Mark Boutilier is here to troll your fits
Mark Boutillier was in New York for his first fashion week, and instead of chasing after the limelight, he decided to watch and learn from afar.
Mark gained momentum on Tiktok during the pandemic from his dry-witted videos critiquing outfits of his peers he found on the for you page. Like most things that begin as a joke, it only blossomed into a career for him. When talking to Mark about his Tiktok fame, he chalks it all up to timing, citing the oversaturation of people making popular content on the app. Mark doesn’t look like your typical Gen Z influencer, he doesn’t have a dangly earring or bouffant hair. He’s usually walking around in a brandless vintage outfit, and even if you see him wearing designer, there’s a good chance he found it on a whim while shopping at a consignment or thrift store where he grew up, in a suburb outside of Atlanta. He won’t spend money on some crazy designer pieces when he can buy his favorite, wearable pieces at a reasonable price. When he does spend money on designer pieces, it’s because he cares and wants something because it’s special, and he typically has to save his money for months before and after. His favorite most worn article of clothing is a pair of old, wide-leg North Face pants. He couldn’t tell you anything about them, but he tends to wear them 4 days in a week and he only paid $25 for them.
While most of Tiktok’s popular creators spent their evenings during fashion week at parties with lines down the block, Mark decided to conduct his own sociological research, creating his own list of dos and don’ts for young influencers. Mark explained to me, “I’ve learned that its important to just be like very real about yourself, like very organic. I don’t try to push myself to some higher degree than what I am”. This comment was an astute observation, not so much of others, but of Mark himself, “I feel like a lot of the time I give off the impression that I’m egotistical or elitist or like whatever, and I’m super not. I’m just a dude with bullshit opinions and if you agree with them cool, but if you don’t, you don’t”.
It’s Mark’s down-to-earth honesty that made him a popular creator. While at first, Mark was trolling, he quickly learned how with great power comes great responsibility, “I look back at that and at times I definitely went overboard. I probably should have chilled out...it got to a point where people really care about the things I’m saying and react in ways to the things I’m saying, so I can’t just be a dickhead all the time. I have to strategically be a dickhead and teach people lessons and you know be a good samaritan”. Mark also likes to interact with his Gen Z disciples through a discord, and he tries to respond or reach out as much as he can. He described an interaction he had with a fan, “...I guess he was having trouble his first week of school and he tagged me in some fit video like ‘I just failed a test but Mark tell me if you like this fit’, and I just went and DMed him like ‘you’re good like I kinda fucked myself in the beginning of college, it’s not really a big deal’”. He doesn’t necessarily want to be a “suggestion machine”, with people constantly messaging him for his recommendations, but he loves the more human interactions like this.
A few months ago, Mark got a big opportunity to be in the New York Times, where he was interviewed along with a few other creators making fashion content. He was asked after trolling a brand offering him a bad deal in exchange for making tons of content (full circle, isn’t it?) He described being blown away by this, and then when the article came out he went to the grocery store next to his part-time retail job and bought a copy before clocking in for his shift. His family members made sure to buy tons of copies, and his mom buying as many as she could.
Outside of “Mark Boutillier the Tiktokker” there is a very real human being behind the content. When asked about his style, he told me about the various phases he has gone through, like when he had a stint as an employee at Banana Republic and dressed like a 40 year old man. Which, only logically, would be followed by his hypebeast phase. When morphing his style over the years, Mark has taken in his inspiration by osmosis, without even realizing it, or by learning from friends. He much prefers this to more traditional outlets like fashion magazines, which might have been the bible to influencers of yesteryear. When I asked him what advice he would give to a guy trying to figure out their own style, Mark suggests being curious. “...just start looking at tags, start looking things up if you don’t know what it is, just be curious and see what you can pick up on.. I don’t know, you see a lot and if you’re actually absorbing it, it’s a good way to start”.
He was also a fan of many men’s fashion Youtubers like Magnus Ronning, Owen Hyatt, and Jacob Keller who have all followed similar paths from content creators to designers of their own brands. Mark is now lucky to call some of them his peers, with some people reaching out to give him advice with his own Youtube channel. While Mark is not ready yet to take his leap into starting a brand, he’d like to drop some of his own merch, just to gauge the interest of his followers. Mark’s other plans for the future are that he has none. He explained that he’s open to anything, “If somebody hits me up and is like ‘be a model’, I’ll be like well I’m 5’9”, and I don’t really know how to do that, I’ll be like ‘sure I’m down’, if somebody wants me to be a stylist, sometimes I can’t put on a good fit to save my life, but I’ll try”.
