Tavi Gevinson

Tavi Gevinson (born April 21, 1996) is an American actress, writer, and magazine editor. She came to public attention at the age of 12 due to her fashion blog Style Rookie. By age 15, she had shifted her focus to pop culture and feminist discussion. She started to take acting roles regularly beginning in 2013 and currently stars in the rebooted version of HBO's Gossip Girl.

Gevinson was the founder and editor-in-chief of the online magazine Rookie, aimed primarily at teenage girls. Gevinson was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in the suburban town of Oak Park, Illinois. Her father, Steve Gevinson, is an English high school teacher. Her mother, Berit Engen, is a weaver and part-time Hebrew instructor who grew up in Oslo, Norway. Gevinson's father was born to an Orthodox Jewish family; her mother, who was raised Lutheran, converted to Judaism in 2001. Gevinson and her two older sisters, Rivkah and Miriam, were raised in the Jewish faith; she had a Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Gevinson was educated at Oak Park and River Forest High School in her hometown Oak Park.

Gevinson started a fashion blog, Style Rookie, in 2008. The blog, featuring photos of the 11-year-old in distinctive outfits and her commentary on the latest fashion trends, began drawing nearly 30,000 readers each day. Her father "wasn't terribly interested" in her new hobby until she asked for his permission to be interviewed by The New York Times for an article about young bloggers.

Because of the blog's success, Gevinson was invited to attend New York Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week. She made overseas fashion-related trips to Tokyo and Antwerp, funded by Pop magazine, and was commissioned to write articles for Harper's Bazaar and Barneys.com. She styled a shoot for BlackBook magazine, acted as a muse and model for Rodarte's clothing line at Target stores, and partnered with Borders&Frontiers to design and sell her own T-shirt. In 2010, she spoke at a marketing conference in New York and at Idea City, a Canadian version of the TED conference.

There was a backlash to Gevinson's early success in the fashion industry. New York magazine questioned whether it was possible for Gevinson to write her blog without "some help from a mom or older sister." Sarah Mower of The Daily Telegraph, while conceding that Gevinson had a "truly independent, original voice," criticized her father for taking her out of school "to go to haute couture shows ... It's hard to imagine a kid being able to come back down to reality." 

A Grazia fashion editor complained on Twitter that a large bow Gevinson wore had blocked her view of a runway during fashion week. Anne Slowey of Elle felt her success was "gimmicky" and commented, "She's been thirteen for, like, the last four years." Gevinson later remarked: "A lot of people on the Internet have a problem with a young person doing well. I felt like there were people who were because of their name, their money, or their family, and I didn't have any of those things."