Hague grew up in middle-class Hitchin in Hertfordshire, the youngest daughter of parents who “pushed me and Zoe into doing every sport, every extra-curricular activity, you name it”. As a teenager, she competed in beauty pageants; she worked as a lifeguard, at a gym, and at Boots while studying fashion retail at college.
But social media was always her passion and even at 16, when she started unboxing fast fashion “hauls” that she would upload to YouTube, she knew the power she could wield. By 18, she was making enough from influencing to rent her own Manchester flat, moving to the northern city because some girls she knew from the influencer scene already lived there.
Fast-forward nine years and Hague’s influence is matchless. Whatever she buys, her fans buy; where she goes, they go. So when she announced in September that she’d be launching her own clothing line, Maebe, offering “high-quality pieces designed for daily wear”, the Hague army assembled. The offering of staple basics – oversized blazers, chunky knitwear, pleated trousers – reflected Hague’s own style, having stepped back from the Love Island aesthetic, the neon and bodycon, to favour a simpler, streamlined silhouette.
Within days, the Maebe Instagram account had 880,000 followers; Hague personally met more than 2,000 fans at a London pop-up. It was terrible timing – she’d just broken up with Tommy – but she was determined that the launch, which she’d self-funded and had taken three years to come to fruition, would go ahead. Within 24 minutes of the collection going live, it sold out.
Fran brings in an armful of Maebe clothes, as Molly beams with pride. “I’ve really, like, done pretty much everything myself,” she says of the collection, a “passion project” for her. She caresses a blazer that retails for £140, the most expensive item. The material feels thick and it looks luxurious, but it is mostly synthetic fibres, as are other items in the collection, something that has sparked a backlash on TikTok, with users accusing Hague of selling fast-fashion clothes at a mark-up.
“[It] isn’t the case at all,” she says, sounding wounded, “quite the opposite.” She explains that, “I was quite surprised that people thought that I was going to come with a fast-fashion price point and that kind of product, because I’ve actually not worn fast fashion for a really long time now, probably the last two years.” Really? After all, this is the woman who parlayed her unique hold to become creative director of PrettyLittleThing, owned by the fast-fashion behemoth Boohoo, in 2021 – she only stepped away from the brand in June 2023. (Can she confirm, I ask, that they were paying her £400,000 a month? “No,” she says, “that’s not true.”)
