Ashtin Earle Is Playing It By Ear

Ashtin Earle walked into the men’s final at this year’s U.S. Open with the same goal that nearly every single attendee has but won’t admit: to see a celebrity.

“When we first sat down, we were like, ‘We need to see famous people,’" Earle says. Then she started hearing the whispers. “I was like, ‘I think someone just said Pat Mahomes,’ and my friend Sally goes, ‘Do you know what that means?’" She didn’t. “But then I see Travis Kelce. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, I know what that means.’ Then, someone moves, and I see Taylor.”

“It was crazy,” she continues, shaking her head. “There were people leaning over from the levels above them to take pictures. And they were just all over each other.” Earle rattles off the names of a few other celebrities she spotted — Andrew Garfield, Usher, Matthew McConaughey — ignoring what is becoming the increasingly larger elephant in the room of her life: for Gen Zers across the world, she is now the celeb spotting.

It was not even two years ago when Alix, the elder of the Earle sisters, became an overnight sensation on TikTok, and soon, beyond. But sometime over the summer, it became clear that there wasn’t only one internet It girl in the family. “All of a sudden, I was going out and would wake up and see videos of myself all over [the internet],” Earle, 21, says. “I was like, ‘What is going on?’"

While the presence of another Earle girl may have seemed sudden, the allure of the bright, bubbly blonde ingenue and her younger, edgier, brunette sister is nothing new; think Gigi and Bella, Delilah Belle and Amelia Gray, Jessica and Ashlee (once she brought out the box dye). While Alix shot to success with her open-book, stream-of-consciousness day-in-the-life videos, it’s Ashtin’s mysterious allure that piqued the PopCrave generation’s collective interest.

It’s the morning after the Open, and Earle is fresh off an early-morning photo shoot and zooming up the West Side Highway to attend Coach’s Spring 2025 runway show — her first-ever fashion show. Like her older sister, Earle is unfailingly polite and professional in conversation. Yet, for someone so new to the world of being a public figure, she answers questions quickly and without overthinking it — as it turns out, that’s the key to this whole thing.

“Honestly, I just did [TikTok] when Alix started, because she was like, ‘There's so many great opportunities,’" she says. “This summer really took off for me in a way, because I was posting more stuff that felt like me and not just trying to do content to do content. I was doing ‘get ready with me’ just to have stuff to post. I would get nervous to be too weird. Then, honestly, I stopped caring as much.” She points to a June clip of her mouthing Charli XCX’s “I don’t think I’m a bitch” quote, a 10-second video with nearly half a million views. “I was gonna use this sound and now I can’t bc ur cooler,” Alix wrote in the comments, to which she replied, “i’m gonna have to agree with u on this one.”

“We have always been so opposite,” Earle says of her older sister. “And it's not like I'm outwardly trying to be different from her [now], but I think it's also a thing that she is my older sister, so she gives me the ick. I'm like, ‘Don't do that.’ So then I go the other way. At first, I did pretty much just try to copy her videos, and it was super awkward and unnatural. She's much more animated and I'm just not. I can't even try.” Her strategy, in that sense, is not to have a strategy. “ I don't really have any rhyme or reason behind the content,” she admits. “It's just whatever feels right. I've noticed, though, if I ever try to force out content, it doesn't do well, and it feels awkward to me. So I just don't force it.”

Then, of course, there are the viral videos that really aren’t planned. In July, Earle became a trending topic when videos of her kissing DJ John Summit at The Surf Lodge in Montauk set the internet ablaze. “I was like, ‘This is weird,’" she says of waking up to the countless tags and mentions. “But honestly, I think it's so funny. It's not that serious to me. People freak out and blow it out of proportion, and make up all these crazy backstories out of nowhere. And I love to read what people have to say [about me].”

But with her newfound fame, does she worry about having to preemptively tell romantic pursuits, or even her friends, that they might end up on the internet? “Well, that's the thing,” she says. “I never really considered that for myself. And then it just started happening. I don't expect anyone to be posting videos of me when I'm out at school. But honestly, I never expect it. I still don't, even though everyone asks me this. It's in and out, I feel like, when people are chronically online and obsessed with what I'm doing or not.”

She’s experienced the two types of fame firsthand this summer: in spending a week in Montauk with Alix, everyone’s imaginary best friend, and in vacationing with friends and Summit, a headlining and renowned DJ, in Mykonos. “With Alix, and especially with the stuff she posts, everyone thinks they're best friends because they know everything about her, so people want to have conversations with her and tell her about something that relates to something she's talked about. And then that is versus, ‘Oh, my God, I want a picture. I know who you are.’ But it's all relatively similar."

At the moment, Earle’s enjoying her own Hannah Montana moment while she still can; occasionally, she’ll get stopped when out in New York or the Hamptons, but on campus, she’s mostly unbothered — save for the unexpected late-night run-in. “There was one night I was out at the bar on campus, and this group of girls were all coming up to me and taking pictures with me,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘This is weird but maybe they are freshmen?’ Then one of the girls was like, ‘Don't tell anyone, we're in high school. We live in New Orleans and wanted to come meet you.’"

A few weeks into her senior year, Earle is just a few months out from graduating with a degree in psychology. Despite the thrill of the summer, she remained steadfast on returning to campus this summer and graduating with the rest of her class. “I really do just want to be with my friends and enjoy my last year of school,” she says. “Taking time off wasn't really an option in my mind, just because I love being at school so much. And I think having an education is important, because who knows what's going to happen in the future?”

It’s the dreaded question for a college senior: What are your plans post-grad? Rest assured, class of 2025, even Earle is still figuring that out. There’s content creation, of course, and eventually she may revisit her original plan of attending P.A. school. She’s also reconnected with her childhood love of fashion, and is even taking a fashion design class this semester. But first and foremost, she’s doubling down on the business of being an Earle Girl; on Sept. 25, it was announced that Ashtin would serve as a co-host for Alix’s popular podcast Hot Mess on the upcoming second season. “I love doing things with Alix,” she says. “She's my best friend, but she's also a comfort person for me. She's my older sister. She'll always tell me what to do or what not to do, which I love. And I love working with her.”

The general master plan? Make no plans. “I'm open to anything. That's my goal right now.”