Mina Le is Writing Fashion History
It’s 2010 and you’re holed up in your bedroom after another terrible day at school. You’re scrolling Tumblr, Sherlock quotes, discourse about John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”, an over saturated galaxy photo with a Arctic Monkeys song lyric edited onto it, a girl with pink hair, a Margaret Atwood quote “Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies?” and then it catches your eye. A screengrab of Kiera Knightley in Atonement. A vision in a silky, floor length green dress. As one TikTok user puts it “the jewel toned gown makes a visual and emotional high point. A woman on the precipice of something.”
The epitome of glamour, a beam of light in your suburban teenage life. You need to know where this still is from immediately. You watch the film, you become obsessed, the sexy library scene is forever burned into your memory, you still hate Saoirse Ronan’s character for what she did ten years later! Mina Le can relate - her debut YouTube video is a video essay about the costume design in Atonement (2007) and her work, as she tells me over video chat, has its roots in endlessly scrolling Tumblr and coming across the film.
Mina could have originally had a very different online presence - she grew up in Maryland just outside of DC, her friends' parents were lawyers and lobbyists. “I was very sure that I would end up on Capitol Hill. I was very pragmatic at that point in my life and dressed really preppy.” She reminisces. “That was my thing.” Mina originally had no intention of doing anything fashion related for her career, but a drastic move to Australia led her to pursue her love for fashion.
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“I ended up going to school in Montreal, Canada. I had a crisis, I hated my degree. I was doing economics and I really don't like maths. So I dropped out and moved to Australia. But the interesting thing about Australia is, people don't tend to leave their city that they grew up in. So most of the people I knew at college were commuters and were friends with their high school friends.” Mina explains, “So I started using Instagram: I started taking photos of my outfits every day because I had nothing else to do. The only social interaction I got was via the internet. So that’s how I got online and became interested in fashion.”
Back in the early days of Instagram, the algorithm worked for its users, not against them. Making connections with those that had shared interests was so much easier. While Mina wasn’t exactly influencer status yet, she had found her people. And those people ran fashion orientated Instagram accounts.
“I remember seeing so many images of the beautiful cinematography screencapped on Tumblr, it reeled me in, it was a formative movie for me. There’s something so innocent and nice about coming across the one image that really resonates with you.”
As well as finding a home online with #style and #ootd posts of only a few years ago, Mina’s interest in fashion also stemmed from a need to be thrifty as a college student. “I started vintage shopping when I realised I could get better quality things at a cheaper price than going to Topshop. And it spiralled from there.” She notes, “I wanted to be able to know where this item was from that I was buying. So I started getting into vintage identification and then that just led into getting into fashion history.”
The influence of different social media sites has shifted since when hashtags actually meant connecting with other people. The Tumblr text post is dead and the Instagram fashion influencer almost seems redundant because of how capitalist driven Insta is now. People have been migrating over to video content for a while - YouTube and TikTok - which makes Mina’s intricate fashion history content more accessible than trudging through a long form article.
“I definitely think people's attention spans are shorter. It’s undoubtedly easier to get your message across through a video format.” Mina considers, “But the one thing that I do struggle with though is making sure my videos are still entertaining enough. I’m thinking, do I need to add a zoom here? Is this boring? Do I need more photos? I'm very aware of how people do not want to listen to twenty five minutes of something information dense without a meme spliced in there.”
Mina’s candour is correct, any longer video you find yourself watching online is multifaceted with text, funny memes, explosions, gifs all overlaying the original content. However, as much of Mina’s work relies on context and examples - like showing the viewer that balletcore is more than white tights and a pink cardi - the blend is seamless. It’s not an attempt to fit in with current storytelling trends, but an editing style that suits the nature of the work.
Still, it’s easy to understand why our generation longs for the day of simpler, more accessible content. Mina reminisces, “The fun thing about Tumblr was that it wasn’t really dictated by an algorithm. Everyone you followed was a mini curator, people were using it as a personal diary or scrapbook and you got to see what they genuinely liked. I discovered a lot of movies that I still love now. I was obsessed with the movie Atonement and ended up making my first YouTube video about it.”
She continues, “I remember seeing so many images of the beautiful cinematography screencapped on Tumblr, it reeled me in, it was a formative movie for me. There’s something so innocent and nice about coming across the one image that really resonates with you.” With even Instagram moving further and further with becoming TikTok 2.0, it’s easy to mourn the days of static images that moved us into our own research on topics, trends and time periods.
Thankfully, Mina’s personal touch on the deep dives into her video’s content continues the passions from the earlier days of the internet. She isn’t looking to chase the short trend cycle just to stay ahead on her output - although the two align naturally often enough - but Mina exclusively researches topics that interest her. A priority that translates into authenticity throughout her work.
Finishing our interview - that feels more like a conversation with a friend than finally speaking to an internet icon you admire - Mina takes the time to shout out other creators who are killing it recently: “Tessa who runs Modern Gurlz, she's my YouTube BFF. Luke who runs HauteLeMode, he’s been trailblazing the fashion commentary scene for years now. Karolina Żebrowska for fact-checking fashion history and Be Kind Rewind for any Old Hollywood lovers!”
Cover star: Mina Le | Photography & Creative Direction: Bảo Ngô | Writer: Eden Young | Hair: Mayumi Maeda | Makeup: Will Metivier | Beauty Booker: Shideh Kafei
