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Home / Lifestyle

Glitter boobs trendsetter's massive spike in business sales come festival season

By Shireen Khalil
news.com.au·
29 Jun, 2019 09:19 PM4 mins to read

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Sophie Tea shot to fame after bedazzling her chest with just jewels and glitter. That viral photo helped boost her multimillion-dollar business. Photo / Instagram

Sophie Tea shot to fame after bedazzling her chest with just jewels and glitter. That viral photo helped boost her multimillion-dollar business. Photo / Instagram

Every year around festival season — including the UK's hugely popular Glastonbury event — abstract artist Sophie Tea sees a massive boost in sales.

The business graduate-turned-artist shot to fame in 2017 after photos of her posing at Coachella with glitter, gems and jewels stuck across her bare chest went viral.

The photo helped boost her multimillion-dollar business, with Ms Tea describing the "glitter boob" trend as the gift that keeps on giving.

"I always see a spike in my Instagram followers around festival season. It's insane what the power of one viral photo can do," Ms Tea told news.com.au.

The 26-year-old managed to go from having barely a cent to her name to creating a multimillion-dollar brand all through the power of social media.

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In two days alone, she can make a cool $27,000 with each of her colourful abstracts selling anywhere between $700 and $4000.

That's expected to soar with the five-day Glastonbury festival kicking off in the UK this weekend, with Ms Tea saying she usually sees a 50 per cent increase in sales.

"Festival season does correlate to increased sales, but like all of my press related to the glitter boobs, it takes around three months to convert the new followers to customers," Ms Tea told news.com.au

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"Proud to say I normally manage it!"

Many are already in the party spirit, with plenty of women proudly showing off their glitter boobs in the lead-up to the festival as temperatures soar.

Glitter, body paint and stick-on jewels are used to create the daring look.

Others just use glitter to jazz up their nipples, often pairing the naked look with colourful shorts, skirts or hotpants.

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"I think like all trends it will flow and ebb, but the concept of empowerment will not lose relevance," Ms Tea said.

"I think some women embrace it as a liberating form of self-expression."

With temperatures set to hit 30 degrees, some have taken it one step further by stripping completely naked, while other revellers have already flooded into the campsite wearing rainbow-coloured outfits and copious amounts of glitter (of course).

Ms Tea, an abstract artist who uses her Instagram status to showcase her work, will be heading to Sydney in September for a solo exhibition.

"I'm very much looking forward to getting back!" she said.

HOW THE GLITTER BOOB TREND BEGAN

Ms Tea was approached by Jenna Meek, a friend-of-a-friend who was setting up her body jewellery brand Gypsy Shrine, now a global business with a string of A-list fans, and wanted another artist to help apply body jewels at festivals.

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"While at Coachella, we had the glitter boobs idea," Ms Tea said.

A little embarrassed by it now, Ms Tea said they just took off their tops and put loads of glitter on their boobs. This in turn boosted Ms Tea's Instagram following, which is close to 62,000.

View this post on Instagram

Grateful for all my new followers who found me coz of my boob press lately xxxx welcome!!!! ✨✨ I met some of my best friends in the world through covering myself in glitter at Coachella 💕 . . . . . . Using this naked photo to let you know that tonight at 7pm U.K. time I will be posting a HUGE abstract original for sale on my instagram. First comment will get it. It is £4,100. Or £341 a month for 12 months. PAYMENT installations will ALWAYS be available on original Art. Just trying to make my work as accessible as I possibly can whilst still growing my business 💕 . . . Glitter from the best glitter company in the world @thegypsyshrine ✨ . . . #coachella #coachellafestival #glitterboobs #sophieteaart #glitter #coachellaglitter #festivals #festivalglitter #abstractartist

A post shared by S O P H I E T E A (@sophieteaart) on Apr 9, 2019 at 7:59am PDT

View this post on Instagram

✨🌈GLASTO IS CALLING!🌈✨Who’s ready for the biggest festival of the summer? Shop via link in bio and select express shipping to receive your products before #Glastonbury 🧡🙌🏼 you don’t want to miss out...

A post shared by GO GET GLITTER (@gogetglitter) on Jun 24, 2019 at 7:17am PDT

The glitter boobs picture went viral, even capturing the attention of Ellen DeGeneres.

Having started a now famous festival trend, Ms Tea's social media following went through the roof — and does so every year around festival season — and also helped boost her now multimillion-dollar art business.

Ms Tea works 15 hour days, seven days a week in order to keep her business growing.

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