Chriselle Lim: The first two people I became quite close to were Michelle Phan, who was the YouTube makeup OG, and Aimee Song. Michelle really pioneered that space for beauty and taught me the ropes, so I'll forever be grateful to her and remember her for helping me get started. I'm still very, very close to Aimee. I think we met at a Victoria's Secret luncheon. It was just Aimee and me back in the day, especially within the LA fashion scene for influencers. We went to our first Fashion Week together in both New York and Paris — we used to sneak into fashion shows together because no one would invite us. We did everything together and supported each other.
Tina Leung: Susie [Lau], Bryan [Yambao], Tina Craig, and I started around the same time. We started going to shows together, not having the best seats or receiving the warmest welcomes, so it was an interesting barrier to break together. It's been over 10 years already, and we're still great friends. I've definitely had moments where I'm with a fellow Asian in the industry and we realize we're the only Asians there, but I never really noticed there weren't many people that looked like us because I was trying to survive and make a stamp, period, for both Asians and myself.
