Michelle Li on Diversity in Fashion
At just 26 years old, Michelle Li is a fashion force to be reckoned with. With her trademark pastel pink hair, dad sneakers, and chunky knits, she is a fixture on the New York street style scene. Amassing over 35k followers on Instagram and being featured in Parade and H&M campaigns, Li boils down her growing journalist-influencer status to just having fun. “It’s all about identifying what you like, what you like from other people’s Instagram, and making it your own,” she said from her apartment in SoHo.
“Something I really value is being able to lift up and support these younger designers and get their name out there through photoshoots,” said Michelle Li, who, as fashion and beauty editor of Teen Vogue, plays a critical part in developing the creative direction for editorial shoots.
For the past year, Li has exposed hundreds of thousands of Teen Vogue readers to smaller brands like Nanushka and Isa Boulder that she discovered on her Instagram explore page. Just last month, Li gave a platform to a collection of small swimwear designers in an article on finding the perfect summer swimsuit.
Despite a strained economic climate, one that’s compounded in publishing by slashed budgets, staff cuts, and an audience largely diverted to rival social media platforms, Teen Vogue’s efforts to champion young designer visibility is freshly resonant. For their September issue, Li is leading the charge, pushing for young designer coverage in an effort to uplift them during this uncertain time. While Teen Vogue has made significant strides at being inclusive to budding designers, she says that New York fashion at large, still has a long way to go. “I definitely want to make it my mission to support these smaller brands so that we can make New York fashion industry welcoming. I feel like the young designers in London are so supported, and that’s why they have such interesting styles and brands coming out of London, and I wish that New York had the same thing,” she said.
Raised in the small town of Carmel, Indiana, with less than 90,000 residents, she contributes the town’s uniformity in shaping her personal style. “Growing up in Indiana, it was pretty homogenous,” said Li. “Everyone dressed the same and had the same style and stuff. I feel like that really pushed me and inspired me to want to change my style and be different.”
From a young age, Li always knew she wanted to go into fashion — she spent her childhood expressing her unique style in sewing classes and her adolescence reading Teen Vogue in her bedroom. But, it wasn’t until she was admitted into Parsons School of Design that her dream of working in fashion, became a reality. Her personal style matured and evolved there: “When I was in Indiana, I always loved really colorful stuff but only if it was more feminine colorful stuff,” said Li. “But, when I went came to New York, it became a lot more sophisticated colors. I still love that stuff, but I think I kind of like toned it down a little bit more and found a way to hone it in and express it in a different way.”
While taking classes, she worked Public Relations at Karla Otto, and briefly at Valentino, before landing at Nylon, where her passion for fashion journalism blossomed. “I pretty much just said yes to trying everything and developed a wide skill set but still stayed focused on what I knew I loved doing,” said Li.
This simultaneous work-study relationship culminated in a rich and varied history in the industry. After graduating with a degree in Business Administration, she was immediately hired as an intern at Refinery29. Over the course of four years, she climbed the masthead and became the associate fashion market editor, where she “met some mentors that I will always be able to go to for advice. I also grew up at Refinery29 — I started as an intern and bounced around doing style, writing, and social. It was my job out of college, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”
When the position of Fashion and Beauty Editor opened up, she made the transition to Teen Vogue. Despite her deep love for clothes and makeup, she tries situate her fashion creative vision on the broader political and cultural context of our time.
“I love that Teen Vogue has always been involved in social issues,” she said. “It’s part of our brand identity. That and helping teens find what their style is.”
A couple of months ago, Li continued that mission for Asian Americans teens. She co-authored an article featuring eight makeup looks to try on monolid eyes. Referencing the often painful relationship Asians have with their eye shape, the article showed ways — everything from gloss to glitter — that emphasized and highlighted the beauty of the monolids. The importance of having exposure for people who look like you and can, in turn, represent you is a sentiment she realized early on as one of the only Asian American families living in Indiana. These days, she recognizes how she’s on the other side of visibility, no longer the recipient, but rather a contributor.
“Inclusion in fashion needs to be something natural - to a big deal and not in place just to meet a certain quota,” she said.