Greatness comes in threes. Team USA Men’s Basketball has Lebron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant. Astrology has the sun, moon, and rising. And Love Island USA has Leah Kateb, JaNa Craig, and Serena Page. This season, Kateb, Page, and Craig — self-titled “PPG,” for Powerpuff Girls— were the undeniable breakout stars of the popular Peacock reality dating series, and it was their friendship that made it happen.
Love Island is, as it sounds, a reality show about finding love… on an island. But even though the focus is romantic partnership via constant challenges, temptation, and avocado toast, it was PPG — and the trio's unwavering friendship — that managed to attract the masses in what felt like divine intervention. “I’m not surprised,” Page tells Teen Vogue of how the trio outshined their romances most of the time. “I barely like men. So I was like, it will be a cold day if I actually leave here with a man. But I did. I love girls, though, so I knew if anything, I was going to find my girls.”
Says Kateb, jumping in, “I think my friendships with girls are much more important to me than with a man. That being said, I don't think I expected to find people I would be this close with.”
Love Island UK originally aired in 2015; it's now on its 11th season. The US iteration began in 2019, but wasn’t, at first, met with the excitement of the original series. Season six of Love Island USA, however, had double the amount of viewers than its previous seasons. After nearly 10 years and so many contestants, fame isn’t an automatic result of an appearance on the show, especially among the myriad other dating shows sprawled across every single streaming platform.
But after what cemented itself as the most-watched reality season in streaming history, Kateb, Page, and Craig have found themselves in uncharted territory. They are the internet’s latest obsession, and have quickly transcended from obscure reality television stars to prime-time internet celebrities, causing pandemonium everywhere they turn.
It’s a blisteringly sunny day on Manhattan's Lower East Side as we wait inside the vintage store Seven Wonders Collective for PPG to arrive. We’re here because the trio is beloved not only for their friendship but for their style (more on that later). Craig struts up to the door first, after being at the Empire State Building, where she was taking photos alongside her beau, Kenny Rodriguez, and a few other cast mates.
As we wait for Kateb and Page to arrive, Craig swipes through her phone, trying to land on a caption for her latest TikTok video. In the video, she and Rodriguez are atop the skyscraper, cuddled up, and Rodriguez is mouthing a scene from the show when he says: “I want you. I need you.” The audio then fades into an instrumental of Champagne Coast by Blood Orange.
The TikTok sound currently has over 13,000 posts. Love Island fans and TikTok creators alike are constantly re-creating their version of the moment Craig and Rodriguez shared on the show. Musical mash-ups like this are seemingly endless after this latest season of Love Island.
TikTok content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Craig giggles as she watches the video a few times, but she can’t decide on a caption. I suggest leaning into the NYC of it all — Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf — given their location: “Three words, eight letters, say it and I’m yours.”
“I can’t say I love him,” Craig says with a laugh. And it’s true. Even the slightest hint of the L-word would set the internet and KaNA (Kenny and JaNa) fans ablaze. Craig decides on the caption “Nostalgia ✨,” just as Kateb and Page walk through the front door.
“Lee Lee, baby,” Craig shouts across the room. The other two members of the internet’s beloved trio saunter over to meet Craig in the center of the store. They quickly check in with one another, relaying details about the night before and today’s early-morning post-reunion filming. On August 14, the cast gathered at Chelsea Studios from 1 p.m. to midnight to film the season-six reunion. It officially airs on August 19 at 9 p.m. Eastern. The group ended up at Tao after the 11-hour taping, which makes this long morning of press all the more challenging.
But their commiseration is quick, and seconds later they spread out to flip through the clothing racks, pulling pieces for themselves, and showing off options they think the others would love. Craig selects a cheetah-print mid-length dress from the rack, pushing it toward Kateb. “I’m trying to guess things that you would wear,” she says.
Kateb hesitates before replying, “I would wear this if it were [Roberto] Cavalli and a little bit tighter at the waist.”
“Hmm… I’ll let them know,” Craig answers, placing the dress back on the rack.
There’s an ease to their friendship; that same camaraderie we all felt through the television screen pours out just the same in person. Newcomers to their world might assume their relationship dates back years, but it began only a few short weeks ago, in Fiji.
Kateb and Craig entered the show together, walking out in episode one, side by side. Page laid eyes on Craig and immediately ran up to introduce herself. “I remember my first time seeing them both,” she says. “It was the first day — my beautiful chocolate goddess walked in and I sprinted toward her. I said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’”
Page walked up to Kateb right after and noticed the letter S tattooed on her hand. “She was like, ‘Is that S for Serena?’” Kateb recalls. “I replied, ‘It could be.’”
Viewers and hate-watchers alike have much to say about fashion on the show. Undeniably, contestants do spend a large portion of the series in bathing suits. But this season, in part thanks to Kateb, has been a fashion show we can’t look away from. Kateb (who now has over 6 million followers across all her social media platforms, and a @leahkatebcloset fashion fan page with over 12,000 followers) is a designer-vintage connoisseur.
She mostly credits her older sister Daria for that love. We saw the 25-year-old Kateb in several vintage Roberto Cavalli dresses, as well as other popular brands like Miu Miu and Jean Paul Gaultier. Her closet was often the go-to shop for all the girls on the island.
“I loved sharing with everyone,” Kateb says. “When putting together an outfit, I like to have a vintage piece and then base my outfit around that. It could be a cute vintage boot, and then I'll wear a fire dress with it that isn't vintage.”
Page is also deep into thrifting and sourcing pieces, adding that most of her closet is thrifted. She loves black clothing, but says there's a show rule that only one person can wear black at a time, which sometimes made things tough.
“There were days where they gave us things from the wardrobe and they would be like, ‘You have to wear this,’” Kateb says. The islanders receive outfits for a lot of big moments on the show, such as challenges, the infamous movie night, and the finale. “We didn’t really wear the things they gave us,” Kateb continues. “We’d be like, ‘That’s cute… for you.’ And that’s not me being shady.” They all laugh.
Page says a lot of the clothing suggestions were very “girly,” something she doesn’t consider herself stylistically. Her style ventures more on the alternative side. She’s been touted by fans as one of the first “nontraditionally styled” islanders, showing up with her septum ring, grills, and Tokyo Ghoul bikini.
“[The clothing choices] were just really cutesy stuff, and I’m not that,” she says. “I grew up a tomboy. I didn't really start getting into my feminine era until college. I love a good little makeup moment, I'm very Southern, very Houston. Sometimes I'll go really girly, but streetwear is my favorite style.”
Kateb spots a pair of Gucci sandals that lead us to the other side of the store.
“I’m a little princess,” Craig says of her personal style. “I love pink and I love a girly girl aesthetic. I’m very bougie, unfortunately, and you couldn’t bring any of your designer, name-brand pieces; we couldn’t wear them.”
Logos were not allowed on the show because of broadcast rules. Page was still able to wear her Prada sunglasses, something she was surprised they allowed, but anything with major designer logos was not allowed in the villa. Nevertheless, fashion still managed to be a major pillar of what made this season all the more special.
This season of Love Island was shaped by PPG for many reasons: the unconditional friendship, the sometimes raunchy and unforgettable one-liners, and because of what they represent. Black and Brown women aren’t often seen as the stars of this type of reality show. More often than not, blonde, white women lead shows like this, and Black women, especially in reality dating shows, are secondary characters to their counterparts finding love. A study by The Guardian found that reality TV contestants from a minority ethnic background are 71% more likely to be in the bottom two, rising to 83% if they're a Black woman.
Initially, Craig almost met the fate of being voted out of the villa, but was saved by Page, Kateb, Liv Walker, and Kaylor Martin. With PPG on top, seeing Black and Persian Iranian women fall in love felt monumental for those who’d spent years being obsessed with dating shows.
“I feel so blessed,” Kateb says. “I couldn’t have thought of two better women to be the face of this show. This was the first season for both the USA (Page and Kordell Beckham) and the UK (Mimii Ngulube and Josh Oyinsan) to have Black couples winning, which is unheard of — and f*cking amazing. I feel like [Craig and Page] are the most perfect representation you could’ve asked for.”
“Wow, I’m going to cry,” Craig says, looking at Kateb. “The things that come out of this girl’s mouth. She’s a scholar.” Kateb quickly disagrees, but they laugh together for a moment, hovering over the jewelry counter. “It’s Leah Island and there’s also Leah University… I graduated from there,” she says.
Craig walks off to join Page looking at a few leather jackets.
Kateb continues: “I’m proud of them and how they’ve represented their community. I know for me, I feel very blessed. The amount of Persian and Iranian people that have come up to me and said, ‘You don't know how much this means to me.’ For me, at least growing up, I didn’t see a lot of Persian women on television. And there were so many stereotypes, you know? ‘Persian women are so hairy, they’re angry, and loud.’ So to now have people messaging me — even some of the messages coming from people in Iran — saying that they love me, I feel so blessed. It’s an honor.”
Craig then calls Kateb’s name. Page has found an undoubtedly cheeky clothing item they want Kateb to look at. She holds up the oversized blue overalls that were lying on the rack. “Who put that there, you messy little f*ck?” Kateb says, laughing. “Anyways! As I was just saying how these women over there are my family.”
Craig pulls out a second pair of denim overalls, this time more fitted for a woman’s body, with a low opening in the back. “Rob’s future wife, though,” she says, holding up the overalls.
Page and Craig start to laugh as Kateb rolls her eyes, saying, “It’s not going to be me.” They tease one another like siblings — sisters, as they all at one point during this interview call one another.
Kateb placed second in the dating show alongside her partner, Miguel Harichi, but she was first coupled with Southern snake-wrangler Rob Rausch. Notably, he wore blue overalls with no shirt and floated through several of the islanders during his matriculation on the show. Kateb was his first couple, and arguably his messiest. Rausch — with ocean-blue, love-struck, attentive eyes — was indecisive, a masterful disaster on a dating show. He went from Kateb to Olivia “Liv” Walker, back to Kateb, and then to Andrea Carmona. From Carmona to Cassidy McGill, then to Daniela Ortiz-Rivera, and finally Kassy Castillo.
It was a journey, to say the least. Kateb dealt with a lot of gaslighting, she says, and relied heavily on her PPG girls to keep her spirits lifted. Without any awareness of the outside world’s perspective while she was on the island, Kateb thought America hated her. Episode 26 of the show, the “Twitter Challenge,” when cast mates read off tweets from alleged fans, was extra vicious. It’s something Craig is still frustrated about.
“It really crushed Leah,” Craig says. “She was crying that day, and it broke our hearts because we know she's a girl's girl. We know she's a sweetheart. So, at that moment, I think we really felt like, ‘How does America hate Leah?’ Liv, too. In the middle of the show, we really thought, ‘Damn, are we doing something wrong?’”
It wasn’t ideal, but those days together made the PPG bond even closer. “I dragged both their asses to Soul Ties with me multiple times,” Kateb recalls. “There is no one else I would’ve wanted with me. Sometimes you just really need your girls with you, and it made us a lot closer. In my really bad moments, they were still there, still helping me. It made me really appreciative of our friendship. And it made me realize these aren’t just girls I’m building a friendship with on this show; no, this is my family.”
This is Page’s first time in New York City, and the welcome committee has been stacked. Everywhere they go fans have appeared, reminding them that their six-week journey on the show has been cemented in pop-culture history. “It’s been crazy, but in a good way,” she says. “I love [the fans]. They make me feel so loved and adored. I just feel like all of them are my friends, like you can’t tell me I don’t know them.”
Craig grabs another piece of clothing, this time what appears to be a pink shirt for Page. “Wait, hear me out,” she says. “If you tucked it and stuffed it into a skirt.”
“No,” Kateb replies.
“Hell, no,” Page quickly adds. Neither girl loves anything pink or frilly — the complete opposite stylistically of Craig.
“I know you guys hate pink,” Craig says. “This is for me.”
All over the internet fans have done a deep-dive into the fashion of the reunion. Craig wore a gray dress from Rick Owens; Kateb wore a black floor-length gown sourced by her friend Emily at Voulez Vous in Los Angeles; Page wore a vintage 2003 Roberto Cavalli sourced by Yuri’s Market.
While the outfits were the talk of TikTok, the Love Island USA Reddit page, with over 178,000 “islanders,” was scrounging the internet for scraps about what actually went down during the reunion filming. We have to wait until tonight to see what happens, but we do expect to lose a lot of the drama — after more than 11 hours on set and only a one-hour reunion, there are bound to be missed moments.
“Yeah everyone that owes Leah an apology, I hope that gets aired,” Craig says. “Connor never gave me an apology. Coye apologized — I hope y’all get to see that one. But everyone that painted Leah to be a villain, I hope their apologies air. I hope you get to see it.”
We end up at the front of the store, PPG facing outside, toward the sidewalk. Page has an affinity for leather jackets and each one she picks up feels like something she needs to leave with. Kateb has gotten her hands on a pair of black boots that fit her size-six feet just right. Craig is still reeling at the fact that both Kateb and Page aren’t huge fans of sparkles, something she finds sartorially indulgent.
Now that the show is over, they can get back to their real lives, something they’re all excited about. Page and Craig have already gone out to California to visit Kateb and her manor filled with farm animals.
“Now that the show’s over, I want to do anything and everything,” Craig says. “I literally want to say yes to everything. A commercial. Put me on a billboard and in a movie, and let me host a show.” Kateb agrees that she can see Craig doing every one of those things.
“I definitely want to get into fashion,” Page says. “I would like to work on the more alternative, streetwear end of the industry. I’m really open to a lot of different things.”
A shopper walks up to the store, meeting the locked door. She peers in, checking to see if she’s missed the opening hours, when her eyes land on the girls. She cups her hand over her mouth. Moments later she’s swiftly tapping into her phone; we can hear it ringing from inside the store. She’s phoned a friend, evidently letting them know PPG is right in front of her. She quickly hops off the call and waves softly at Kateb, Craig, and Page. She records them for a few moments before walking off down the street.
This new lifestyle the girls are facing doesn’t seem to phase them. After being filmed day in, day out for six weeks, it appears a few iPhone cameras are inconsequential.
Craig grabs her bags filled with several items she loved, heading off with the Peacock team to do another interview. The girls all agree to reconnect that night for dinner, sharing adoring goodbyes back and forth. The real love story on this dating show was always their friendship.
We walk out of Seven Wonders together, and are greeted by eight young people loitering around. Two enter the store and start perusing the racks, but the others continue to wait outside, hoping to meet with Kateb and Page. Forty minutes have passed since we saw that eager fan waving from outside the store, but she has returned with another friend, ready to get a picture with the two starlets.
Kateb and Page hug each person waiting to meet them, taking in this newfound fame like it was always meant to find them.
Design Director: Emily Zirimis
Associate Visuals Editor: Bea Oyster
