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The number 999 is Shockey Sanders’ “angel number,” meaning it appears before important moments in her life. It was on the license plate of the car she rented when she toured Syracuse University. It’s also tattooed on her side and hangs on a silver necklace around her neck.

The number 999 has now made its way into the SU sophomore’s clothing brand which sells masks, T-shirts and tank tops. Her “Rule of Three” products feature three balloons, which when seen from a distance, are actually the number 999. Sanders began selling her “Rule of Three” clothing, which is a part of her “Dreadful Summer” collection, with SU student-run company Popcycle when they launched their website on Sept. 7.

For Sanders, creating clothing was the next step in her social media influencing career. She has more than 35,000 followers on Instagram and 129,000 followers on TikTok. She could have gone for merch with her name on it, but instead decided to create something that even people who didn’t know her could wear.

“I wanted to be able to put something out there that wasn’t sacrificing my own style,” Sanders said. “I didn’t want to just make something really easily consumable that people would buy. I still wanted to make something fashionable that I’d wear.”

Sanders’ “Dreadful Summer” collection is sold on her website and by SU student-run company Popcycle. Courtesy of Shockey Sanders

Growing up in Tampa, Florida, Sanders wasn’t able to present herself the way she wanted to in high school. Her brand is a way for her to make up for the lost time of clothing she wished she could have designed in high school, she said.

Sanders designs and makes all of her products herself. During quarantine, she fulfilled orders on her own, but now that she is back at school, her management team in Chicago is helping with packaging, designing and shipping.

Working with Popcycle has been a great opportunity to sell her products to SU students and collaborate with other student-run brands, Sanders said. Even though all of the businesses are different, they fit into Popcycle “so well,” she said.

Sanders described her personal style as “early 2000s MySpace-ish,” which she said is now classified as “e-girl” style. She balances what she likes to wear personally and what will be consumable for her followers.

She posts on TikTok every day and Instagram at least twice a week. Most of her time spent on social media is planning content and identifying trends, not looking at other people’s content.

Overall, Sanders said she lives “two separate lives” between her social media influencing career and academic aspirations. She is a neuroscience and psychology major and hopes to go into psychopharmacology, specifically focusing on holistic drug research.

“A lot of it does, with neuro, tie into my brand in the sense of things on my website specifically being very trippy, sort of like hallucinogenic-esque,” she said.

Clothing items from Sanders’ collection are available on both her website and Popcycle. Sanders personally picked the items she thought would sell the best to SU students on Popcycle. She still has items such as her Black Lives Matter apparel on her website only.

Jackson Ensley, SU junior and the CEO and chief marketing officer of Popcycle, said that having Sanders associate with Popcycle has been beneficial to the business.

“She’s honestly one of the more professionally-oriented brands that we’ve worked with. She’s really on top of her stuff,” he said. “She’s always on time. Her products are really high quality.”

Popcycle doesn’t require Sanders to pay fees because she’s an influencer. The company waives her fees in exchange for her posting about her work with them, Ensley said.

In addition to selling her own merchandise on Popcycle, Sanders is also a model for other brands that work with the company. She frequently models for Method to Madness, a unisex embroidered loungewear brand founded by SU senior Sarah Green.

Sanders is a neuroscience and psychology major at SU but keeps her influencing and academic lives separate. Courtesy of Shockey Sanders

“She always looks very put together, so it’s great to have someone like that modeling my clothing because it’s nice to have somebody like that associated with my brand,” Green said.

Green said that the posts Sanders is tagged in on the Method to Madness Instagram do better than other content. One post featuring Sanders in a neon orange Method to Madness hoodie did 85 percent better than other posts, she said.

Sanders just signed a second month with Popcycle and is also hoping to drop a new collection in December. The collection will feature sweatpants and sweatshirts and will be unisex like her “Dreadful Summer” collection, Sanders said.

“I want girls and women in the big long T-shirts. I want guys in my tank top and crop tops,” Sanders said. “Like I think that’s awesome, just being able to take it and wear it how you want no matter who you are.”

Published on October 6, 2020 at 9:30 pm

Contact Sydney: sabergan@syr.edu