#peekbackstage

Noteworthy Posts

History of idol companies: why some idols become actors

Touring overseas for Asian artists

How artists make money

Brand deals and the music industry

Artists in long distance relationships

Can idols who primarily act go back to music?

Music distribution and streaming platforms

Artist valuation by talent buyers: Xiao Zhan

Career advice: The present state of the music industry in 2021

Live Performance 101: Wang Yibo’s Rules of My World NYE 2021

BJYX: Economic analysis of CP communities

BJYX: Brands banning turtles from fan meetings

Is lip synching okay?

A love letter to an anti

Is it reasonable to blame XZ or WYB for the behavior of antis?

Q&A: Royalties

Artists competing for endorsements?

XZ Studio and 22*7: PR Response Part 1 / Part 2

Is it possible to ethically watch propaganda?

How does Xiao Zhan trending worldwide affect his career?

Beijing Justice Bureau to criminalize “soft violence”

Challenging the North American Gaze: Unpacking Asian Masculinity

Ahem, so, story time! Let me start off with first making it clear that even now I will only work with actresses and actors when I have no viable means of refusal. This is simply a preference of mine and stems mostly from this woman’s behaviors and treatments of me and some of the crew I worked with at the time. I was quite young when I entered my apprenticeship, like barely more than 20, and I was simultaneously accustomed and starstruck by the world I was entering. Before the apprenticeship, I had already been working off and on via temporary contracts and commissions as a MUA at the time, so I knew the ends and outs of the place and the people that worked my end of it. However, I hadn’t worked with many clients one on one as either a MUA or as an aspiring wardrobe stylist. Due to this I was still very green and awkward and hadn’t yet figured out the line between casual and professional (to this day, for me, this line is nearly nonexistent) and I tended to make a mess whenever I opened my mouth so mostly I kept quiet and melded into my role as an observing trainee with occasionally useful ideas but was mostly just an extra pair of hands. The stylist I was shadowing was, in a word, cumbersome. They weren’t a very great teacher and had a tendency to drop projects into my lap without much proper instruction or insight and would leave me to attempt making sense of what was wanted by means of vision boards and client portfolios. In much a similar fashion, when a scheduling conflict came up involving the actress which will star in this tale and another more major artist; naturally, he had to see to the client he had a more tangible contract with and stuck me with wrangling our golden girl. 

Within the first 4 sentences of our first exchange as stylist and client I hated her immensely. She was the type of client I abhor to work with; overbearing and demanding, thankless and impatient. She was in the midst of her career finally catching some interest which is the most pivotal time in any celebrity’s career and I like to think she was so bitchy and just plain mean due to the stress and pressure she was under but it doesn’t make what happened any more justifiable. Her immediate and first words to me were, “You’re young and clueless enough to be my baby sister. Whatever authority you think you can have in dictating what I wear ended with the sound of the door opening when you stepped in, get that straight now.” I remember this extremely clearly because I went from gobsmacked to incensed within the time it takes to pop the top on a can of soda. But! I knew at least enough to know to keep my mouth shut and temper my immediate dislike of this person and tried to push forward and steer the conversation in the direction of what her ideal style and presentation should be. It went well enough for all of an hour tops before she domed me again by calling me “baby sis” in place of my name. As I am, in fact, the baby sis of my family I am well aware of when a power play is being maneuvered in on me and spotted this for what it was: her trying to remind me that I had no right to be speaking to her, let alone designing her. This was a culmination of her being upset and put out that she wasn’t chosen by my mentoring stylist and was stuck with someone that had basically no merits behind her. 

Calling me this wasn’t really an issue for me, but it did chafe against my skin enough to make me feel uncomfortable and anxious. Still, I let it slide and she continued to call me as such for the duration of our time together. The true horror of this story is what comes next and the escalation from minor verbal insults meant to belittle me fanned into blatant sabotage. She and I had come to a sort of estranged agreement when it came to modeling her vision board - she wanted to retain some traces of her perceived sweet and demure self from when she was cast in her first role, but play up the maturity and grace she held now and have it reinvented into timeless class while holding a touch of being chic. It was a headache to make sense of since, from a the perspective of fashion and trends at that time, this wasn’t the ideal and even seemed counterintuitive to someone in her position and of her age. I went along with it and threw myself into the quest to pull from the brands she mentioned liking most and for days I learned firsthand how exhausting and tedious it is to make acquisitions and swear responsibilities/accountabilities one after the other and put my name and my company on the line. I handpicked every item and steadily managed to pull off forming my second ever ensemble of 4 sets of styles each with 2 or 3 substitution items that could alter the look entirely while still remaining within the realm of what the client had asked for. I worked upward of 13 hours for 4 days and when I finally was able to bring the client to her showroom and present my designs, I was only able to feel relieved for mere minutes before she began to yell and make a scene. She demanded my supervisor and the head of the styling department of our company both come to tend to her and see what a mockery I had made of her ideal image. She went on to use her acting quirks to insinuate that I had gone off half-cocked and overruled her every idea and word and then dared to present her with such low quality fashions. She even managed to produce a vision board that was entirely different from the one she and I had planned together! It was obviously done by herself and lacked the detailed attention any of the stylists housed in our company would have added, but it was convincing enough to appear damning. 

At this point my head was in a weird place, trying to make sense of the perilous world I was throwing myself into and the fact that this was actually happening to me at all and wasn’t just me daydreaming while watching daytime dramas. After I worked through that initial shock, I was more than mad but less than enraged. I was confused as to why this client was being so purposefully obstinate and difficult for me, even briefly wondered what sort of grievance I could have possibly cost her when I had only just met her and had done my utmost to seem cool and pro like all the seasoned stylists I had worked with. I thought I was going to lose my job and have to go back to my family with my tail between my legs and tell them they were right and I never should have strayed from my original course and career path. I only became aware that I was crying, like big fat tears that made a mess of my face and were embarrassing to the point that I wanted to flee, because my supervisor had given me his handkerchief. It was at this point that I teetered and looked deeply at the person accusing me and wasting my time and efforts and realized that it wasn’t about me and was only ever about her. This moment of clarity, though, was like the opening of a gate I had been clinging to all week in hopes of keeping all my spurned senses quietly simmering beneath my skin rather than wreck my name and finish off my chances before they truly begun. I very rudely told my supervisor and the department head that if they needed proof of my hardwork and dedication to the vision of a thoughtless actress caught in the weeds of her own wilting fame then they were free to examine my copy of the original vision board and compare it with the one she had; that they could check through the 15 or so LORs under my name and in her stead (both names are featured for security means). Anyway, she was attempting to spill a stain across our company and specifically the stylist in charge of me for blowing her off. Her idea was that if I failed in a big way it would make him look like a horrible mentor and cost him some of his reputation. I was merely cannon fodder.

I’d always been especially good with makeup and styling friends for their big dos of our teen years and into early adult life. It was something oddly gratifying to me, to be able to take someone’s presentation and turn it into art and an expression of them. A friend that works in the industry had been one such person I did up a few times and she composed a pseudo portfolio of my works and submitted it for review to secure me a job as a cosmetic assistant without my knowing, and the ultimately roped me into agreeing for a weekend run at a smaller scale event. It was intoxicating and heady and I had a rush that was something my life of research and regurgitation was not plying me with. 

From there, I switched my education around to be more geared towards fashion merchandising and kept my cultural studies but became especially keen on cultural fashions and trends worldwide. I continued working as an entry level make up tech until eventually I earned enough recognition that I made it onto my first real glam team and was signed to a legitimate company that works with rising stars in both the music and film industries. I made it clear early on that my interests and intents lay beyond cosmetics and that I wanted to pursue styling, that I was stacking my portfolio with an educational backing (something that is not strictly necessary for personal stylists) and kept pleading and looking for opportunities to strike. 

Finally, we had a newbie artist that came in and was rather difficult for some of the more veteran stylists to handle as he was very particular about what he wanted his public image to look like. I happened to be lingering around and going about business as usual when he spied me and said he wanted a style like mine and brought me over to ask me a bunch of questions on what pieces I typically go with, brands, why I pair certain key features, etc. That was that and nothing came of it for weeks until there was some uproar about an artist having a bit of a fit about his glam team not being up to snuff; specifically he was upset with his stylist for not capturing the essence of the aesthetic he wanted to present (he said this in a lot harsher words, but it boils down to this lol) and asked about “that girl that looked seamlessly NG” which was me. I consulted with his stylist on how to achieve the look he wanted and thought that would be the end of it, but he was so pleased with the way I made him look he pressed management until I was contracted as his. By which time I had my degree and was only lacking true experience. He’s still my client to this day.