Earlier this week, I read a think piece about the modern-day ‘It Girl’ and how, once upon a time, the term used to mean being, not branding. Today, the ‘It Girl’ has been rebranded and repackaged to promote mass consumerism whether it’s through fast fashion or beauty products that you definitely don’t need — all under the guise of the “clean girl aesthetic”. What happened to the real ‘It Girls’? The ones who could leave an impression without having to sell anything? It got me thinking about our very own ‘It Girls’; whose cool aura can just exist; who has that ineffable je ne sais quoi, and the first person that came to mind was Leeloo.
Leeloo Larcombe (who often goes by her mononym, Leeloo) is someone I would call an ‘OG influencer’. She is only 21 years old but she just gets the concept of content creation. She has a natural ability to draw people in with her own niche, and with one glance through her Instagram, you can tell her engagement is genuine.
“I’ve been doing this… I wanna say for about six or seven years now, properly,” she says. “Since I was 11, I really loved YouTube. I loved watching all the vloggers in the UK, and that was kind of where I got my passion from because it was a safe space for me. And my goal is to create that for other people, help other people with creating and being creative with themselves because I think it’s super important to keep your inner child alive. That’s kind of what I integrate with my content.”
These days Leeloo has mostly become known for her distinctive fashion sense, but it didn’t actually start that way. “The thing that got me started was my vlogs on YouTube,” she says. “I did that for quite a long time, and it’s just slowly changed to whatever has been my interest over the years, ‘cause I never not wanna be myself, you know? Then it went to TikTok dances because I did dance in high school. And I did gaming and streaming as well during lockdown.”
Eventually fashion took over, because — as it was during the days of ‘It Girls’ past — people naturally began noticing of Leeloo’s unique sense of style. Fashion has always been a huge part of her identity, she tells me, and so she started sharing outfit inspirations as part of her content. She has also taken up fashion upcycling and turning old clothes into something that she would style with her own existing outfits.
On creating, and curating
When Leeloo says she never not wants to be herself, I interpret it as being real. Leeloo IRL is the real deal. There is no persona or ‘character’ put on; she is exactly as whom you see online. I’ve noticed that many young, up-and-coming fashion influencers on TikTok have adopted a gatekeeping behaviour. But not Leeloo.
“I think I grew up idolising a lot of social media,” she muses. “And it was always something I wanted to achieve, I wanted what they had. And there’s a very fine line of that becoming jealousy rather than the motivation, but I never let it become jealousy. I always try to encourage, and not ‘gatekeep’ the process. Because I’ve gotten it before, where people are like, ‘Oh my God, I love your fashion.’ And it’s so achievable, like, let me tell you where I got it! Let me tell you what I did to this, and this, and this! I just want to share. I want to let people know that what you want in life isn’t unachievable. If I see, for example, a bag that I like and the price is a bit steep, I’m like, ‘OK, how can I make it? And how can I teach other people how to make it as well?’ Because I know I’m not the only person that wants it.”
“My goal is to create that for other people, help other people with creating and being creative with themselves because I think it’s super important to keep your inner child alive.”
Leeloo’s intent is always to grow her community and to revel in their interests together. Earlier this year, for Raya, she created her own Jawa-style kebaya from scratch using lace and batik fabric, showing the entire painstaking process from the beginning to the end result. Leeloo has also been speaking Malay in her videos (she is of Chinese, British and Orang Ulu descent), extending her reach to a wider local audience. Her relationship with fashion has shifted over the years — she has grown with the trends, and while she figures out her style as she goes, she always approaches fashion without judgment. Everyone is constantly figuring it out what works for them.
“Over the past six months, I’ve had this huge identity crisis of, like, what should I wear? What should I be?” Leeloo opens up. It’s this kind of honesty that gives her a real charm, which has become rare in the realm of social media. “Kind of wanting to fit in. And I’ve never felt that before, so it’s a super foreign thing to feel that. It took me reflecting back on my content to figure that out. And I feel like I’m slowly getting to that place of finding myself with that again, and it’s just wearing what makes me happy. It’s really as simple as that. It was looking at what I loved and what I found interesting, and kind of selecting which parts made me feel the most. Like, I’ve noticed it’s been accessories a lot lately, and I’ve never been an accessories kind of girl. It’s just slowly finding key things that inspire you from other people, and adding your own touch to it. It’s always ever-changing. And in a year’s time I’ll look back at this and be like, ‘Why did I get that?’”
On being comfortable in her own skin
Leeloo grew up in Kuching, Sarawak, where she spent her adolescent years soaking up the sun. “We were near beaches a lot, so my family and I would go every week,” she says to me. “I guess being in a city is a huge shift from that. Like, you can’t just nip down. I guess you could go to Port Dickson, but it’s a very different vibe.” She is a self-proclaimed island girl, which is also probably why she visits England a lot less than she does her hometown, or Bali, or literally anywhere else with beaches. (Her father is English.) “It’s very gloomy,” she says of England. “I love the sun. It’s very harsh, the winds over there. If you’re getting any sun it’s just for, like, a week. The sun impacts my moods a lot. I swear, when I go back, I get, like, seasonal depression. I’m just in my bed all day.”
But she is still so young, I tell her, and she can feel always differently about things. “One thing about me is I can’t really envision that far into the future,” Leeloo concurs. She is constantly in a transitional period when it comes to her relationship with fashion and beauty; it is forever changing, and as Leeloo puts it, “that’s a beautiful thing”. “I feel like I’ve been on a real self-discovery journey the past year,” she says. “If you see my Instagram at all, you’ll see it’s changed so much. Like, I used to wear huge lashes and the ‘anime eye’ contacts, and things like that. I feel like what I do now is a huge difference to before, and I noticed that it was because of some insecurities I had. Makeup made me feel very safe within myself. I think with fashion and beauty, it holds an amazing power because it helps you love yourself more. And that was kind of what it was for me for a really long time.”
“Where I’m at now with myself, because I have done a lot of inner reflection and healing, I’ve leaned more to the natural aspect, and just enhancing my natural features,” she adds. “That’s made me feel very ‘me’ as well, with my identity crisis that I had. And it feels very safe still. Makeup has always felt safe to me.”
“I feel like I’ve been on a real self-discovery journey the past year.”
There was a time when Leeloo wouldn’t leave the house without makeup; she only began doing that this year. But it wasn’t due to any external criticism or backlash — it was Leeloo herself that was putting the pressure all on her own. “I faced, like, a lot of social anxiety in the past and I’m slowly overcoming that,” she shares. As she grows and changes, that aspect changes with her.
“Putting myself out there, it kind of just feels not real. It doesn’t feel like you have any substantial existence outside of a screen, but actually, it does impact other people. And when you see that in real life, it kind of throws you off guard but in a grateful kind of way. I don’t think I have complaints about it, I’m super blessed. I’ve wanted this since I was very young, so I think any hardship that comes with it doesn’t really impact me, because I’m living my dream, pretty much. So, I’m just super grateful. I think if you were to ask me in a different time of my life, like a month ago, I would have a different answer.”
On becoming “self-made”
Perhaps it’s not wisest thing to ask a 21-year-old how she believes she has embodied the theme of The Z List this year, self-made, judging by the way she is balking at me. But Leeloo has also been doing what she’s doing for a long time now — and she’s giving out a stream-of-consciousness’ worth of wisdom — that it gets easy to forget how young she actually is.
“How I’ve embodied that? I don’t think I’ve embodied that,” she says. “I think for me, I don’t really want to let myself fall into the ideation of you’ve made it, this is your peak. Because that’s telling myself that everything I do after this is nothing or, like, not enough. So it’s not self-made, but it’s self-making. It’s a journey. It’s a process. With other people, I would tell someone, ‘You’re self-made, you should be so proud of yourself.’ I get the concept. But what it means to me is it’s just a journey. Because maybe in 20 years time, I’m doing something else. I could have already built a family, or a business, and that would still be self-making in the process. It’s work in progress.”
“She wants to be an actress,” Azureen, her manager, cuts in.
“I want to be an actress,” Leeloo echoes with a shy laugh, ducking her head down. “I have too many dreams. I mean, I have some goals, like, I would like to get married and things like that, but I try to focus more on the short-term goals so I don’t get distracted. But I would like for one day to have my own clothing line. Those are aspirations I have that can go on for a long time. And they’re really hard to execute, so setting them up to be like, ‘This is your 10-year goal plan…’ It’s very intimidating to me. But each day, each week, I try to work in a way that is kind of getting there.”
editor-in-chief & creative direction MARTIN TEO | assisted by RONN TAN & MALLIE MARAN | interview PUTERI YASMIN SURAYA | photography EDMUND LEE (ONE3FOUR STUDIO) | videography POR JIA JUN & STANLEY LOH | art JOYCE LIM | makeup KEVIN LEE | hair CODY CHUA | styled by ISAAC CHONG | assistant stylist ZIYIN TAN | wardrobe COACH
