Who is Emma Chamberlain, the American Léna Mahfouf?

Her name is Emma Chamberlain, and she's a bit like the American Léna Mahfouf. Like the French entrepreneur and videographer, she has become a powerful fashion influencer who has 15 million subscribers on Instagram, and 12 million on YouTube. Very popular in the United States, she was invited by Vogue to ask questions to celebrities for the first time during the Met Gala in 2022, and repeated the experience in 2024, a sign of its status.

She also used this power to boost the career of her ex-boyfriend, singer Tucker Harrington Pillsbury, simply by appearing from behind in one of his music videos. The video thus allows the rapper to go from “emerging artist” to “friend of Emma Chamberlain”. A title that couldn't be cooler, which will give him a stage all to himself during the famous Coachella Festival on April 22, 2022, a month later.

For seven years now, Emma Chamberlain's influence has continued to grow. At the age of 23, she is able to defy the Youtube algorithm – which forces you to publish regularly – by having posted only nine videos in one year. She can also be responsible for the commercial success of a fashion collection, inspire millions of young girls on TikTok to consume the same drinks as her, or make hundreds of fans scream when she arrives at the entrance of a fashion week show. And, like many girls of her generation, it all started for her behind a camera in her little girl's bedroom.

California girl

She was born on May 22, 2001, in San Bruno, California, to a father, Michael Chamberlain, an artist who specialized in oil painting and photography, and a mother, Sophia Chamberlain, a flight coordinator who previously worked at Microsoft. The couple divorced when Emma, ​​their only child, was 5 years old. “They’re still friends, they talk all the time. I'm really lucky in that way, they get along very well. And they support each other a lot,” she told the magazine at the end of 2023. People . But this separation will still have repercussions on the young girl, particularly on a romantic level. “It gets a little shocking when you're older and you're like, 'I'm in my first relationship, what is this supposed to be like?' I don’t know, I’ve never experienced that.”

Emma attended Central College in San Carlos, then began her high school years at Notre-Dame in Belmont. It was also during this period that she discovered cheerleading, and practiced it competitively for five years. But Emma Chamberlain was not destined to stay in school. Too sensitive, a jack of all trades, or just too different? She left school during the first semester of first grade, took refuge on YouTube, a platform she discovered at the age of 6, and published a first video on her channel in June 2017. Dressed in a simple white t-shirt, hair in a ponytail, the young girl presents her latest purchases. But it was in July 2017, when she published a video titled “We owe the Dollar Store an apology,” that she first found success. In one month, his channel went from 40,000 to 150,000 subscribers.

The first “unretouched” influencer

Her style of video is a hit because it is different: she is the first to opt for chaotic editing when other YouTubers take care of their content. She has fun distorting her body with filters and taking close-ups of acne spots. Very often, she yawns, burps, films herself without makeup or in the middle of sobbing. No introduction, no conclusion. Often, videos end suddenly and leave the viewer wanting more. She is also able to stay for several seconds searching for her words, staring into space, rather than cutting this sequence like a seasoned influencer would do. Implicitly giving the impression of being like any teenage girl her age, that is to say more or less vulnerable. In short, without really knowing it, her personality makes her the first “unretouched” influencer, the one who speaks to everyone.

Physically too, Emma Chamberlain has a characteristic that makes the difference: large, dark-circled eyes with low eyelashes which, like Billie Eilish, constantly make her look tired. “I learned to love my dark circles this year. I think my style is becoming a little more grunge, a little more natural. I feel like my dark circles make me look like a Tim Burton character and I'm not angry about it,” she revealed about this in the columns of the magazine Elle in 2021.

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Riding the success of YouTube, she moved to Los Angeles in 2018 with YouTubers equally famous in the United States at that time: James Charles, Grayson Dolan and Ethan Dolan. At the Christmas time of 2018, his channel had 6 million subscribers. Enough to be nominated the same year in four categories at the Streamy Awards, the Oscars of web production. She won the Breakout Creator Award. Ultimate consecration: on November 13, 2019, the magazine Time decides to include him in its Time 100 Next lists and that of the 25 most influential people on the Internet.

Queen of an empire

Influencer…or should we rather say entrepreneur. In 2019, Emma Chamberlain founded Chamberlain Coffee, her own company which markets coffee and related products. A nod to her passion for this drink, which she prefers cold, with milk and filled with ice cubes. Moreover, the Ice Latte Coffee phenomenon (cold coffee with milk, in French) which overwhelmed TikTok a few years ago owes part of its success to Emma Chamberlain. The results of his company are there: it raises 7 million dollars from investors during a fundraising in 2023, and would have generated according to Forbes no less than 20 million dollars in revenue during this same period. In November 2024, it signed a first collaboration with the eyewear brand Warby Parker, offering several models sold for $95 each. Unsurprisingly, the label declares that this partnership becomes the most lucrative in fourteen years. Another example of the influence of this young woman, able to start trends with a single photo posted on Instagram.

Naturally, the fashion industry soon came knocking on her door. In 2021, she was named ambassador for the Louis Vuitton brand and regularly travels to Paris to attend fashion shows orchestrated by artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière. Two years later, Lancôme made her its new muse, while Vogue gives him his microphone during the Met Gala.

Mental health priority

But with success also comes pressure. Everything Emma Chamberlain touches turns to gold, but sometimes it's to the detriment of her sanity. “I felt guilty because I had what other people dream of, and I was so scared and depressed and broken. But at the same time, I feel like I was made to do that,” she confided to New York Times in 2023. Because before becoming famous, Emma Chamberlain was always this girl “like the others”, at least in appearance. The one who gives herself the right to be troubled, romantic, sad, or downright depressed. And it is to put her emotions into words that in 2020 she signed a contract with Spotify, with whom she produces her podcast Anything Goes . A bubble in which she expresses herself on a thousand and one subjects: from the notion of revenge to the return of 2010s fashion, including existential questions like: “Do I want to be beautiful or interesting?”.

Her own way of proving that beyond the fairy tale there is always a dark side. As she related to New York Times : “It’s an industry that makes a lot of false promises. I feel like it's my duty to say, 'OK, someone has to tell you that you're not going to reach nirvana.' A point of view which seems to comfort his community, ever more numerous to follow his adventures. His latest Youtube video, posted two months ago, deals with “hair theory”. A very “niche” subject (according to which the way one wears one's hair is the mirror of the soul) which has nevertheless been viewed more than 1.2 million times.