SYLLABUS

A Beginner’s Guide to Emma Chamberlain’s Greatest YouTube Hits

Who is Emma Chamberlain, really? Watch these videos to find out.

June 10, 2019

By now you’ve surely heard about the most interesting girl on YouTube, Emma Chamberlain. With 7.6 million Instagram followers and an incredibly devoted fan base, she’s a modern-day celebrity at this point—but how much do you really know about the vlogging phenom and W’s latest Instazine cover star? For starters, she’s from the Bay Area, she’s an only child, and she just turned 18 last month. She loves iced coffee and SoulCycle, and has mixed feelings on Coachella. Want to know more? Well, there’s no better way to learn than by diving into Chamberlain’s illustrious YouTube channel, where she chronicles everything from running errands to going to Paris Fashion Week. Don’t know where to start? Here, a guide to Emma Chamberlain’s greatest YouTube hits, from her first viral video to her ascent to fashion darling.

“We all owe the dollar store an apology,” July 27, 2017

The video that started it all. Chamberlain launched her YouTube channel in June 2017, but it would be nearly two months (and a whopping 40 videos) before she had her first big hit: a dollar store “haul” (a popular YouTube trope where a vlogger shows off the goods from a recent shopping spree). “I made that video going to the dollar store. That was apparently a YouTube trend at the time, and it ended up working in my favor,” she told us. “It was a very searchable topic, and my video ended up blowing up. I got 500,000 views at a time when I was getting a thousand views on a video, max.” Consider this a jumping-off point into the charms of Chamberlain on camera.

“Why I left school,” Oct 26, 2017

This is what the YouTube community calls “story time”—essentially a straightforward video in which a vlogger talks directly to the camera and tells a single story. While it’s not Chamberlain’s first story time, it is an important one that offers some insight into the roots of her YouTube stardom. If you’re going to dive deep into the world of Emma Chamberlain, you’ll need this video to get her origin story.

“TURNING ME INTO AN LA GIRL FT. JAMES CHARLES & THE DOLAN TWINS,” June 19, 2018

By June 2018, just a year after launching her channel, Chamberlain was already one of the most popular vloggers on the platform. Case in point: She got not one but two (or, technically, three) of her fellow YouTube stars together in one video on her channel, documenting her transformation into “an L.A. girl”—contouring, Gucci clothes, et cetera—with the help of established YouTubers the Dolan Twins and James Charles. These are relationships that would show up in several more videos, across all three channels.

“COOKING WITH EMMA IS BACK,” February 11, 2019

If you have glanced at her comments section, you may have notice that Chamberlain gets a lot of requests for cooking videos. Indeed, “Cooking With Emma,” wherein Chamberlain hits the kitchen (to varying results), is among her most popular series. Here, she makes a burrito at 1:30 a.m., pausing halfway to make an iced latte (if you’ve been paying any attention at all, you also know that Chamberlain is very into coffee).

“I WENT TO PARIS FASHION WEEK,” March 10, 2019

For her first fashion show, Chamberlain kind of knocked it out of the park, sitting front row at Louis Vuitton’s fall 2019 runway show. It also happened to be her first time in Paris, so naturally she recorded the whole experience. Watch as Chamberlain searches for the French equivalent of SoulCycle (another signature addition), deals with paparazzi for the first time, and gets a high-fashion makeover.