and classic styles reads as more genuine than the Jenners’ take. Even if she did hire a stylist.
Young women online are moving out of girlhood and into something more mature. On social media there’s a surging interest in articulating their ideal image of wifehood, either as a fantasy or a lifestyle. There is the homesteading tradwife of Ballerina Farm, with her hearty meals and Disney princess hair. There are the tortured femcels of the New Right, who reframe marriage as the edgiest form of social submission. There is also the fake-trend-turned-aesthetic of the Mob Wife, brash, bold, and glamorous. Each of these wifehoods extolls different virtues, but they all suggest that entering into a state- and culturally-sanctioned union is an easy route to a happily ever after (the off-screen wealth that subsidizes their domestic bliss doesn’t hurt, either).
Marriage seriously becomes Sofia Richie Grainge, but it’s not wifehood that she’s selling as much as a polished, Barbie-esque genericism.
While Richie Grainge’s Vogue editorial did mark a happily ever after of sorts, she’s something of a foil to those capital-W Wives. Marriage seriously becomes Sofia Richie Grainge, but it’s not wifehood that she’s selling as much as a polished, Barbie-esque genericism — a look available to all, regardless of relationship status. If being initiated as a Mrs. has done one thing to Richie Grainge’s brand, aside from lending her a fashionable third initial and an air of maturity, it’s establishing her dual power as an aspirational and relatable figure. And much like her well-fitted blazers and pearl earrings, this combination has staying power. She’s rich but not flashy, well-connected but never boastful. She shares on social media, but she doesn’t join the discourse. And most importantly, she never gatekeeps — her followers will always be able to click through and get the look.
With a solid foundation under her feet, brand expansion is the natural next step. Now that she’s announced her pregnancy, the floodgates are open for waves of maternity fashion and mommy lifestyle content to once again turn social media into SRG-world. As debutante balls once marked a girl’s entrée to the marriage market, Richie Grainge’s wedding reintroduced her as a person and a brand to both companies and consumers. Every TikTok and every interview she’s given about how it all came together tells the story of a fairytale wedding, positioning SRG as the taste-making powerhouse behind all the magic and whatever comes next. Before, we only knew of Sofia because of the men in her life. Now that she’s married to one, she’s a brand in her own right.
