Written by Luke Smith
Edited by Jack Bouchard
Paper-thin brows, jet black hair, hollow cheekbones, and leather pants. In 2025, model Gabbriette (Gabriella Bechtel) has become the personification of “Succubus-Chic,” a look equal parts evil and alluring. So alluring, in fact, that the style has begun to go beyond Bechtel’s signature look. This article explores the relationship between Gabbriette and model Amelia Gray, who has been accused of replicating her image. Is Amelia’s sudden transformation a case of meticulous imitation, or simply a reflection of a fashion cycle that worships the thin, the severe, and the strange?
The fascination with the “dark feminine” has reemerged on runways, social media feeds, and brand campaigns. Many celebrities are braving the red carpet in all black outfits, dark eyeliner, and an air of goth inspiration. This aesthetic sharply contrasts the maximalism and colour of early 2020s fashion, where the “VSCO girl” and bold psychedelic imagery flooded TikTok feeds. Mind you, for Gabriette, a dancer-turned-model-turned-musician, this dark aesthetic has been much more than just a trend. She was first recognized for her work as a dancer in the early music videos for Blood Orange, then praised for her modelling career, until musician Charli XCX specifically selected her to be the lead vocalist of punk rock band Nasty Cherry. Since then, her career has skyrocketed, walking for fashion brands like Diesel and Dsquared2 and starring in campaigns for Marc Jacobs and Bottega Veneta. Accompanied by her now-fiancé, Matty Healy, lead vocalist for The 1975, Gabriette has become the soft-goth it-girl flooding our inspo boards. As she rises, the industry’s mass duplication process seems to be in full force, with Gabbriette’s authenticity becoming a blueprint for mass appeal.
When Amelia Gray, daughter of reality star Lisa Rinna, stepped out in 2022 with pencil brows, prominent cheekbones, and jet-black hair, social media began buzzing with rumours of “imitation”. Side-by-side comparisons have circulated ever since, pointing out the startling similarity between the two. However, despite the copycat rumours, Amelia has made a name for herself in the fashion industry, modelling for brands like Chanel and Miu Miu, and even being on the cover of Spanish Vogue. Indeed, imitation is the fashion world’s oldest ritual, from Kardashian lookalikes to Prada’s Slavic clones; the line between homage and plagiarism is always blurred. What amplified this particular situation was Gabbriette’s fanbase. For them, her aesthetic wasn’t a fading trend but instead a living persona representing a set of aesthetic ideals. Amelia’s alignment with this aesthetic, combined with her perceived nepo-baby status, produced a likely-false narrative that this sudden shift was a theft rather than an inspiration.
Amelia on left, Gabbriette on right
As for me, I believe the importance of Amelia’s transformation lies not in the alleged imitation but instead in what the public outrage represents for fashion consumerism. Many consumers are obsessed with the idea of pseudo-originality, in which uniqueness is the ultimate luxury. What many fail to realize is that in this pursuit for originality, it is easy to fall victim to a smaller—but just as powerful—hive-mind of cultural monotony. Gabbriette’s main appeal lies in her so-called “realness,” her performance of an unbothered, unfiltered individual who is just weird enough for intrigue but not for exile. As her authenticity has gained traction, it has been absorbed and regurgitated by the industry that once rejected it. The feud between these two models, real or imagined, has become less about Amelia’s actions and more about the borrowing of aesthetics without recognition of their roots. Amelia benefits from the same punk culture allure that Gabriette does, but without having to exist in the anti-culture which Gabriette inhabited for many years.
The peak of this discourse occurred in 2024, when Charli XCX released the album “brat.” One of the singles, “360,” features the line “Call me Gabbriette, you’re so inspired.” Many fans assumed this was a reference to the so-called imitation of Gabbriette by Amelia Gray. However, in the wake of Charli’s callout, the doppelgangers seem to have put any feud behind them. In February of 2025, Gabbriette posted a photo of two identical shrimps on a plate with the written message “‘Amelia + Gabi,” perhaps with the intention of extending an olive branch to her fellow model in hopes of dismantling Amelia’s constant ridicule at the hands of her fans. Recently, Gabbriette and Amelia have been side by side in a Marc Jacobs and Fendi campaign, showing that they are leaning into the twin accusations, rather than ducking them.
Gabbriette in front of the brat sign. Gabbriette’s Instagram story post about Amelia
Regardless of whether Amelia is heavily inspired or simply adaptive to the times, the discourse between her and Gabbriette reveals one of fashion’s endless paradoxes, in which people imitate originality and, in the same breath, ridicule those who do the same. Fans of Gabbriette will copy her makeup and emulate her most recent outfit, but when Amelia does the same thing, she is called uninspired, a chameleon to the colours of Gabbriette. In understanding the public’s reaction to Gabbriette and Amelia, we are not revealing an imitation game. Rather, we become aware of two women pitted against each other in the consumer’s pursuit of fabricated originality.
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