Forever my celebrity obsession

Do you have a celebrity you have watched grow from the beginning of their career, support them from afar, and appreciate their successes? I discovered Emma Chamberlain soon after her YouTube channel started gaining attention in 2017. Her unique humor and video editing made her charming and I couldn’t stop watching. Her videos became my ‘comfort show’. It’s easy to see her personality through the videos and she is entertainingly relatable and you can tell that she is being her true authentic self. She used to do videos of drive-thru taste tests, thrifting, and more. Her signature look was a crop top and jeans with her ‘poopy’ jacket and a scrunchie in her hair, typically in a ponytail. That ‘poopy’ jacket became one of the most popular pieces around 2018-2021. I guarantee you know exactly the brown fleece jacket I’m talking about. Emma is a self-made woman who had no idea how much she would grow in her career after launching her YouTube channel, which currently has 12 million subscribers. She has a big personality and an even bigger imagination/mind. 

In the most recent years of her career, she has had some partnerships with notable brands including Cartier, Levis, Lancome, Adidas, and Louis Vuitton. I still remember how proud and impressed I felt when I saw her high fashion debut at Louis Vuitton’s show at Paris Fashion Week in 2019. It’s kind of a full circle moment because she started her channel intending her videos to be about fashion. In July 2017, she uploaded a video making her own Gucci shirt and now she’s being invited to their shows. She has also been on the front page of several well-known magazines including Rolling Stones, Cosmopolitan, Vogue Australia, Allure, Harper's Bazaar, and more. There were also features about Emma in magazines such as Forbes and Vogue. She has also interviewed guests at the Met Gala for Vogue’s YouTube channel every year since 2021. In 2022, she and Jack Harlow were a meme for a while because of a clip from one of those interviews.

Like I said before, she is a businesswoman. She has built her brand, Chamberlain Coffee, since 2020. The graphics on the products make it more intriguing and fun! There is a variety of different kinds of coffees and the names fit the roast or flavor well. When I began writing this piece, I happened to be in Whole Foods when I spotted two of her coffees in cans. I got to taste the vanilla and mocha lattes and to be quite honest, they weren’t my favorite. Since the milk is plant-based (almond and coconut), shake it very well before opening or it will be a little chunky. Both didn’t taste very much like the flavors they’re supposed to be, but I also think I hold high expectations for canned coffees. She also has her podcast, Anything Goes, which I will admit I don’t listen to, but I like the merch for it. Her limited clothing line High Key was her style at the time but didn’t last very long. Either way, you can tell how motivated she is in her professional life. 

On to her personal life … Something she has gotten really good at is keeping what she wants private, private. She has always kept her dating life private, though it hasn’t been super tough to figure things out. Her relationship with the singer, Role Model, ended recently after being together for over three years. Though their relationship was kept very private, they gave their fans a little something, sometimes including their interview together for GQ which was uploaded on YouTube on Valentine’s Day in 2023. There has been a lot of speculation on her relationships, but Role Model is the only one who has been confirmed. There were some assumptions about her dating life based on evidence. People believed that she was in a relationship with Ethan Dolan for a bit as well as Aaron Hull, who gained popularity on TikTok in 2019. Her relationship with Dolan was never confirmed, but Hull verified that they were together for a few months. I think she likes to keep her personal life private because she has had relationships in the past, where other people were using her to gain popularity on their channels or profiles. Emma had admitted to feeling used by peers, which shouldn't be the case. She is a wonderful person who has a big personality and it’s disappointing that people would take advantage of that for personal gain. 

I would say that she was the center of a few friend groups, but to me, there are two main ones. The ‘Sister Squad’ and the ‘Girdies’. The ‘Sister Squad’ definitely gained the most amount of popularity due to the group consisting of Emma, the Dolan twins, and James Charles. They were all at the peak of their Youtube careers when this group came together which led fans to theorize that the squad formation was a marketing move. I wouldn't be surprised if that’s true, but their chemistry was undeniable. I think they were genuine friends and spent as much time together as they admitted but I think there was some professional motivation to get together as well. They made a bunch of videos together between all of their channels that I still watch for comfort to this day. Now the ‘girdies’. This group was Emma, Hannah Meloche, and Ellie Thuman. Hannah and Ellie were best friends before Emma came into the picture, but they met through the trips that Dote used to put together (a story for another time). These three were an unstoppable trio. They were pretty, funny, quirky, and everything every girl wanted to be at the time. They were close with photographer Bryant and had many photoshoots all together. I believe they fell out because they grew out of each other. Emma was more based around comedy and silly little vlogs, whereas Hannah and Ellie were/are more focused on more ‘aesthetic’ vlogs. I can’t imagine how let down Emma has felt by people who she can tell are using her for personal gain. But I think she has a good head on her shoulders and can recognize an honest friend.

I love Emma Chamberlain. I think she is an amazing person who deserves the world. She has always been open about her mental health, whether it’s depression or anxiety, and I appreciate her transparency. Being watched by the public eye is a difficulty I could never imagine myself facing. She handles it with grace and knows how to handle herself. I can’t wait to see what she does in the future and I’m confident it will be great!