A 19-year-old TikTok star with 41 million followers went viral for her red chiffon dress at the 2022 Met Gala

• Avani Gregg is a 19-year-old TikToker and former member of the Hype House.
• She attended her first Met Gala this year, wearing a red dress designed by couture brand, Bach Mai.

On May 2, 19-year-old TikTok star Avani Gregg attended the Met Gala for the first time, wearing a red chiffon dress designed by American couture brand, Bach Mai.

On social media, where Gregg has over 41 million TikTok followers alone, fans said they were "proud" to see one of their favorite influencers at the event, and short videos made to praise Gregg's brightly colored dress now have hundreds of thousands of TikTok views each.

Gregg was one of a handful of influencers at the Met Gala this year. TikTokers were invited to the event, which is typically attended by A-list celebrities, for the first time in September 2021. According to NBC, event organizers hoped that their presence would attract interest in the event from a younger audience.

Here is how Gregg rose to fame, from posting lip-syncing videos on TikTok to becoming the 25th most followed creator in the world and walking down the Met Ball red carpet.

Gregg has been consistently posting on social media since 2016

The 19-year-old TikToker was raised in Brownsburg, Indiana, and moved to Los Angeles, California, in 2019. She was training to be a gymnast but pivoted to social media when she was 13 after developing a stress fracture in her back, according to Forbes.

Gregg started posting on the video-sharing platform Musical.ly in April 2016, years before the app was acquired by Bytedance and merged into its sister app, TikTok, in 2018. Within a month, Gregg posted a video saying she had gained 1,000 followers.

The teenager initially posted lip-syncing videos — a format where the user moves their lips to the words of a popular song or sound — as well as make-up tutorials and transformations.

Gregg started to become well-known on the app in 2016 when she began posting distinct make-up looks that resembled Harley Quinn from the movie "Suicide Squad." In 2020, she told HollyWire that her fans started calling her by the nickname, "Clown Girl," and has recreated the now-iconic looks in more recent videos.

Gregg joined the 'Hype House' TikTok collective, filming with Addison Rae and Charli D'amelio

When "Hype House," a group of TikTokers who filmed daily videos together, formed in December 2019, Gregg was one of the original 21 members, alongside Addison Rae and Charli D'Amelio, who are both listed in the top five most-followed TikTok accounts in the world. However, in February 2020 Gregg told Today that she did not live in the shared house with the other stars.

Gregg filmed TikTok dances and lip-sync videos with other Hype House members, but in May 2020, the group appeared to have a disagreement which lead Charli D'Amelio and her sister, Dixie, to separate from the collective. According to Dexerto, fans soon began to speculate that Gregg might also leave the group, as she began to appear less frequently in videos with the other members.

Gregg has not publically made a statement about her involvement with the group, but she did not appear in the Hype House reality show that aired on Netflix in January of 2022 and is not listed as a group member on the Netflix website.

Despite appearing to distance herself from the group, Gregg remains popular on the TikTok app, and is currently the 25th most followed creator in the world, according to analytics website insiflow.

Gregg wore a red couture dress to the 2022 Met Gala

On May 2, Gregg attended the Met Gala for the first time, and was one of six influencers at the event, according to Teen Vogue. Other influencers at the ball were TikToker Addison Rae and YouTuber Emma Chamberlain.

Gregg wore a red dress made of chiffon strips that was designed by New York-based American couture brand, Bach Mai.

In a video uploaded on May 2 to her Instagram account, Gregg told her fans she had arrived in New York for the Met Gala and said, "I love fashion, so this is a dream come true."

On Twitter and TikTok, Gregg's dress has gone viral, as fans said they loved the outfit and were happy to see her at the event. The hashtag "Avani Met Gala," where fans have edited together short video clips of Gregg wearing her dress, has two million TikTok views.

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