Originally published here at MelWearsWhat by Melanie Haid
Everyone’s got their own thing, their own “flair” if you will, and Andrea (@a.flair)’s all about embracing that. With over 6k following on Instagram and style videos and content galore, you won’t ever get bored of her creativity, new ideas, and warm presence.
A junior at Northeastern University but spending the fall semester in her home of Hong Kong, her major in marketing and design is only helping her expand her brand, her platform, and the seemingly endless, know-no-bounds style of presenting content and outfits in new and refreshing ways.
She started @a.flair when she got into high school - now over six years ago. “It started with just wanting to document my own journey of finding my own personal style and just learning to be comfortable with myself. I started down that rabbit hole of style, and that little passion project right when I started high school, and that was actually when I first moved to the States.”
After having moved to the U.S. from China, Andrea decided it was a good “blank slate” - one that allowed her to really understand not only herself better through fashion, but also by growing confidence within herself.
“I think of fashion and style as two separate entities and I think that fashion is an art form in itself and I think that style is more, where a lot of my passion and inspiration comes from,” she says. “Style is something that’s really, really personal and really sentimental to yourself and your growth, and how you grow to be comfortable with yourself and confident in your own.”
Not only is she an absolute creative force, Andrea is also extremely humble, genuine and one of the friendliest people you’ll probably ever meet.
From videos, Fit Recaps, Minute Fits, How-To Style videos, how to edit, and #RewearFlair, to looks based off of Taylor Swift’s Folklore, compiling lists of racist brands and her signature #WearUrFlair, there is absolutely no end to how she can express herself beautifully through her content and style.
#WearUrFlair was the product of “quarantine boredom,” helping Andrea build a community of self-expression in her corner of the internet that would not only bring people together, but encourage self-expression in its truest form.
“For so long, I’ve never really done anything that really helped me bring together this community that I’ve sort of grown with my platform, this group of girls, these friends that I’ve made...I’ve just never really showcased why I started my blog and why I started @a.flair. @A.flair really did so much for me, in terms of helping me find my own confidence and wearing things that I wear now, finding things that I think are fun, finding things that look good on me, on my own terms, it’s not whatever the trends are saying. And I wanted to encourage that for other young women because it did so much for me and it helped me grow to be confident about who I am and I wanted to encourage others that you can embrace that flair of yours, and your flair can really be anything, but it’s just you, your essence, how you portray that in your style.”
As for her own “flair” - she’d describe it as “quirky,” but not in the connotation that you might think. “I think my flair is really just me being a goof, and portraying that sort of “did she just do that?” in my style, but I think that my flair is just me not taking myself too seriously.”
But that absolutely doesn’t mean she can’t be serious. In late June and early July when the Black Lives Matter movement “took social media by storm,” Andrea says she really wanted to post “regular” things. “There’s toxic positivity, as much as I’m an optimist, I didn’t wanna post anymore, about my outfits and my regular life.” She considered how she could merge what she was passionate about with what she knew her followers were too, and found that in style and fashion, that meant holding brands accountable.
“@diet_prada started posting a lot about Reformation, and I thought it was so strange that there wasn’t a list for this - because I wanna read about it. I wanna know what all the brands are not doing well and I wanna have a list and keep track for myself and hold myself accountable.” This posts, beginning on her IG Stories and moving to her feed, quickly went viral. “At the end of the day it was just something I wanted to see that I didn’t see other people posting that I would have liked to see on my feed, and so I was like “you know what? I’m just gonna make this.””
But she says with posts that had this great a reach, impostor syndrome began to set in. “I have to make sure I’m getting the facts right, and that I’m doing it justice for the people who are fighting for the fight. I don’t want to seem performative, and when the posts started getting a lot of attention, I was scared I wasn’t really educated enough to tell you anything,” she says.
However, she says she managed to find a middle ground, and find the peace again within herself. “I’ve always been interested in brands that are doing the right thing...I wanted to make sure that I’m leveraging my platform the best to spread the most important message that felt comfortable to me,” she says about linking fashion and style with brand accountability and racist brands and using her platform to educate her followers.
Aside from her content creation, Andrea says she never could have imagined to find this community and this outlet when she started @a.flair six years ago. “The fact that I have my own brand to begin with is something that I would have never imagined. If I am to be hopeful, I would love to have my brand be an actual thing and I would love to have my own clothing line. I’d just love to meet more people. I love to create, even just in a larger community of girls I can be friends with and share the things I like and use that as the platform to empower women.”
Find her here.
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