Michelle Phan was a beauty vlogger long before the likes of James Charles and Tati Westbrook
built their respective followings on YouTube.
She began her YouTube channel in 2006, a year after YouTube itself launched, and she's changed
quite a bit over the years.
This is her stunning transformation.
We know her best as Michelle Phan, but the beauty vlogger's Vietnamese birth name is
"Tuyet Bang," which translates to "avalanche."
In an interview with Glamour, Phan said her father chose the name during a snowstorm because
of his daughter's "nonstop energy."
Phan said she takes after her father in many ways, including by being a risk taker.
Although Phan was born and raised in the United States, both of her parents grew up in Vietnam.
Phan explained,
"Their families were like the Montagues and the Capulets, [my father] was from northern
Vietnam, [my mother] was from the central countryside, yet they ran off together."
Phan's childhood was less than ideal.
Phan revealed to Glamour,
"You wouldn't exactly call my childhood stable.
When I was growing up, my father constantly gambled away our rent money.
Every few months we'd get evicted and move."
One night after a particularly "big loss" at the gambling tables, Phan said her father
didn't come home.
She would not see him again for over a decade.
Phan's mother remarried, and, although the relationship seemed like a good thing at first,
her new husband quickly became possessive, and Phan told Nylon that he "ran the house
like a dictator."
Some time after her half-sister Christine was born, Phan's mother left him.
She explained to Glamour,
"Eventually, the four of us [Phan, her mother, her brother, and her half-sister] moved out,
and at age 17, I started working as a hostess to supplement my mom's income as a nail technician
in a salon.
We could barely pay rent, and we had no furniture; I slept on the floor, my clothes in a basket
beside me."
To avoid her home life, Michelle Phan would often stay late after school.
But while at school, she faced bullying.
Phan shared that she'd walk down the school hallways and other students would yell racist
things at her.
She told Nylon,
"It made me insecure about my nationality and race.
It was really hurtful."
That bullying would continue throughout high school, but she continued to try to fit in.
At times, she'd attempt to look more white and would dress in a preppier fashion.
Other times, she asked African-American girls to cornrow her hair or she would put baby
oil in her hair like her Latina peers.
Phan told the publication,
"I didn't really have a defined style.
I didn't know what my culture or aesthetic was, so I would cosplay to feel part of theirs.
I was hiding the true me."
Phan also felt pressure to lose weight.
She explained,
"I did go through a moment where I didn't eat a lot because I wanted to be skinny.
I don't know if you'd call it an eating disorder, I would at least eat dinner.
It was around the time of 'thinspiration.'"
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Michelle Phan reminisced about her mom's job
at a nail salon.
After school, Phan said she would come to help out, and, while there, she'd also page
through the magazines.
She explained,
"I would read all these beauty magazines and I was a sponge.
I was absorbing all of the information and facts."
Little could Phan have imagined that she would one day grace the covers of magazines herself.
However, it wasn't just the beauty magazines at the salon that were inspiring Phan.
"I wanted to be like my mother.
She didn't wear a cape or shoot lasers out of her eyes; she was someone who wore a smile
and made people more beautiful."
Even more than that, though, Phan said her mom made her customers "feel beautiful."
On her YouTube channel, Michelle Phan has used makeup to create all sorts of looks,
we're talking everything from "Gothic Lolita Doll" to "Snow White."
While Phan could use makeup to transform herself into practically anyone, makeup was not part
of her high school "cosplay."
Shockingly, other than lip gloss and mascara, Phan didn't really experiment with makeup
until she was 19 years old.
This was because her mom thought Phan should embrace her natural beauty.
Her mom also believed in always looking presentable.
Phan told Nylon,
"I was taught to dress nice, to show everyone around you that you care.
Even though we had no money, my mother believed in looking good."
Her decision to dress nicely in college led to bullying once more.
Phan revealed,
"I guess in art school, it was cool to look broke.
If you dressed up, you were trying too hard.
But when you come from nothing, it's the last thing you want to look like."
Michelle Phan launched her YouTube channel while attending Ringling College of Art and
Design in 2006.
Her first video, "Natural Looking Makeup Tutorial," was actually a repost of a tutorial she'd
first uploaded to her Xanga blog.
Ah, the good ol' days.
Before she shared the vlog to YouTube, though, it was already a hit on the blogging site.
In just one week, it had been viewed 40,000 times.
That may not sound like a lot today, but, being as it was in the mid-aughts, it was
impressive.
Phan explained to Cosmopolitan,
"Back then, it wasn't as easy as it is [now] to instantly share or retweet anything that
you found online.
You would have to copy and paste a link, and post it to Facebook."
Phan hadn't intended to grow a huge following, but that's exactly what happened.
By 2015, Phan had amassed over a billion views on her videos and 7.7 million subscribers
on YouTube.
Not too bad for a makeup blogger who didn't really start doing makeup until she was 19.
In 2018, the skincare industry grew by 13 percent whereas makeup only experienced a
one percent increase, according to the NPD Group.
Stephan Kanlian, professor and chair of the Fashion Institute of Technology's Master of
Professional Studies program, told CNN Business that it was "the first time in a very long
time" that skincare had surpassed makeup.
Although many of us may have only recently jumped aboard the skincare bandwagon, Michelle
Phan has long been a believer.
In her very first YouTube video, she advised viewers to begin their makeup routine with
a cleansed, toned, and moisturized face.
"You get better, natural-looking results when applying makeup on a clean face."
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2012, she revealed some of her top beauty
tips, including simple skincare steps such as drinking more water and always wearing
sunscreen.
She told the Journal,
"Sunscreen is really important, especially now.
Not just because it's going to reduce wrinkles and brown spots and so forth, but also for
your health too."
In 2011, Michelle Phan co-founded Ipsy, a subscription service that provides samples
of beauty products for a set fee each month.
And success quickly followed, with more than a million subscribers in 2015.
Later that year, Ipsy was valued at $500 million.
Phan admitted at Forbes' 30 Under 30 Summit,
"I didn't have a roadmap.
I just did it because it was meaningful to me and I wanted to disrupt the beauty industry."
She certainly succeeded.
However, Phan decided to leave Ipsy in September 2017.
Jennifer Goldfarb, the subscription service's co-founder and president did acknowledge Phan
as "the original creator" who "inspired a generation" when speaking to Racked.
While some may look to Michelle Phan as her generation's rags-to-riches story, Phan's
success hasn't been without struggle.
Even though Ipsy was thriving, Phan's line of makeup, Em Cosmetics, which launched with
L'Oréal in 2013, "flopped," in Phan's own words.
She wrote in an article for Teen Vogue in 2017,
"I had Reddit forums dedicated to hating on it.
I was bullied.
I hate using that word because everyone is bullied, but I was digitally bullied."
She chose not to clap back at consumers who were calling her formulas cheap, writing,
"I could have said a lot of things, but the thing about the internet is that you cannot
have a legitimate [argument] with someone online and win."
Instead, she decided to detox from social media, and she took a total online hiatus.
As her fans surely remember, Phan went totally radio silent.
Nearly two months after penning that article about her "social media detox" for Teen Vogue,
Michelle Phan returned to YouTube in June 2017 with a more in-depth explanation about
why she took a break.
"Who I was on camera and who I was in real life began to feel like strangers.
Money can bring out the worst in people, and I was no exception."
She further explained that she was struggling with depression, and, quote, "wanted to be
forgotten," which is why she "began posting less online."
Phan went through her YouTube channel and purged a lot of her videos.
She then changed her profile picture to a black box, all of which worried her fans.
She told Racked that some people thought she was dead, but in reality, Phan was actually
reinventing her life and herself.
After Michelle Phan decided to step away from everything, she took nine months to travel
everywhere from Egypt to Europe in an effort to, as she explained to Racked, "heal" and
"reflect."
Phan recalled packing her "whole life" in "one piece of luggage" and leaving without
saying a word to anyone, including her business partners.
During her nine months abroad, Phan reconnected with nature.
She wrote in Teen Vogue,
"Nature healed me.
Nature reminded me that everything we've built around our world that we have today doesn't
really matter."
When Phan eventually returned to Los Angeles, she said nothing had really changed, even
the digital scene, but she came back a different person.
She promised her fans,
"I am not gone, guys.
I'm stronger than ever."
Although Phan didn't share specifics, she said she'd returned from traveling with a
renewed sense of self and clarity.
She had plans of breaking into "other industries."
It may have been vague, but for longtime Phan fans, it also sounded exciting and promising.
Em Cosmetics may not have been successful under L'Oréal's control, but Michelle Phan
didn't give up.
After her line failed, she bought it back from L'Oréal via Ipsy in late 2015, and,
in April 2017, she launched Em Cosmetics once again.
Although Phan was disappointed that Em Cosmetics didn't take off the first time around, she
told Racked,
"It was through that failure that I started to get more interested in the business aspect
of everything."
While Phan was no longer on a digital detox, she didn't return to posting makeup tutorials
on YouTube.
Instead, she focused on working on her cosmetic label.
Phan herself expressed her discomfort around fame to Racked, saying,
"Getting recognized in real life is always weird, because you never know when it's gonna
happen.
I can't even tell you how many times I had to take pictures with people in the bathroom.
It's the most awkward thing."
For years, we've been able to watch Michelle Phan transform in front of our very eyes,
thanks to YouTube.
Phan's decision to move behind the scenes may mean we're not privy to her everyday life,
but the beauty guru continues to transform all the same.
She revealed to Teen Vogue,
"Em [Cosmetics] is going to be an introduction of my evolution.
Because I've been evolving since I was that 15-year-old on Xanga.
I'm changing, and I want to show people that it's okay to change and to grow."
Em Cosmetics has even brought Phan back to YouTube.
In a short vlog simply titled "Hello," posted in September 2019, Phan showed her face on
YouTube for the first time in years.
Looking as radiant as ever, she showed viewers a behind-the-scenes glimpse at Em Cosmetics
and an upcoming product: Morning Dew Crystal Lip Gloss.
Fans were thrilled about Phan's return to YouTube.
One viewer joked,
"I just watched 3 minutes of pure ad and I'm somehow not mad at it??"
We hope to see more videos from Phan in the future!
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