She’s a YouTuber. But she is also the founder of Chamberlain Coffee, the host of Anything Goes, an ambassador for Louis Vuitton and Cartier, and Vogue’s Met Gala correspondent. Yet, the first word used to describe her is “influencer.” Technically, that’s correct. She still uploads to YouTube, posts on Instagram, and does brand deals. But the label feels too small for what she’s built. The mistake here is that we treat "influencer" and “celebrity” as only one or the other. In reality, fame is a spectrum and while most people are forced to pick a side, Emma occupies both ends of it simultaneously. 

Emma was the first creator I remember actually influencing me. I watched plenty of YouTubers growing up but I truly followed Emma. My friends and I were hitting Goodwill to go thrifting, drinking iced oat milk lattes, and wearing Nike AF1s because of her. She practically invented the 2019 VSCO girl aesthetic by wearing teddy bear sherpa jackets, scrunchies, puka shell necklaces, and carrying around a Fjällräven Käckén backpack. But it wasn’t just the clothes or coffee, it was her raw, chaotic, and funny personality that shined through in her videos. While everyone else was trying to look flawless and curated, Emma was being her weird self and burping on camera. She wasn’t just getting followers, she was actually influencing how a generation dressed, spoke, and presented themselves online.  

Then, the girl who made thrifting cool got a front row seat at Paris Fashion Week. At just 18-years-old, Emma was sitting next to fashion royalty. Then came Cartier, magazine covers, and interviewing A-listers on the Met Gala carpet. High fashion needed a bridge to Gen Z, and Emma was the perfect person for this. Emma gave legacy brands cultural relevance with young people and those brands gave her access to institutional, old school fame. Louis Vuitton didn’t make Emma famous, they just introduced her to the adults in the industry. 

Traditional celebrities build their fame on distance and mystery. We don’t know what Adele ate for breakfast. Influencers build fame on oversharing and direct access. Emma was a genius for using that internet intimacy to break through the front door and then using high fashion to build a space around herself. She didn’t abandon YouTube, she just expanded past it until her name became its own brand.  

We don’t wait for an actor to quit acting before we start calling them a celebrity, so why are we waiting for Emma to delete her YouTube channel? Now that she’s crossing over into cinema with films like Forbidden Fruits, holding onto the “influencer” label makes even less sense. Traditional celebrities would abandon the internet to protect their mystery, but Emma kept that intimacy with her followers while claiming a seat at fashion week and starring in her first movie. She didn’t just move along the fame spectrum, she showed us that you can dominate multiple points of the spectrum at the same time. Emma went from filming oat milk latte runs in her car to interviewing the biggest stars in the world. Along the way, she quietly redefined what a modern celebrity looks like.