- Jaime Xie, daughter of a technology billionaire, is known for being a fashion influencer and for appearing on the hit Netflix show “Bling Empire”.
- She says she earns nearly $ 100,000 as an influencer and is often seen in New York, London, Milan and Paris for fashion weeks.
- In an interview with Insider, she talks about her love for fashion, what it was like to be at the “Bling Empire” and her upcoming career plans.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
A few years ago, Jaime Xie’s mother made a bet. “My mom was like, Jaime, if you join Parsons, I’m going to give you a Birkin,” Xie told Insider, referring to the exclusive Hermès bag.
Xie is the 22-year-old daughter of billionaire Ken Xie, the Asian-American billionaire who built the first firewall and VPN. Currently the founder and CEO of cybersecurity company Fortinet, he previously founded Systems Integration Solutions and NetScreen, the last of which he sold for $ 4 billion to Juniper Networks in 2004.
Jaime told Insider that although she was born and raised in Silicon Valley, “surrounded by technology and Teslas”, technology was not really her thing. She said she has been passionate about fashion since high school, when she realized that Chanel and Louis Vuitton were much nicer than the Hollister and Abercrombie she had hung in her closet.
So, of course, Xie wanted to study fashion business at Parsons, one of the best fashion schools in the United States – she also really wanted what Birkin her mother was offering – it would be the first, after all.
She joined Parsons (and bought Birkin), but chose not to attend, enrolling at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, close to home, in Los Angeles. About a year later, she gave up to focus on influencing full-time. Now she has just over 300,000 followers on Instagram.
Now, Xie told Insider, she is earning almost $ 100,000 a year from collaborations and partnerships with the brand. She buys her own clothes with her own money and attends haute couture weeks in Paris and fashion shows in Milan before the pandemic. Snapshots of his life can be seen in Netflix’s new hit series “Bling Empire”, which chronicles the lives of wealthy Asians and Asian Americans living in Los Angeles.
Read More: Meet the ‘Bling Empire’ haute couture collector who is bringing wealthy angelic Asian Americans to Netflix
Xie remembers the months before the pandemic very clearly. She had participated in haute couture week in Paris, then went to Davos to see her father speak at the World Economic Forum. They went skiing in Saint Moritz, Switzerland, then Xie participated in more fashion weeks and returned to California in March, exhausted.
“I was going home to relax, but I had no idea that the chilling time would be so long,” she said. Jobs froze for a moment during the beginning of last year, but began to recover in the summer, and she was able to attend a charity gala with Luisaviaroma and UNICEF on the Amalfi Coast in August.
Her career as an influencer was only slightly affected by the pandemic, she said, and she has been dividing her time between Bay Area and LA, where she has most of her photo shoots.
Yoshi Uemura for Business Insider
Xie participated in her first fashion week at around 17
A competitive equestrian, Xie spent her high school years entirely online while riding around the country. Still, she said, she couldn’t go a day without thinking about fashion.
Much of his knowledge of fashion is self-taught, through reading magazines and searching for fashion websites. Her first stylist purchase was around seventh grade – a Louis Vuitton Neverfull bag and a Hermès belt – the one with the big H in it. At 17, she attended her first fashion show. It was Dior.
The brand invited Xie and his mother to launch his new high jewelery collection in Paris after Xie convinced his mother to buy a plethora of jewelry from the brand. Unbeknownst to Xie, she and her mother were arriving just in time for couture week.
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At the time, they were staying at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, on the Champs-Elysées. One day, they met Christine Chiu, future castmate of “Empire Bling”, who broke the news to her. “When I ran into her, she said, ‘Oh yeah, I’m here to see a lot of shows,'” remembers Xie. “I was like, okay, so in September I want to go to all the ready-to-wear shows, starting in New York.”
Back in California, Xie was also becoming known in the circle of friends as someone with good taste.
Jaime Xie
Yoshi Uemura for Business Insider
“Jaime’s sense of style is multifaceted,” his friend Mathew Sakhai, 22, told Insider. “She can go from feminine and sweet to nervous and dark without making you think that she has no fashion identity because you can see her brand in every look she chooses.” Xie loved – and still loves – to use emerging and new brands, mixing them with traditional houses like Prada and Mugler. She loves vintage, especially from Gucci, Chanel and Dior. “When I have free time, I will be browsing Vestiaire Collective on eBay to find something cool vintage,” she said. “What I love about vintage is that it is something that not everyone will have.”
She also has some more affordable brands in her closet. Her mindset is that she will buy anything and everything that looks good, “regardless of whether it’s Zara or Chanel.” In fact, Xie said she bought so much during her teens and spent so much of her parents’ money that they made her get a summer job working at Nordstrom when she was 18 to “appreciate the value of the money”.
Xie keeps everything real on Instagram: ‘Very casual, something identifiable’
During that time, Xie posted photos of her clothes on Facebook. She switched to Instagram and YouTube on the recommendation of her equestrian friends, who thought she had a good sense of style.
On YouTube, Xie started making unpacking videos – meaning that she unwrapped her stylist purchases in real time and showed them off to the public. She stopped doing this despite receiving positive feedback, she said, because she did not like to show her wealth in such an extreme way.
Read More: Within the weird and expensive pandemic purchases of wealthy children, from $ 1,000 wool from Patagonia to $ 31.8 million T. rex
So she focused more on Instagram, where, she said, likes to “keep it real”. Its page is a mix of selfies, magazine photo sessions and designer street style. “Very casual,” she explained. “A little identifiable.”
Around the age of 19, she decided to pursue the creation of digital content full time and is now invited to fashion shows around the world as an influencer. She travels frequently between New York, London, Milan and Paris. Before the pandemic, there were haute couture weeks twice a year, in January and July. Then there was ready-to-wear in February and September, and then other shows, such as bridal weeks and men’s clothing.
Xie said she used to change clothes about five to six times a day “because you wear a different look at each show,” she said. “It is a sign of respect for the designer.”
Yoshi Uemura for Business Insider
Xie had never seen reality shows before ‘Bling Empire’
Lately, Xie has been thinking about where to pursue his career. She wants to start a line of sunglasses, and a line of shoes is not out of the question. As a vegan, she said she is also willing to explore something related to healthy living and wants to enter philanthropy, working more with her family’s foundation.
She never thought she would end up on the reality show, however. While growing up, she never watched any reality shows and was the last person to join the cast of “Bling Empire” when it was developed in 2018. When asked how to act on the show, she said the producers told her to be her and “have fun”.
This can best be summed up, perhaps, in the scene where the cast of “Bling Empire” is on the beach talking to a shaman. Xie asked the healer a question: what color should the Bottega Veneta bag buy? It was, of course, for fashion week, and there are endless color options to choose from. Unfortunately, the scene was cut before the shaman could give him an answer.
“I ended up taking the color of the mist,” she said. “And then I got a wrinkled gold, and then I got a light blue with the woven Bottega Veneta intrecciato, and then I got a tiny gold – it looks like a mini gold cupcake. It’s like, the cutest thing ever.”