When I think about my summer, it’s not bad. I’ve got a holiday booked, a festival planned. But it’s not, say, being paid to go to Dubai. It’s not having an invite to parties, with free-flowing drinks, and swishing up the red carpet in a strategically-placed, eye-catching dress. In short, it is not the summer of Gabby Dawn Allen. And the more I learn about the winner of Love Island All Stars’ life, the more I want it.

I’m sitting in a bustling restaurant, the small plates piling up around us, with Lois North, the founder of Pia Publicity. It’s Lois’ job to ensure her clients, which include Selling Sunset’s Bre Tiesi, MAFS’ Ella Morgan and many Love Islanders including Gabby get the best publicity possibility. She’s their right hand woman when it comes to booking red carpets, magazine covers and TV appearances, and capitalising on post-reality TV fame. Which means she’s perfectly placed to tell me what it takes to become a Love Islander.

After all, since leaving the villa in February this year, Gabby Dawn Allen’s Instagram followers have rocketed to 1.3 million, she’s released a new body building programme, and sure her romance with three-time Love Islander Casey O’Gorman didn’t last*, but her very enviable career will. And, as we call the bill, and I contemplate heading back to our stuffy office, where the air conditioning is always too hot, or too cold, I decide to ask for Lois’ help. If I want to swap my life for one of magazine covers, podcast interviews and brand deals, what do I need to do to get on the show that’s launched so many into stardom?

Cool by association

We’re coming to the end of Love Island’s tenth year on our screens, so I’m guessing you’ll know by now that, every summer, without fail, the nation gathers to watch a bunch of hot, young, single people crack on and mug each other off.

The first episode kicks off with host Maya Jama welcoming the starting line up of 10 Islanders, five guys and five girls. It’s the ideal position to be in if you want to gain popularity, and audience loyalty. It’s where Dani Dyer, Amber Gill and Tasha Ghouri all started from. If I was going on the show, that’s where I’d want to start. But every year ITV receives around 98,000 applications for the show, but there’s been just 364 Islanders (and counting) in the past decade, how on Earth would mine cut through the noise?

Thanks to being part of the industry already, I send an email off to ITV asking what they look for in future Islanders. A spokesperson got back to me, saying their only stipulations are Islanders “must be single, over 18 and looking for love.” While I tick all those three boxes - single for two years, 28, and up for a summer fling (though I could end up with more, there’s been ten babies and four marriages forged from the show) that alone doesn’t give me much hope my application will make it through.

And so I pull Lois for a quick chat (see I already have the Islander lingo down) to see what I actually need to do to make it in. For Lois, there’s one of two ways to go about getting in, and neither of them require an application. The first is to be seen as cool by association, aka being spotted with people who are already in the public eye. “You want to be seen hanging around with the right people. So whether that's people from previous seasons, we've seen that Harriett [Blackmore] is connected with people like [Strictly’s] Saffron Barker, who used to date Luca Bish.”

It’s a way that’s worked from the start. Back in 2015, Cally Jane Beech went on a few dates with a guy called Luis Morrison when he told her he was going on a show called Love Island and encouraged her to apply too. It was towards the end of the audition process and so nothing came of her application. That was until a few weeks into the show when Luis began talking about a girl he had feelings for at home.

“They gave me a call one day, they'd obviously listened for the information,” she explains over the phone. “I'd been a previous Miss Great Britain, so he mentioned that, and I think they'd just done a little digging and found out who I was.” Within a week she was on a flight to Mallorca and strutting into the villa. The pair ended up getting into a relationship and having the first Love Island baby, Vienna, before splitting in 2018.

I begin swiping on Hinge while trying to manifest an ex-Islander to crop up, I do stumble across one season seven Islander and aggressively swipe right, but no luck, as of yet, after all, I am not ‘cool by association’ but I could be.

woman seated at a bar with a stylish backless top holding a cocktail and surrounded by patronspinterest
Lydia Venn
At my most Love Island glam level

Impressing producers

A year before she set foot in the villa as an Islander, Molly Marsh was getting to know which was the most comfortable sun lounger, and where was best for cracking on. How? She was an influencer and had been invited by the show to do a villa tour, showing her followers what the property was like a week before the show kicked off. This route, building a following of my own, to get noticed and scouted by a casting agent, is a solid one for landing a spot. “If you were building a social media following that always helps and being able to attend certain brands events,” Lois suggests.

As an addendum to that, it’s also not unheard of for talent managers or agents to either pitch you to the casting team after spotting you, or you reaching out to a talent agent and agreeing to sign on with them after the show if they get you in.

“An influencer who might be really good looking, and they can see that they're single, they [an agent] will say, ‘Oh, have you thought about doing Love Island?’ And then they will put that person forward to production,” Lois adds.

Ok, with less than a thousand followers it could be a struggle to get a place, but if I start schmoozing maybe I’ve got a shot? I also share my concern with Lois that my age could also be a barrier to me getting in, but she thinks it’s actually an advantage.

“I think last summer there was a shift in age. So I think at 28 you'd be a perfect age,” she adds. Finally, one thing in my favour.

Once you’re on the producers’ radar and you get an audition, how do you nail it? Many previous Islanders state ‘being yourself’ is key and while that is true, it’s also quite frustrating advice. What if I’m just not ‘loud’ or ‘interesting’ enough for TV? As it also appears that having a distinct personality can help. Faye Winter was one of the most memorable Islanders from season seven. She was scouted on Instagram, and immediately won over the casting agents in two phone calls, and in April 2021 made her way up from Devon to London for a 20-minute audition to impress the producers.

“I'd had really dodgy Botox done just before I was going to see them,” she tells me over the phone when reflecting on her audition. “But they liked the story. I went in there and I said ‘really sorry. My face is taped up.’ I had body tape to either side of my eyebrows, and a piece of tape around the back of my head to try and give me some eyebrow lift.”

It was an unconventional, unplanned approach, but it worked and two months later Faye found herself on the starting lineup (the producers did tell her to cool it with the fillers though).

Despite doing the promo shoots for the series at the end of May, Faye only found out officially she was going on the show a few weeks before, meaning minimum prep time. If I was to find myself as lucky as Faye and ready for a summer of love, what would I need to do to get physically ready?

The Love Island Look

Each year the Islanders enter the villa in heels, bikinis and picture perfect hair and makeup. Many of them have hair extensions put in, as “the more hair they've got, the more confidence they have,” Katy Grimshaw, the founder of Spectrum One Hair, tells me. “They're so exposed while they're there, it's just making sure that they look the best at all times.” Her salon has done Grace Jackson’s signature blonde waves both times she entered the Villa. It’s a process that takes around seven hours and if she were doing my hair, Katy says she’d keep my natural colour and would match it to one of the 36 hair extension colours they have.

As for my face, I have a quick catch-up with makeup artist, Lielle Neury, who has been working with Islanders since season two, including Samie Elishi, Sophie Piper and Lucinda Strafford. While the Islanders don’t get access to a makeup artist during the show, Lielle still knows exactly what look works best in the villa.

“It used to be full glam,” she says, referencing the OG seasons. “But now it's a lot softer. It's more just enhancing natural beauty. For you I'd bring a nice pop of blush to your cheeks to tie everything in. I’d add a bit of a bronzy glow to the perimeters of the face. I'd fill in the brows a little bit, but not over the top, just for some natural definition. With your complexion, you'd suit rose gold tones. I’d do individual lashes for sure and then a nude pink lip. Oh, and obviously the body glow. Vita Liberata Body Blur, for me personally and the other girls, some areas of your body can get more tanned. And if you just want to add that extra glow that has a bit of a tint to it, it's perfect to put all over your chest.”

Glowed to perfection, and with my two suitcases [the limit Islanders can take with them] worth of stuff I could be off to Mallorca. The contestants go on lockdown for about a week before they enter the villa, giving them a lot of time to think about their game plan. Although the many I’ve spoken to over my career, including Faye and Cally, will tell you they don’t have a game plan and being yourself is the most important thing.

But while you may not plot what you’re doing in there, Lois does suggest many of them do think of the plan for when they get out of the Villa. However, she warns: “You can't duplicate the Molly-Mae method as much as everyone attempts to. So come out and know what you want to do, but do something that you're passionate and authentic about.”

And if you want to make being a Love Islander a long term career plan, then it’s going to take time she adds. “A lot of people come out and they say ‘I really want to do Strictly Come Dancing’. Well, I hate to break it to you, it's going to take a few years. So if you want to do stuff like that, you've got to play the long game.”

After speaking to all of my Love Islander insiders I sit down and do the maths. In order to grow my following on social media, I’d have to get <extremely> dedicated to posting, three times a day on TikTok and once, on the grid, and then on Stories too. To have enough content to do that, I’d have to be out and about, with a very loyal friend as my photographer, pouting in floral-lined doorways and other Insta-friendly locations. To be seen with the ‘right’ people I’d have to be out every Friday and Saturday night. It’s already amounting to well over a full-time job, and that’s before I’ve even factored in the seven hours for hair extensions.

Or, I could just apply normally and cross my fingers (that's how last year's winner Mimii Ngulube, and other main characters Toby Aromolaran, and Samie Elishi did it) but, either way, I think I’ve decided I don’t think I’m cut out to be Islander material. The thought of having to flirt, on camera, with five guys on my very first day makes me shudder. But, now, when I watch this season, I’ll have a new found respect for the graft. Honestly, Molly-Mae, I don’t know how you did it.

Cosmopolitan UK contacted ITV, who said: "It isn’t about who you know, the only stipulations are being single, over 18 and looking for love."

*Gabby and Casey confirmed their split in May