Meet Essie Button: How Estée LaLonde went from Canadian student to UK beauty star

[Estée LaLonde via Facebook]

By Nicole Chapman

In the beginning it was a fresh-faced girl sitting alone in a bedroom writing blogs about her favourite lipsticks and body creams. But all that soon changed and now, life just doesn’t look the same.
Five years ago, when the Waterloo, Ont. native made the move across the ocean for love, she would have never dreamed that her social media accounts would one day blossom into a high-paced career.

At 19 years old, Estée LaLonde was living in Waterloo and feeling, as most young adults do at some point in their lives, alone and confused about what she wanted to do. She had dropped out of university in her first year and wasn’t entirely sure what her dream “career” looked like. But things all changed for LaLonde, when she met her now boyfriend, Aslan, online. After travelling in the United States together, LaLonde made the decision to pack her bags and leave for the big city of London, England to be with him.

Finding herself in a new country with no job and no core group of friends, LaLonde stumbled across the beauty blogging community, filled with Londoners who shared her passion for the products and their transformative abilities. With the help of her supportive boyfriend, she too started writing a beauty blog. The handle she chose, ‘Essie Button,’ was inspired by a childhood nickname from her grandparents and a pet name from boyfriend Aslan.

“I never thought it was something I’d be known as but as I’ve grown up, I began to feel like ‘Essie Button’ was something separate from myself and I didn’t like that as things began to really grow. I felt like Essie Button as an impression of who I was and it was really beginning to feel like a character, rather than myself,” says LaLonde. “I also feel like I’ve done a lot of my growing up online and I wanted it to be authentic and real to who I am.”

Documenting a transformation

“When I first started all of this, I would get ten views a month and I was absolutely thrilled with that,” LaLonde says. “It had really started as a way to try and get friends in the UK and show my mom back in Canada what I was up to. I really felt like this was the best way I could document this weird experience that I was going through here.”
LaLonde’s popularity appeared to happen overnight, as it so often does in these dream-come-true stories, but it took her some time before realizing this could really be her calling.

“I had absolutely no idea that I could make a career out of this. I guess I was just clueless and naive,” says LaLonde. “At the time I was working three part time jobs, because I couldn’t find something full time. And I was creating my blog and starting to create video blogs (vlogs) on the weekends. And it just kind of crept up from there and the amount of views I was getting was growing into the thousands.”

Five years into her social media whirlwind, LaLonde has gone from a single blog to having the Estée Lalonde Channel with over a million subscribers and growing, a lifestyle vlog titled Everyday Estée, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and her everyday blog.

One of the biggest changes for LaLonde came when she realized she couldn’t do it all alone. It was difficult deciding to give up some of the control and seek support for her work, she says, however she felt comforted knowing she had someone like Lucy, her day-to-day assistant, helping her keep that train on the tracks and working directly with LaLonde to respond to social media comments and emails. LaLonde also hired a management team to help with image branding and with bookings for events, fan meetups and interviews.

“For the longest time, it was really just a one-woman band and it was going full steam ahead,” says LaLonde. “But when we started to take things more seriously, I realized that I couldn’t just do this on weekends and in the evenings anymore. Things started to happen that were new and exciting, such as sampling, sponsorship, fan growth and deals and I couldn’t do it. It’s been weird for me, because I didn’t plan for all this to happen…It just did.”

And although LaLonde does admit that when it comes to her content and her brand, she can be a bit controlling, she attributes this to the fact that she feels that there is a major piece of her in everything she does.

Hitting it big

LaLonde hit a major milestone August, reaching her longtime goal of over one million subscribers to her YouTube beauty vlog. To celebrate, LaLonde threw a party in central London with 50 lucky viewers, family and friends. She decided she wanted to spend her celebration with the people who had gotten her to where she is today.

As if that wasn’t enough, she was crowned “Best Beauty Reviewer” in the same month by InStyle UK, and was featured in a photo series by well-known British photographer, Rankin.

“It was really a crazy experience,” says LaLonde. “The photos were shot by Rankin, who has shot celebrities like Michael Jackson. And when I was doing the shoot, I felt like I was outside myself. Like it wasn’t even happening to me. I’m still that same Canadian girl from Waterloo. I still heard that it was going to be happening and had to call my mom and tell her all about it. It’s a dream come true.”

LaLonde says she isn’t quite sure if things would have unfolded for her as they did in the Canadian beauty blogging community. She says the beauty blogging community in London, UK is a tight-knit community where they all know each other quite well and lean on each other for support. LaLonde videos include guest appearances from other well-known vloggers including Amelia Liana, Louise Sprinkle and Ingrid Nilsen.

But Canada is certainly where LaLonde had her interest in beauty piqued, working one of her first jobs at The Body Shop in Waterloo. Now, The Body Shop is one of the international brands LaLonde is collaborating with.

“The Body Shop was really my foot in the door. I even worked at The Body Shop as one of my part time jobs when I moved to the UK. It’s been a really constant in my life and I can’t believe I now get the opportunity to work with them,” says LaLonde. “It’s insane in the membrane and such a dream come true.”

LaLonde says she is excited to see what will happen in the Canadian beauty blogger movement, and does believe that it is something that will start to gain attention. So for fellow Canadians looking for some inspiration, LaLonde says that if you have the passion to become a beauty expert and personality, the most important thing is to just get out there and do it.

“Don’t wait around, just put yourself out there. Don’t wait for eight months because now doesn’t seem like the right time. Even for myself, I look back at the first year of my online content, and I’m not happy with what I was creating but I just keep trying to improve and get better. You do get to a place where you are happy with what you’re creating,” says LaLonde. “Like Drake says - started from the bottom now we’re here.

“Every day I wake up and think about what I am doing. I’m very lucky to be doing this,” say LaLonde. “I love making videos and vlogging and I love pushing myself to see what else I enjoy. I don’t like to be stagnant. I’m just enjoying taking things as they come and saying yes to as many opportunities I can.”

[Aslan and Estée with their greyhound, Reggie. photo: Facebook]