admin Ice Spice, the Bronx pop-trap sensation who’s been running circles around the pop culture hive mind all year, warned us about her winning streak months ago.
“Everybody was tryna be like, ‘Oh, she’s a one-hit wonder,’” she said in a since-viral clip plucked from her appearance on Genius’s Verified YouTube series. “But now, it’s like, ‘What? Two-hit wonder?’” True to her word, Ice Spice has been serving up hits—musically, yes, but also culturally—ever since. After her buzzy first hit “Munch (Feeling U)” dominated TikTok and local airwaves last summer (the song later inspired her official “fandom” name, with her fans terming themselves “Munchkins”), a collaboration with Taylor Swift earlier this year sent Spice into the hype stratosphere. Last night, she collected a MTV VMAs Moonman for Best New Artist. And where better to fete new superstardom than at New York Fashion Week?
Doja Cat and Ice Spice at SSENSE and Jean Paul Gaultier’s NYFW party.Nina Westervelt/Getty Images
Since the timing of Ice Spice’s rise just so happened to cosmically align with the fashion industry calendar, this wasn’t her first fashion week: At the last NYFW in January, she sat front row at Dion Lee (next to Julia Fox) and Coach (next to Lil Nas X) and performed at the afterparties for LaQuan Smith and Tia Adeola. This season, Spice was the belle of the ball once again: She sat front row at Dion Lee again (this time, sandwiched between Kali Uchis and Diplo), before climbing up on top of the bar at the Boom Boom Room to perform at the brand’s afterparty. The next night, she and Doja Cat caused a minor riot at retailer SSENSE’s Jean Paul Gaultier party.
But what really made it feel like Ice Spice was everywhere this week was what she was able to accomplish outside of her packed NYFW schedule. There was last night’s aforementioned MTV Video Music Awards, where she and Swift emoted to their hearts’ content. (They also both won big: while Ice took home Best New Artist, Swift won seven of her eight nominated categories, including Video, Artist, and Song of the Year.) In another feat of expertly timed marketing, Ice Spice also announced a collaboration with Dunkin’ Donuts on Tuesday, which she celebrated with a custom Elliante diamond-encrusted “Munchkins” chain, in ode to her fandom. The collab includes a limited-run beverage with the straightforward title of “the Ice Spice Munchkins Drink” (the recipe, which contains coffee syrup blended with whole Munchkin donut holes, has torn Twitter apart) and an ad spot co-starring fellow Dunkin’ ambassador Ben Affleck.
