Aishwarya Baidar’s YouTube channel, girlmeetsworld, could be every fashion enthusiasts’ guilty pleasure. Although Baidar has only posted a few videos, she mentions that she has put in a lot of thought into everything and all the videos on her channel are aesthetic and pretty. What’s more is that her videos are actually helpful and provide a lot of tips and inspiration for future outfit styling and combinations.
Baidar, who is a third year Media Studies student at Kathmandu University, started a Wordpress blog in 2017. Although she was very consistent with her updates and had a variety of posts—all related to fashion—she realized that because Nepalis aren’t interested in reading such blogs, she would never be able to connect with people through this medium. So, she moved on to creating YouTube videos with similar content about five months ago and mentions that she has been received much traction among the fashion enthusiast crowd of Nepal through this new medium.
The transition from writing a blog to creating videos was a little difficult for Baidar. She remembers being awkward in front of the camera the first time she filmed a lookbook. “But I’m definitely getting better over time. Recently, I did a photoshoot for Lumuwears and I was a lot more comfortable posing than I thought I would be,” she says.
Instead of using her platform to just create trendy content that will have viral hits, Baidar is using it as a portfolio of her style. In her videos, you can see the dynamic nature of her style that isn’t confined to being just pretty, trendy or edgy. Instead, it’s all mixed with a lot of classic and 90s retro silhouettes. She names Ashley, who runs the YouTube channel bestdressed, and fashion blogger Amiee Song as two of her biggest influences when it comes to fashion and fashion vlogging/blogging.
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All of Baidar’s videos are filmed and edited by her brother, Suhel Shrestha. Shrestha, who is an engineer by profession, is passionate about photography and videography and owns good quality, professional gadgets—something Baidar is yet to buy herself. Usually, Baidar directs Shrestha on the kind of shots she wants and how she wants the final (edited) version of the video to look.
“I’m very stringent about the look and overall vibe of the videos so I keep pestering my brother to re-shoot or retouch things until I’m happy with the result,” she says adding that her background in Media Studies helps her a lot during this whole process.
Creating a single video for her channel takes Baidar a lot of time. Because she is involved in different projects, she has to skillfully divide her time for each of her activities. Baidar is working part time as a content writer at Square Studio and is a part of the Book Bus campaign by the American Embassy as a language and arts instructor. She claims that she also takes her studies very seriously and thus has very little free time on her hands when she can work on her videos. Additionally, she also has to take her brother’s busy schedule into account before deciding on a time—when both of them are free—for the shoot.
The making of the video is a lengthy process in itself. Baidar starts out by looking through her mood board and jots down the outfits she wants to include in the video. She mentions that she has an elaborate list and plans about all the outfits she wants to include in her videos. Once she has that down, she and Shrestha film for a day and it takes them three more days to edit and get the video ready—with Shrestha editing the video and Baidar, right by his side, directing him on every little thing.
“Even though this (making YouTube videos) is a difficult and time consuming project, I’m willing to keep doing it because of my passion for fashion,” says Baidar adding that one of the primary reasons as to why she is working part time right now is just to be able to buy all of clothing and accessories she wants to without asking for extra allowance from her parents. She also states that since there aren’t many fashion vloggers or even bloggers in Nepal right now, she wishes people would take her channel as inspiration and realize that this type of content has a market among Nepali viewers.
Besides running her YouTube channel and previously her blog, Baidar is also establishing herself as someone whose style and fashion can inspire her followers on Instagram. So, she puts a lot of thought into her feed themes and posts, and never posts anything randomly. She has created her own preset on the Lightroom app and applies that to all of her photos so that all the posts on her Instagram have a uniform color grading.
She also uploads photos onto the UNUM app to see if they fit her Instagram feed theme before actually posting them. Besides posting her OOTDs and things related to fashion and style, Baidar, who calls herself a big bibliophile, also updates her followers on what she is currently reading and writes reviews of books she has read.
Right now, Baidar just wants to focus on her studies while working on her YouTube videos on the side. She reveals that she is preparing to go abroad for her masters as soon as she is done with her undergrad course. She is planning to return to Nepal after that and do something possibly in the field of fashion and/or YouTube. For the immediate future, Baidar has lots of new videos and projects planned for her YouTube channel. She is currently working to meet her aim of uploading two videos per month because she knows consistency is very important for a new channel.
