For one Texas influencer, a viral moment has turned trips to H-E-B into an unlikely fashion community. Now, he’s telling MySA that the whole saga feels more like a sketch than real life.
A creator by the name of @sartoriatejas on TikTok went viral in January after dubbing the beloved Texas grocery store the “Haus of H-E-B,” sharing his ‘fit check to roam the aisles and encouraging others to join the wave. The original video racked up more than 100,000 views and prompted him to post several other installments to the “Haus of H-E-B” series. He tells MySA he’s gained a massive amount of followers in the months since, and he even partnered up with the chain for a trip to the Houston Rodeo.
“It had felt like a trend in the beginning, but as time went on, so many people began sharing with me their journey,” @sartoriatejas told MySA via email. “When I first shot the original Haus video, I was getting super dressed up and grieving the loss of my father, because putting myself together felt like the only thing I had in my power in my grief. And then it blew up, and I found that so many people had resonated with this mantra of ‘If you look good, you will feel good.'”
It gained so much popularity that an H-E-B store in Lubbock created a Haus of H-E-B-inspired display.
According to @sartoriatejas , there was a bigger conversation at play: have Texans become too relaxed and forgotten how to clean up? The collaboration with H-E-B came around the time that the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo instituted a dress code, “and sure, there was a lot of backlash from people with comments such as ‘I’ll wear what I want, don’t tell me what to wear.’ And that was never my intention,” @sartoriatejas said.
“I never wanted to tell anyone what to wear, but telling people to feel good about themselves through their appearance.”
All in all, partnering with the company “feels like a full circle,” @sartoriatejas said, noting that he believes H-E-B took notice of his videos “because of the family I gained through this strange grassroots movement that felt like a community.”
“This is what Texas is all about, a community of people coming together and helping one Texan out through a hard time, even if it feels so ridiculous in a way of dressing up,” @sartoriatejas said. “It really proved that it had resonated with so many people and connected a community that I didn’t know I had …What is more Texas than a community of people getting a man who dressed up to go grocery shopping, being sent to the rodeo. It feels like [a Saturday Night Live] sketch, but such is reality.”