Dressed in an oversized black Balenciaga t-shirt, paired with gold earrings, Sarah Ashcroft enters her aesthetic neutral-toned lounge. Tears are already threatening to escape.
It’s only her in the room right now, but what is about to happen won’t remain private. Before sitting down on the cream sofa perfectly positioned to receive the best lighting, she flicks the switch on her vlogging camera to record. ‘So this is definitely not a video that I ever thought I would film…’ she begins after a deep exhale.
When the finished footage was later shared on YouTube with the blunt title ‘WE BROKE UP’ it was watched nearly 300,000 times. Over 17 minutes Sarah details the ins and outs of her breakup from her long-term partner (and unfortunately, also her manager), with the sort of honesty you’d usually find exclusively at a hardcore two-hour bottomless brunch.
Over the months that followed their split in early 2024, Sarah’s posts depicted everything from her solemnly putting up a Christmas tree alone for the first time to going on her first girls’ holiday post-split.
Today – and millions of views later – Sarah is once again sitting in that same London apartment that has become instantly recognisable to her 1.6 million social media followers. This time, it’s with Metro to talk about the realities of living life online.
Considered one of the OG influencers, Sarah’s journey began 12 years ago when she posed in fast fashion brands on her parents’ drive. The best snaps would be uploaded to her blog That Pommie Girl with information on how to recreate the looks.
‘I just wanted something to say when I was quizzed in fashion PR job interviews about blogging,’ she tells us. Her original ambition of being the person schmoozing with the talent was quickly flipped on its head as brands scrambled to gift her their latest launches and whisk her away on luxury brand trips to Ibiza and Los Angeles.
Sarah, then still a teenager, began outearning many of her peers thanks largely to affiliated links. ‘I was making around £1500 per month and that felt wild. I’d never seen that much money in my bank account,’ she remembers.
Before long, her readers weren’t just interested in the clothes being worn but also the girl wearing them. So, Sarah decided to give fans what they wanted – unlimited access to her life.
It is a tactic that has paid off as she has since navigated the shift from blogging to short videos, with stop-offs at perfectly curated Instagram grids and chatty hour-long GRWMs (get ready with me) along the way.
‘I’m now a dinosaur in this industry,’ the 30-year-old blurts out with a laugh. ‘I go to events now, and I sit next to people that were born in 2006 and think “Oh my God, I’m old”.’
Although Sarah jokes about the pain of often being the most mature person on the invite list, she’s pleased that she came to online stardom when she did. ‘The younger generation is often propelled to huge fame so quickly – they go from zero to a million followers overnight. My growth was more gradual so I could adjust. I’m grateful,’ she explains.
‘I become a big sister when I meet the new influencers. I say “Do you want to talk? Can I offer you any advice?” I try not to be condescending but I want to help if I can.’
But, how hard is it to stay relevant with newbies constantly emerging? ‘It’s super saturated now,’ she points out matter of factly. ‘I’ve seen so many influencers come and go and I’m not sure why I’ve managed to stick, but I’m not complaining.’
When giving new content creators their induction-esque spiel, Sarah tells them they must protect themselves from the ‘dark side’.
‘People glamorise influencing so much, but they don’t realise you have to be mentally strong. If you are a bit of a sensitive soul, putting yourself online can send you to a bad place because of the trolling.
‘Everyone thinks they want to go viral until they do,’ she warned. Sarah recounts the time a video of her saying: ‘I am fine being high maintenance because I’m the one maintaining it’ on the Branded by Amelia Sordell podcast appeared in millions of people’s TikTok FYP.
Sarah was ‘savaged’ in the comments but was able to laugh due to the thick skin she’s developed. There were also a few years when people regularly told Sarah she used too much lip filler. ‘To be fair, they were right,’ reflects Sarah, who now favours a more natural pout.
Certainly, influencing is now a popular dream – a recent survey* found that 57% of Gen Zers want to become influencers. It wasn’t always this way, having been around for over a decade Sarah has enjoyed a front-row seat to its rebrand.
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‘The word influencer wasn’t used back when I started out and then when it became more recognised people would still be like: “What is that?”
‘Even my dad would tell his friends I worked at Facebook and would say to me: “Can you get a proper job?” ‘He’s so proud now but I remind him of his early question,’ she adds with a smile.
After years of making money for other companies including In The Style and Pretty Little Thing, Sarah decided to emulate the likes of the Kardashians and Paris Hilton, who managed to turn themselves into billion-pound companies by launching her own brand in 2019.
At first, SLA the Label experienced year-on-year growth, and in 2023, the business made almost £4 million in sales. However, a manufacturing issue led to a domino effect of issues and the company’s sad closure last month.
Sarah’s story is far from unique – many influencers turned business owners have faced an early end. For every Molly-Mae Hague Filter or Kylie Jenner lip kit, there is Sydney May Crouch’s fashion brand 48FORTYNINE finishing abruptly, or Jaclyn Hill Cosmetics closing its doors as ‘tough realities’ set in.
Despite not being the only one to fall victim Sarah admitted to feeling like a ‘failure’ and ‘lonely’. Knowing she couldn’t save SLA the Label, Sarah began to dread having to let the world know. It was not unusual for her to lay in bed at night ‘catastrophising basically everything’ about the reaction.
‘My ego was massively bruised, I’m not going to sit here and act like it was not,’ she admits.
‘I’ll be honest, it’s been the worst year of my life. I’m definitely going to start therapy at some point because I need to process everything but what I have realised is sharing the lows is just as important as chronicling the highs.
‘I’ve always built my career on transparency – I mean even my boob job is all over YouTube,’ she adds with a giggle. ‘To not talk about these life changes – my business breakdown and breakup – would have felt so wrong, even bizarre.’
After all, if a TV show abandoned a plot midway through a season and never spoke of it again fans would have something to say, and this is often also the case now we’re keeping up with real lives on social media. Passionate followers will be vocal if they don’t get answers, flooding Reddit threads, and comment sections, and in the worst of times, Tattle, until they get their information.
Aside from ending speculation, Sarah also hoped her story would bring comfort. ‘People may find it embarrassing to say “I got dumped” or “my business collapsed” but that’s what happened, and I knew talking about it could help people who’d also been through it,’ she explains. ‘I was inundated with messages of support and they ended up helping me.’
Although she’s built a strong community, Sarah can’t escape the fear that it won’t last forever. She worries that one day she’ll wake up and the social media platforms that pay for her lifestyle will be gone.
The scary prospect isn’t completely out of the question – TikTok briefly went down in January ahead of a federal law requiring its parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the platform or face a ban, before President Donald Trump reinstated it.
When the 2020 algorithm changed on Instagram, Sarah says her audience stopped growing and engagement dropped massively. ‘I mentally struggled with it, and it led me to a really bad place. It fully drove me insane,’ she remembers.
‘I felt like everything I’d worked for was gone. I’ve now had to come to terms with the fact that I am literally working with a robot. You can’t control it, so you have to go along with it.’
However, Sarah insists that despite such a hard year in the spotlight, living her life with thousands of people may have made the lows lower, but it’s also made the highs higher. Knowing she’s the person who can influence women to buy everything from Chanel bags to M&S dips has served her well and she plans to continue doing it for the foreseeable future.
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‘I want to keep showing the less polished side. People are bored of seeing curated manicured lives,’ she says. ‘I’m the first person to admit that I’m sometimes guilty. In the last two years of my relationship with Joe, we weren’t in a good place but you wouldn’t have known that.
‘When I was unfiltered the general response was “Thank you for the truth because life is so hard”. Pretending is quite toxic for everyone.’
*2023 Morning Consult survey, **2023 Collabstr Report
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Josie.Copson@metro.co.uk
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