A 5-year-long international pursuit to identify a mystery celebrity included in the design of a piece of fabric has finally been solved.
The hunt started five years ago when a Reddit user from Finland posted a picture of a piece of fabric they bought in 2008, which featured celebrities who were popular at the time.
Seven of the eight stars were numbered and named fairly quickly, but not one out of the 46,000 fans could agree on who number six was — until this week.
Highlights
- A 5-year-long investigation to identify 'Celebrity Number 6' from a piece of fabric ends with Leticia Sardá being named.
- The mystery started when a Reddit user from Finland posted a picture of a fabric with unidentified celebrities.
- Despite years of online scrutiny, Sardá was unaware of her viral status until recently informed by friends.
After more than half a decade of searching for “Celebrity 6,” the star was identified as Leticia Sardá
Image credits: Brittany G
43-year-old Spanish model Leticia Sardá lives in Tenerife in the Canary Islands. She has two kids and used to work for world-famous brands like Burberry, L’Oreal, and Levi’s.
During her career, she collaborated alongside celebrities such as Ian Somerhalder and Tom Welling but ultimately decided to settle down in 2009.
Image credits: blameitonjorge
Although Reddit users have been searching for her identity for years, Sardá mentioned to Spanish Vanity Fair that she wasn’t aware of her trending status.
“I still can’t believe it,” she said. “And I didn’t know anything about it, until two days ago. I had no idea about all this.”
Because she isn’t present on social media, she only discovered the news when someone she knew said she had “gone viral on TikTok.”
The breakthrough began when someone found out the fabric’s place of origin
One user from Reddit found out the fabric had come from a textiles store called Anttila, which had been based in Finland 10 years ago.
Quickly, more Internet sleuths joined in on the hunt, with one user going through old Anttila catalogs from 2008 to 2009 — the period the fabric had been bought. Within a short amount of time, the real fabric was found.
Knowing that mystery “Celebrity Number Six” was a star relevant during the time, the name Leticia Sardá was thrown into the guessing pool.
Most of the features matched such as the eyebrows and jawline, but netizens weren’t completely satisfied as they didn’t have the original photo the illustration was based off of.
One user was later able to track down a fashion photographer who had worked with Sardá during that time period.
Image credits: leticia.sarda
On September 8, he confirmed that he worked with the model and the fabric did, in fact, feature his work — albeit without his permission. He also provided the original photo that the designer of the fabric had used.
Hours after the confirmation, Sardá came forward and said it was her.
“It’s me, 100% sure,” she posted on social media.
Now that the years-long mystery has been solved, social media users have been very vocal about their thoughts
Image credits: RedditLurrrker
It may be no easy task to let go of for some people.
One user said, “As someone who has been lowkey obsessed with the Celebrity Number Six mystery for a WHILE, I can’t believe it! She’s been found! Now what am I gonna do with my life???”
Others were impressed with the many sleuths who were able to track down the star.
“Damn dude, we need to get you on the Zodiac case. Good job,” one said while another added, “You will live in Reddit’s Hall of Fame! Great detective work.”
People are overjoyed that the multi-year long Internet mystery has finally been solved
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