Is there anything Nara Smith can’t whip up herself in her kitchen, dressed in a designer gown with her hair and makeup fully done? The influencer — who is married to model Lucky Blue Smith — has racked up over 8 million followers with her elaborate cooking videos on TikTok, where she painstakingly makes peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, pizza, and doughnuts from scratch.
Recently, Smith’s videos have taken an absurdist turn as she’s tackled Coke, sunscreen, and even chewing gum in her own kitchen. Her latest craving? “A delicious red Marc Jacobs tote bag.” On Monday, the Marc Jacobs TikTok account shared a clip of Smith mixing flour, eggs, water, and red food coloring and kneading the dough until it magically folds into a tiny tote bag. After an hour in the oven, she declares in her signature monotone that it is “perfectly risen and red” and ready to eat. Or, in this case, ready to wear. “This is her humor and people don’t get it!” wrote one commenter. “Top-tier marketing,” wrote another.
@marcjacobs The Tote Bag, made from scratch by @Nara Smith
♬ original sound - marcjacobs
Other commenters called out similarities between Smith’s video and posts by another, smaller TikTok creator, Mary Korlin-Downs, in December of last year. Also in collaboration with Marc Jacobs, Korlin-Downs’s video shows her popping a single red cherry into the oven, where it magically turns into another red Marc Jacobs tote. In another past video, Korlin-Downs kneaded dough into a tank top. “I never think one person owns an idea or owns a concept, we are all in this creative field and we all take different versions of this concept and make it our own,” she said in a post yesterday, adding that she thinks Smith and Marc Jacobs have seen her videos. “However I do feel like it wasn’t made her own.”
@marykorlindowns Replying to @♡HEAVEN ♡ what a wild monday haha #marcjacobs #narasmith
♬ original sound - Mary Korlin-Downs 🤍
This isn’t the first time Smith has been accused of copying other TikTok creators. In June, a South African TikToker named Onezwa Mbola said in a now-deleted video that Smith was ripping off her ideas without credit. (Smith denied having seen Mbola’s videos.)
Meanwhile, Smith acknowledged some of her other critics on Tuesday in a video explaining that she’s more than just a glam trad-wife devoted solely to her husband and children. “I wasn’t aware that finding joy in cooking for my husband and kids would automatically mean that I just slave away in the kitchen, I don’t have a job, and I don’t have a whole production team at my house making that happen,” she said. “I’m a working mom.”
This post has been updated.