Rising star Ashley, aka bestdressed, plays the role of the fashionable, sarcastic older sister to her 1.9 million subscribers, but, only going by her first name, her own parents still have no clue about her presence on YouTube.
However, Ashley has not always been serving looks and creating cohesive outfits cute enough to make any thrift fan swoon. She actually considered herself a tomboy, sporting khaki capris and plain T-shirts, until her sister convinced her to watch “Project Runway” with her every night. Somewhere along her journey with Tim Gunn, young Ashley became interested in fashion.
In an interview in May, the recent UCLA graduate explained that she found her love for thrifting after getting her wisdom teeth removed. To distract herself from the pain, she tried thrifting for the first time, ultimately discovering what would lead to her internet fame.
After finding surprisingly cute second-hand clothing, bestdressed ventured into the world of reselling thrifted clothes online through popular websites and apps like Poshmark and Depop.
Although today she resells thrifted clothing on her own website, bestdressedstore.com, her presence online shifted from sales to videos her senior year of high school. While looking for an outlet to share her love of fashion, she posted her first video, “How to Style a T-shirt Dress 5 ways (Original Version).” She called her channel “bestdressed” because she won the “best dressed” superlative in her senior year of high school.
Both her resale business and her YouTube content quickly became full time jobs while she attended UCLA, studying film. She began regularly posting a variety of content from fashion essentials and how-to videos to rant-style vlogs (which she calls “chatty” videos) every Thursday while restocking her online store with her recently thrifted finds. Balancing schoolwork, her online presence and store as well as other jobs outside of fashion occupied most of her time during her college years.
After graduating with a degree in film, TV and digital media from UCLA earlier this year, the young YouTuber now has more time to cater to her growing audience. She hit 1 million subscribers in March, which she celebrated by attempting to eat a million pieces of cereal in her video, “eating 1 million pieces of cereal for 1 million subscribers.” The video idea was in honor of her fans and her limited college diet that mostly consisted of cereal, especially cinnamon toast crunch.
Free from the perils of homework assignments and dreaded deadlines, bestdressed found enough time to create and share on YouTube, leading over 900,000 more subscribers to join her fanbase in less than four months.
In addition to graduating this year, Ashley found more help for her online business in the form of her new boyfriend, personal trainer David Camus. Before dragging Camus into her world of edited Instagram photos and overshared personal information online, Ashley’s posts on YouTube and Instagram, @best.dressed, were limited by her own two hands.
She has remarked in several of her videos that she took most pictures by balancing her camera on the edge of cars, trashcans and fences and even gave her viewers advice on perfecting these solo strategies in her videos, “how i take instagram pics by myself” and “HOW I SHOOT LOOKBOOKS BY MYSELF // behind the scenes vlog.” Thanks to Camus, his fashion YouTuber girlfriend now has a designated photographer and videographer, making her life easier.
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Her independent one-woman film production crew, her effortlessly relatable personality and her unique self-proclaimed “picnic b—h” fashion sense all come together to complete the older sister figure, aka bestdressed, that is taking the fashion and thrifting community on YouTube by storm.
Before committing herself to be a full-time YouTuber, Ashley gained film experience by working for the DIY YouTube duo, The Sorry Girls. She edited their YouTube videos for them, until she quit to focus on her own channel. In honor of her time working with them, she posted her first collaborative video with them titled, “HOW TO BUILD A CLOTHING RACK ft. my ex-bosses.”
Her passion for film also carried over from her classes at UCLA to the fashion videos she posted on YouTube. Some of the signature aspects of her uploads include hand drawn animations, bright and simple backgrounds and unique angles that resemble the cinematography of a short, indie film rather than a simple fashion vlog.
Ashley also touched on her love of films in her uploads like, “geeking out about movies for 24 minutes straight (my favorite films).” While studying at UCLA, she also uploaded some of her own short films onto her channel such as “FRIDAY NIGHT (a short film on 16mm)” and “VINYL // a short film about modern love.”
Her uploads, filled with her dry humor as well as her bluntly honest thoughts and feelings, set her apart from the type of fashion YouTubers that portray an unrealistically perfect life as well as the others that try too hard to be #relatable.
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Bestdressed tries hard to make extremely put together and aesthetically pleasing videos, but her blunt honesty about certain aspects of her personal life creates an atypical connection between her and her viewers. Also, her subscribers will not let go the fact that she still has not told her parents about her YouTube.
In many of her “chatty” videos, she covers taboo subjects that she jokes could get her demonetized, such as “losing my v card, masturbation and other sexual adventures.” She returns to these subjects in other videos and even mentions her experiences with alcohol, existential crises and the social side of college before vlogging her drinking adventures with Camus on her 21st birthday in “getting *litty* on my 21st birthday.”
Her unfiltered and uncensored advice to her subscribers has made many viewers feel like they are just chatting with a friend, or even their older sister, while watching her videos.
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On a less personal note, bestdressed also uploads how-to and advice videos helping her fans organize their outfits, closets and even their lives. One of her most recent videos that would fall in this category, “HOW I MAKE THAT BREAD (literally and figuratively),” features Ashley trying to bake bread while giving viewers advice on budgeting, jobs and money in general.
Last, but most certainly not least, bestdressed attracts new viewers and subscribers through her genuine eye for fashion and aesthetics. Some of her most popular uploads focus on the most basic parts of fashion, from “how to put together an outfit 101” to “50 OUTFITS for when you have nothing to wear.” Her most recent video, published in July, is even about, “how to find your style + the confidence to wear it.”
Ashley focuses on the quality and essential pieces of clothing rather than the trendy, fast fashion which dominates the ever-changing fashion landscape today. Her style meshes mature and girly pieces with edgier items with thrift-sourced vintage items and lots of gingham (where her style’s nickname, “picnic b—h” originates).
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Most of her closet consists of versatile items — such as a dress that can be tucked into another skirt or put on underneath different shirt — so that she can create a larger variety of outfits out of fewer individual pieces. This ties into her passion for reusing and reselling thrifted and old clothing.
Bestdressed has been attracting all sorts of fashion and film fans to her channel since 2015 with her attention to each and every aesthetic detail, her personable personality and passion for fashion. However, there is a lot more in store for her channel now that she graduated, so you should check it out if you haven’t yet before you miss out on more sex advice and gingham.
