Toronto teacher’s outfits took her from 50 TikTok followers to 100K overnight, Canada Reviews

With 5 million TikTok likes and 200,000 Instagram followers hanging onto her every post sharing her outfits, Toronto teacher Zahra Hassan sounds like your average fashion influencer. But her day-to-day involves less ring lights and more math tests and art lessons — and she prefers it that way. 

“Teaching is where my passion lies. It’s not just a job for me, it’s a purpose,” she says.

The Toronto elementary school teacher went viral on TikTok in 2022 after her Grade 8 students at the time encouraged her to post some of her outfits on the app. “It went viral overnight. I went from 50 followers of people that I knew to 20,000,” she says. 

Hassan kept posting, quickly reaching millions of views, but the many eyes on her didn’t change much: “I just kept doing my thing, wearing what makes me happy. If they like it, they like it, if they don’t, they don’t. So I don’t feel any pressure at all.”

Hassan says her social media presence has helped her connect even more with her students. “When I’m being my authentic self, I’m creating a safe space for kids to be themselves too,” she says. 

Working in a new school this year that she says has many Black and Somali students, she says students treated her like Beyoncé. “The minute I walked through the door, students were like, ‘I prayed to be in your class;’ it brings me so much joy,” she says. “Kids can feel when teachers care about them and make them feel like they belong; that’s when real learning happens.”

Fashion and teaching have gone hand-in-hand in more ways than one for Hassan.”My first year teaching, a kid in my class asked me to teach him how to be more stylish. So I turned it into a financial literacy lesson, where said, ‘OK, I’ll give you a budget, see what you can make,’” she says. “The next day, he ended up buying his first Nike dunks, which he matched with black joggers, a white T and a chain. I was so impressed!”

Hassan knows her personal style, which she describes as being a combination of streetwear and ’90s hip hop–inspired, is not necessarily what everyone thinks of when they picture “teacher style,” and she says that’s a good thing. “What I wear is appropriate, it’s modest, but people don’t always think so because what people associate with Blackness they see as unprofessional. People in my position didn’t look like people like me growing up,” she says. “It’s important for kids to see that — and if I wasn’t my authentic self, I would be doing them a disservice.”

But even the super stylish have days where they don’t want to think too hard about what they’re wearing — and when that happens for Hassan, there’s an outfit formula she likes to follow: “A good vintage T, either some dad jeans or a good pair of Carhartts and a great pair of sneakers. And if it’s cold outside, maybe one of my staple jackets, just to add a bit more to the outfit.”

Hassan says she sources her most of her closet through thrifting, shouting out Toronto’s Attire Co. and Throwback Vault for statement vintage pieces.

While Hassan has built up enough of a following that she could pursue influencing full-time, she says she’ll never do it — and any money she makes from her videos go right back into her students. “I always tell people, content creation is something I stumbled upon, but teaching is my purpose; it’s not just a job for me. When I wake up six in the morning every single day, I don’t feel like I have to go to work; I say, ‘I can’t wait to see the kids. I hope they enjoy this lesson.’”