Love Is Blind‘s Hannah Jiles put a lot of thought into her look for the reunion show — feeling pressure to look her best in front of fans watching the Netflix special and not her ex-fiancé, Nick Dorka.
“I was nervous because I had no clue what to wear,” she exclusively told Luxury Handbag Shopping. “I was shopping for months trying to figure out what to wear.” Hannah, 27, found her answer in a lipstick-red slip dress that flawlessly highlighted her shape, which has been subject to (unfair) criticism online.
Since making her debut in season 7 of the reality series, Hannah has faced massive social media backlash from viewers criticizing her weight on the show as well as her weight loss that followed.
In the lead-up to the reunion, she shared side-by-side photos of her transformation in a TikTok, which the internet was too quick to comment on. When the online chatter shifted to how Hannah, and her body, would ultimately appear on screen at the reunion, she began to worry.
“[In] the beginning when the show came [out], everyone was like, ‘Well let’s see if it’s a filter. Let’s see if she looks different.’ Like, ‘I can’t wait to see her,’” Hannah told Us. “‘What if I don’t look the same?” she recalled “I put a lot of pressure into it.”
While trolls in the comments debated whether she had edited her appearance in the video, Hannah turned to the all-important issue of wardrobe. “I had gotten a couple of other dresses and they just didn’t fit me right. I found that dress, and I was like, ‘Ok, this looks great’” she said.
As LIB loyalists can attest, great is an understatement. Hannah wowed in the body-skimming red dress and it was enough to make her castmates and the audience members do a double take. But for the record: Her glow-up had nothing to do with the fact that she’d be running into her ex.
“It wasn’t like a revenge dress like Ariana [Madix],” she said, referencing the plunging red cutout dress the Love Island star turned heads in at the reunion. “I was just like, ‘This looks good.’”
To help create a scene-stealing look of her own, Hannah enlisted an A-list team who also did the reunion beauty for several other former LIB cast members. When the reality star arrived for hair and makeup, she came armed with a reference photo of supermodel Gigi Hadid.
“I was like, ‘I want old [Hollywood] glam hair,’” she said. “[And] nothing too crazy makeup-wise.”
After the reunion on Wednesday, October 30, she posted an Instagram Reel that gave her followers a BTS look at her glam set to a song that clapped back at her haters with the caption: “🚨 Reunion Ready! 🚨”
At the time, she was receiving comments from critics who said she still had a lot of room to grow and wasn’t “self-aware.” But when speaking to Us, Hannah was nothing if not perceptive.
When asked about whether she had experienced any issues with body dysmorphia after the negative statements were made about her physical appearance, she responded: “I think anyone that puts themselves on the internet might have a body dysmorphia thing, because they will rip you apart. Granted that’s what you do. You put yourself out there, and that’s what’s going to happen.”
Suffice it to say, Hannah also put herself out there with her bold style at the reunion, and she slayed.
