Festival season is upon us, and Wendy Ly — or Wendy Skin, according to her 1.2 million TikTok followers — is excited. “I feel like [my followers] don’t know that I am a partygoer, festival girl just by seeing my videos. I seem so tame and calm, but I can party, and I feel like not a lot of people know that,” she tells Her Campus in an exclusive interview. What’s the go-to fit for Coachella this year? The beauty content creator has a feeling “micro shorts will be in this year, paired with cowboy boots.” Plus, “ONE/SIZE just launched a glitter setting spray, and I know everyone’s going to use it,” she says.
But as Ly says herself, festival season content isn’t what she’s known for. She’s made a name for herself in the beauty community, a topic she’s been posting about for almost five years. “Throughout the summer [of 2020], I educated myself on how each skin care ingredient affects different skin types, and it really turned into a beautiful hobby,” she says. “During quarantine, everybody was so bored. I had just turned 20 and I was like, I need to start doing my skin care or I’m going to regret this later. Around that time, the 10-step skincare routine was trending, and I had nothing else better to do than to try that out,” she said. “Along the way, I’ve gained so many new friends, followers — I grew a community, and I wasn’t really expecting this.”
Ly’s channel has seen exponential growth ever since. Her content is now centered around reviewing trending skin care products and partnering with top beauty brands like Clarins, CeraVe, and Lancôme. She inspires her followers to try out new hairstyles and makeup looks, and breaks up her beauty content with videos about her daily life in L.A. with her boyfriend and business partner, Gerald Welly.
Ly’s content and her drive to join the beauty community was motivated by an OG beauty creator. “Michelle Phan inspired my content. She’s been around YouTube forever,” Ly says. “She made me think it’s possible for a first generation Asian American to be something in this industry — in this space that was not [always] accepting of minorities.”
But Ly isn’t just a content creator. She’s also an entrepreneur as the founder of her own clothing brand, House of Envisage. With all the fun that comes with creating new designs and launching them to the public, being a business owner also has its struggles. “The most difficult part is the ideation of the clothing. When we’re ideating the next design, we’re like, is this going to appeal to the audience? How is this going to stand out in the mass market? [Fashion] is a very saturated industry. We’ve had this clothing brand for two years, and it really takes time to perfect something,” she says.
Ly’s brand recently launched a glitter-infused hoodie — perfect for festival season. “We really enjoyed the process of making it because glitter-infused clothing is not that popular right now. So it feels like we’re creating something to interrupt the industry,” Ly says.
With the always-on work that comes with being a content creator and business owner, Ly values taking care of herself. “My go-to self-care routine is staying home and watching a movie, putting a face mask on, and calling it a day,” she says. “I have a really short attention span because of TikTok, so I’ve been trying to sit down and watch a whole movie by myself, something I could never do. It relaxes me and keeps me happy.”
With a community of millions of followers across platforms, customers that support her business, and friends and family by her side, Ly isn’t planning on stopping anytime soon. “I thrive on chaos, and I’ve always been like this. In college, I had a lot of officer positions in clubs, as well as being a full-time student and having my social media account,” she says. “I really love being a very well-rounded individual because it keeps me grounded, and spreading my knowledge is what keeps me going.”