Allegra Shaw is just 26 and already showing off her budding entrepreneurship. With 278 thousand Instagram followers, 928 thousand YouTube subscribers, and her own clothing brand, Uncle Studios, under her belt, Allegra is a Canadian girl poised to take over the world. We catch up with her on the set of her cover photoshoot to discuss YouTube, fashion and being herself.
Waiting for makeup and hair while wearing her own Uncle Studios sweatshirt, Allegra talks about how she put up her first YouTube video, an everyday makeup routine, in 2011 after graduating high school. She continued putting up videos infrequently during university, but it was when she graduated that things changed. “After university, I applied for a lot of different jobs, and I didn’t get any responses,” Allegra explains, “And I was kind of like oh, people are doing YouTube as a job, maybe that’s something that I could do if I actually put a lot of time and effort into it. So I asked my mother if I could stay home for a little bit longer, and I told her my plan, and I started putting out content like three times a week.” In time, YouTube grew into something that became her full-time job. One of the big turning points for Allegra came when she did the first of what would become a signature video for her, a changing video; “I call them changing videos, where I do one shot, and I do like 10-20 outfits in this one-shot. My first video of that did really well and blew up,” she says, “I actually started that video because I had the rights to use a Steve Aoki song and I had to send them the video to get approval, and I wanted them to think the video was good. I didn’t have anyone to film for me at that time, so I set up a tripod and I was like, let’s just do one shot. It was very organic. But that was a big turning point in terms of feeling like I could come up with ideas and that I had found my place in the market.” The video did so well, in fact, that it became a trend on both YouTube and Instagram, a fact that Allegra still has trouble believing.
Allegra’s Instagram is a poised, aesthetic dream, but it wasn’t always this way. “I don’t think I was too early on the Instagram train which kind of sucks,” she explains, with a touch of regret in her voice, “I definitely thought it was fun and I loved it, but I kept it more for me and my friends. I didn’t connect YouTube and Instagram, which now is regret because it’s like I’m trying to play catch up on Instagram. But I’d say I started taking Instagram seriously maybe two years ago.” Allegra has developed followings and a community on both platforms now, and although there is a lot of overlap, her experiences have exposed her to the difference between the two: “On YouTube, you get a lot of people who don’t follow or subscribe to you watching your videos and commenting, where I don’t really find that on Instagram. Usually, people who are commenting and being active on Instagram are the ones that follow you. But because YouTube is such a search platform you get a lot of different people, which is really cool, but also I think leads to a bit more negativity.”
Shaking off the negativity, we start talking about brand deals, a major component of Allegra’s social media presence. Boasting brand deals with brands such as Aritzia, Revolve, and Nespresso, Allegra is proud to be working with them; “It’s really great when you love and support a brand and then they want to work with you, and they want to pay you. That’s how I like to make content, and that’s how I like to do my brand deals–with brands that I already know and love.” She reflects on how her parents wouldn’t let her buy Aritzia growing up as it was too expensive, and so partnering with them has been very cool, as well as how her partnership with Nespresso genuinely reflects her love for coffee. Working with such big-name brands hasn’t always been easy for online content creators, but Allegra can speak firsthand for how the industry is growing. “I think that the more the industry grows, and the longer that YouTube and Instagram have been around, the more brands get it. I think it was a big learning curve, because it isn’t a commercial, and it isn’t traditional media,” Allegra explains, stating that many brands now “have full teams dedicated to it, and it’s just really fun, it’s super fun working with brands and making content for brands that you never thought you would work with.” Although she has worked with Fendi and Chloe, Allegra says that more luxury brands and fashion houses are what she would love to partner with next. When asked if she thinks being based in Toronto makes getting those kind of brand deals difficult—Canada is often a forgotten market—Allegra gets thoughtful, “It can be a little bit more difficult, I just think you have to explain that the internet isn’t just one country, the internet is the whole world, so wherever your audience is, is more important. I do travel a lot and my manager is based in LA, so I feel like I do have the states covered. But I think actually Europe is a hard one. North America, Canada, the US, are kind of the same-ish, but Europe can be a little difficult and that’s where the fashion houses are based.”
One of Allegra’s brand partners is the Instagram powerhouse brand, Revolve. In fact, she was nominated for a 2019 Revolve Award. She’s humble when asked how it felt to be nominated, saying, “I really didn’t expect to be nominated. I had just started my relationship with Revolve this year, and so being nominated was a huge honour, especially beside these people that I grew up watching on YouTube who are just so incredible. And the revolve awards were really cool. They built this whole awards show at a studio, they built it from scratch, and the whole revolve team worked so hard. They literally like work hard play hard, and I respect them so much.” A video of the experience is up on Allegra’s YouTube channel, and both there and in person, you can feel her excitement; “It’s hard to put it into words but it was just an amazing experience and I feel very, very blessed to have been there.” She’s interested in growing her relationship with Revolve in the future, speaking intently about the talent of all the individuals she has met working with and for the brand. Brand deals are far from her only focus though. “Working with brands is amazing and I love doing that and I want to continue doing that,” she insists, “but I’m also wanting to continue my own personal brand and continue growing my clothing company as well.”
The clothing company is, as mentioned, her clothing company Uncle Studios, which she owns with her business partner Shirin. When talking about her brand, Allegra is passionate, articulate, and well-spoken. “We make everything with sustainable materials—I mean as sustainable as fashion can be, and make it ethically in Toronto, two values that are super important to us. We like to call ourselves elevated basics, because they’re all pieces that you can wear altogether and that we wear every day” she explains, “We started with a white t-shirt. We were just not into the t-shirts that were on the market. They were either super expensive or we’d buy them and then they would pill or lose their shape or they would yellow. There were so many things that were wrong with them. So we started on a quest to create the perfect white t-shirt and that was our first piece. I think we did a great job and we kind of built the brand off of that.” On top of basics, Uncle has started incorporating more fashion pieces, and will next be moving into “staples that good Canadian girls need” like sweaters and coats. However, you won’t be seeing overly trendy pieces in upcoming Uncle collections. “I think we try and stay away from super trendy pieces, because when you make something, we want people who buy them to have them in their wardrobe forever. That’s the main goal of ours,” says Allegra, “we are a bit more expensive because of the quality and the sustainability aspect and the ethical aspect, so we want you to be able to have that piece in your wardrobe. So you’ll never really see anything on our website that’s really trendy, but I think basics are always in style.”
Allegra speaks with a straight-forward honesty, which reflects the way she presents herself on her YouTube channel. Her “realness” is not anything she has ever thought through or calculated. “As content creators, we’re creating content for people and we’re trying to connect with people and I think you need to try and be as real as possible,” Allegra explains, “I can’t be fake all the time.” At the same time, she’s well aware that a twenty-minute vlog for a full week is only presenting viewers with little snippets of her, “that’s not someone’s whole personality, it’s definitely like an online personality, but you’re not getting like a fake person. It’s still me it’s just a part of me.” Part of being real includes sharing her struggles with her skin, something she is often praised for, “It was just never something that I thought about, it was just like well I have bad skin, and I’m not going to get full glam to go on camera every day, so I’m just going to show you what my skin looks like, and that’s what it’s going to be.” When asked how she decides what to share and what to hold back, Allegra laughs, “I don’t know. I think it just is whatever feels right,” continuing by saying that what she is comfortable with can vary day to day, “sometimes I won’t feel comfortable sharing something, but then a few months later, I feel comfortable sharing it, and usually I have filmed something so it will come out later. I think you just have to have your own boundaries and that is what is really important, just making your boundaries and sticking within those.” With nearly a million followers, Allegra is aware some look up to her or may see her as a role model, but it remains a hard thing to wrap her head around. “I try to set a good example to like be a conscious human and for people to be the best version of themselves, but I think everyone has to be them, you know, you can’t try and be someone else. So I think I try to set a good example in that aspect, but then I also have to be me,” Allegra says, “So I’m not just going to censor myself, I am 26 and I’m not a high schooler. I just kind of be myself and hope that people like it.” She does believe in using her platform to speak up about her political stance and other topics she believes in; “When you have a voice, I think it’s really important to use it, so I try to use it where I feel educated and I feel comfortable taking a stance.”
As hair and makeup come sweeping in, we have time for a few more short questions.
Fave content creators on Instagram? “I really like Josefine H.J. (@josefinehj), I like the content my friends make, like I like @allanaramaa”
And on YouTube? “I feel like I haven’t watched YouTube in a while because I’ve been busy, but recently I’ve been loving magazine’s content, like really cool short fashion films.”
Goals for 2020? “Some goals are to just continue to grow YouTube, Instagram, and the company. To try and live life in the moment and live just like every day, but I think growth is very important to me.”
And what projects are coming up next? “We have some fun stuff coming up with UNCLE, we’re always releasing new items, and then we’re just wrapping up a lot of our partnerships for this year and there’s a lot of things in the works. So stay tuned!”
