Despite Black women being the backbone behind so many of the trends and styles that circulate the YouTube fashion community (see the Art Hoe movement), our faces are often missing from the mix making the platform feel overwhelmingly white. For those just trying to exercise their interest in fashion, the fashion world, with all its unspoken rules and regulations, can already seem so intimidating without the added stress of not being able to see yourself.
Fortunately, Brittany and Charmaine Goodwin are helping to change that. The two are the twins behind the YouTube channel The Complex Girls, a fashion and beauty channel dedicated to sharing their unique take on the fashion and beauty world. Through their eclectic lookbooks, styling videos, and video discussions, this dynamic duo is determined to represent Black girls who go against the grain just by being themselves unapologetically.
With a mission statement like that, it’s not hard to understand why we couldn’t resist getting to know more about the two and their channel.
Glamdom: So, who had the idea to start the YouTube channel first? Or did both of you have the idea at the same time?
Charmaine: It’s kind of funny, but we kind of grew up during the initial YouTube craze around 10 years ago. A lot of people from our high school were starting YouTube channels, so we had some high school friends at the time who encouraged us to start our own because they had one. At first we were like, Oh no. We’re kinda camera shy. But once we started it after we graduated and we knew we would have more time to invest in it, we both already had a bunch of ideas racked up that we were thinking about. Then, we just started recording lookbooks and different thrift videos, and now [we’re] getting more into makeup. We kind of just started from that. We came out of the gates after we graduated from college like, We’re gonna start a channel. That’s how it kinda started for us.
Glamdom: That’s actually interesting because I’ve noticed for a lot of YouTubers they either start around the end of high school when they’re going into college or during their college years.
Brittany: This whole experience is really interesting because you can kind of set yourself up to really do whatever you want once you graduate and I know once we graduated we had to have some sort of creative outlet and the YouTube channel was really a way for to express ourselves and it’s just catapulted since then. We started in 2015, June 2015 like literally the week after we went back to our home town. Ever since then we’ve been making YouTube videos and filming and our instagram and twitter accounts.
G: You both have been doing a really good job! Your channel’s so cool and your instagram account is also really good.
B: Girl, thank you! We try to stay consistent. Sometimes it’s hard cause then life gets in the way, but we really think you have to make the time to film things or take pictures. You really have to schedule in that time for yourself. I feel like the longer we’ve done it, the more we’ve understood what that balance is supposed to look like and how it works for us. Charmaine has a different work ethic than I do, but we still find a way to manage it to be as consistent as possible, just because it’s creative expression for both of us.
G: Since there are two of you working behind one channel, what’s your creative process like for when you’re making a new video or a new post on instagram?
C: Honestly, over the course of time that we’ve had our channel, that’s how we learned how to work together. We’ve been editing for almost two years now. At first, we didn’t really know how to, but then the more that we did it we learned that we both had different organization styles. We had to look at what both of our strengths and weaknesses were and how we could capitalize off of what our strengths were in working together. When it came to posting different lookbooks, now we each take one video to ourselves. We both are really into a certain vibe that we’re trying to go for, so one of us will edit the video and maybe the next video that we come out with the next person will edit it. Doing each video’s edits together meant that sometimes we wouldn’t get videos out as quickly as we wanted to. If one of us sits down to do one video and maybe the next video I take it and then we just flip back and forth, it’s less stressful. “I’ll take care of this video. You’ve got the next video. Ok cool.” And then we learned to organize it that way.
Same with our Instagram. If I post a picture early in the day, Brittany would post one later on in the day. Then the next day, I’ll post early in the day, and [the other] will post later on in the day. We kinda learned how to do it in a way that fits our organizational style but is still a way for us to get out content in an efficient way.
G: When you both first started your channel, what did you picture it being like?
B: We definitely wanted it to focus on fashion. Fashion will always be the focus of our channel. But the more we explored–honestly the more people that we met and the more we’d go out and meet people in creator’s spaces, the more we were learning to develop our skills to create different types of content. We’ve really have been taking our initial love for fashion and then just streaming it into all of our other interests and creating videos whether it’s fashion based or makeup based or maybe it’s talking about some books that we read. It still adds to the complexity of our identities. Our channel’s really just a cultivation of everything that we’re interested in.
G: How did you come up with your channel’s name, “The Complex Girls?” What’s the meaning behind it?
B: The funny thing is, our original name for our YouTube channel was Creative Complexities. That was the original name for it. But, when we were trying to get all of our socials to have the same name, Twitter said Creative Complexities was too long, so we had to think of a different name. So, for Twitter, we called it The Complex Girls. I think we got to a point in 2016 or so where we dropped off Creative Complexities and just kept the word “complex” and just put it as The Complex Girls for all of our social [media]. I think we were kind of going through a period of rebranding, so I was like Ok, what kind of sticks in your mind? What’s easy to say? What’s something that’s easily searchable on Twitter, easily searchable on Instagram?
The word “complex” is [also] a way we identify ourselves. We’re multifaceted beings– intersectional beings being Black women into fashion and beauty and music and politics. So, even though a mechanical error created our name, it really worked out because it’s really just how we define ourselves. We continue to cultivate our content to be that way: a range of our interests as we are growing and moving. Our channel’s really just our palette, where our creative ideas just flourish, and we don’t hold ourselves back saying Oh no, that’s too weird. We’re just like, Hey! A vaporwave lookbook. Why not. A Black bunny makeup tutorial. Why not?
G: Would you say that your channel is really for both of you as a creative outlet, or did you have an idea of somebody else who the channel might be for when you started it?
C: One of the main motivators for creating our channel was the lack of representation for Black women interested in fashion and in beauty. We wanted to create a channel based off of the things that we love to talk about, but we also wanted to be relatable to more girls that look like us in the fashion industry. We grew up reading magazines and not really seeing women or girls that `looked like us. When we were growing up we were like, Ok, well we see the whole influencer way kinda going on. How can we create something as well? I think that kind of organically developed where our brand was going to focus on. Content that we liked, but also the industry of Black women and girls. That’s why we love shooting fashion pictures.
We try to stay consistent with our fashion pictures and beauty videos because we just want our Black women and girls viewers to be able to see themselves and embrace the complexities of who they are whether they like fashion, makeup. We’re really into K-pop and other music. We love to travel. There’s so many different things that we really love doing and just wanted to create a destination where we can show that and other Black women and girls can see that content as well.
G: How do you deal with the pressure of needing to be consistently putting out content and the creative funks that can sometimes come out of all that stress?
B: One YouTuber that I follow, Jenn Em, said in a video that her creativity comes in waves, and I really identify with that as well. I really feel like the way the YouTube space is right now, Charmaine and I have really cultivated ourselves to come out with videos that we’re just excited about. It’s exciting for us to go through the process of filming it and editing it and taking our time to make the videos the way that we want [them] to be. We do work full-time hours, so that’s some time that we’re spending at work instead of making videos. For us, it’s really been a huge learning experience to really time manage ourselves. A lot of our filming will be on the weekends, and most of our editing will be after work, and then from there we’ve had to learn to not butcher ourselves for not coming out with a video every few days. Now we’re like, Ok if we can do a week or maybe two weeks– it just gives us some sort of leverage because there are things going on in our lives on the back end.
Just generally, we have come to understand what [productivity] looks like to us and not feeling like we have to put pressure on ourselves to put out content. We’re inspired to come out with something. We also have a YouTube calendar that we post all of our videos on. The stuff that we’re coming out with either within the next few months or within the month, we put it on the calendar to just have a gage of what we came out with. That’s another way staying organized helps with the consistency and also to not get overwhelmed, because you want to be creative you don’t want to be overwhelmed. I feel like allowing yourself the space to edit your videos for as long as you need to maybe give yourself some sort of timeline as like, Ok, I want this video to be done at this certain date or whatever, but I do feel like it’s really necessary to figure out how you work because it’s really different for everyone. Everyone’s track to success or YouTube success is different. I do feel like consistency plays a huge part in it, but it doesn’t have to stress you out. It doesn’t have to be a stressful part of being a content creator.
C: One thing that we do well is, we pre-film content. We pre-film and pre-shoot, so sometimes you may be seeing a picture on Instagram that we may have shot a week ago. If we pre-film things then we can kind of plan out a lot more efficiently when we’re going to come out with stuff. There’s also time for you to have a life as well. We’re both 27 year olds still figuring out who we are and learning about ourselves, so we’re not always on Instagram or on Twitter. Pre-shooting things– I think that that’s a really good tip for any content creator. If you pre-film stuff then it’s not like you always have to be in front of the camera every single weekend or every single day trying to film something. One time we filmed two videos in a day and we did a photoshoot. We just hashed it out. We took care of our shoots for the week, we took care of our videos, and that gives you time for post production as well, and you don’t have to rush to edit the video. You don’t have to rush to edit your pictures. That’s really, really helpful because nobody’s going to know that you took a photo a week before and you’re just posting it now.
G: LA is such a big hub for YouTubers. People are always joking about the traffic being made up of mostly people moving in to get into the influencer industry.
What about New York is having you move away from the West coast?
C: Our LA trek was really just [us[ wanting to get more job opportunities and just a new living environment from our hometown. We’re originally from Rancho Cucamonga, and we moved home to Rancho after we graduated, but one of the big things that we always wanted to accomplish was living in LA at some point in our lives. We both grinded it out. We both did job interviews, went to fashion agencies. Our goal was that we wanted to get to LA. We just wanted to live there. We didn’t know how long it was gonna be, but we just really wanted to have that experience. Because of our hard work and our effort, we got a job and we found a place to live. We were there for a whole year, and it was a great year because so many amazing things happened with our art stuff individually, but also with what we were doing creatively.
I think when New York came into the picture– we’ve always wanted to move to New York ever since we were little. We’ve always been drawn to the fashion industry. I think a lot of people can say that fashion is definitely a lot more prevalent in New York. I feel like beauty is very prevalent in LA because a lot of companies are based out here. LA is so perfect for that, but we thought to ourselves, What if we went to New York? How could we develop and cultivate our brand to what New York can offer us–which is a lot of fashion networks and connections. That’s something that we’ve always wanted to do, and something that I honestly felt like I was missing from LA.
I feel like being in New York–it’s so different when you’re actually living in an environment of opportunity. We thought living in New York would give us opportunities and more connections to work in the fashion industry and just continue to develop ourselves professionally.
There’re so many ideas and things that we want to start–businesses that we want to start, but I feel like one of the most important things is to learn how the business actually works. If you want to develop a product or clothing line or whatever, I feel like if you learn kind of the back ends of it, it’s a great foundation of success. I think that that’s something that is really inspiring us in New York: how you can really build the foundation in fashion in the actual fashion capital of the world. At least of one of [fashion capitals]. That’s what’s really exciting. I think it’s a new challenge, but we’re definitely ready to tackle it.
G: How would you describe your overall style?
B: I feel like we take a lot of inspiration from the fact that we thrift shop, and that really allows us to find clothes that are super unique and eclectic. Our style is definitely a mix of vintage trends, but also some of the more modern trends that are happening right now. We have moments where Charmaine dresses a little more edgy and maybe I’m dressing more girly, or we have more of like a boho look that we’re trying to do. Honestly, our videos are a really great time line of that because for each video we kind of try to style ourselves a different way. So, for the 80’s video we did, we [wore] more bright colors and had our hair differently and had accessories and our makeup different. Then for our vaporwave video, that one was a different type of style as well.
I honestly feel like our style changes, but it’s very consistent with the fact that we love to find new clothing at the thrift store. I feel like that really continues to add to our love for fashion.
Also, our mom. She has so many clothes that we inherited. We’ve really modeled a lot of our styles from her. She was very fashionable. She was a hat person and we’re hat people now. Berets in every color. Fedoras. We kind of grew up to have fashion be something that we’re interested in because our mom had a really, really cool style, and we would wear her clothes. She passed away when we were seventeen years old, but I feel like her memory lives in what we wear, and that’s a motivation too. I feel like fashion is another memory I have of my mother.
C: And Rihanna! We really love to experiment. I just feel like now is not the time to play it safe. If you want to try different looks just go for it. We’re really tapping into that with our brand which means getting confident too. I feel like when you’re feeling good about yourself and feeling confident, you try more things. You try more risks. So, the more we’ve grown our brand, the more risks we’re taking, and the more we like to change our look and not feel like we have to have our hair a certain way or have our style a certain way. We’re just growing into our brand and allowing it to grow with us, and with that comes experimentation for sure.
G: If there’s one thing you want people to take from your channel, what would that be?
C: One thing I would want people to take out of our channel is change is good. Whether we’re changing our style, whether we’re changing our hair, whether we’re living in a new place, we always like to take change as a way for us to grow. I really want viewers to not be afraid of change and not being afraid of taking a risk. Not being afraid of trying new hairstyles, putting on a different type of dress that they may never wear, moving to a new place they never thought they would be. Any people coming to our channel and following us on our journey–I just want them to be inspired to take risks and to take chances and to not be afraid of making a change especially if it could change your whole life.
G: Where do you both see yourselves in four years?
C: I definitely see our channel growing a lot more, especially with us getting more into our beauty content and kind of merging it with our interest in fashion. We’re definitely excited to expand ourselves to a bigger audience. I definitely see ourselves having a makeup collaboration with like someone like Colourpop. It’s something we really want to do. Also any fashion collaborations. We were talking about [doing] something with Topshop or Adidas, and someday having our own clothing line. That’s something that we’re working towards as well. We have so many ideas and individuals and different projects that we want to work with and different side passions that we have, so we’re really excited to expand ourselves to all of our different interests and also to also just cultivate and grow what we’ve already done with Complex Girls and just see it flourish more in New York, and someday Paris. We want to go to Paris fashion week. We want to try and go to every single major fashion capital. We want to go to Milan. We want to go to London. We want to really build our brand to an international visibility. That’s how much we believe in it.
Check out The Complex Girls channel here.
Feature image via Instagram @thecomplexgirls
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Glamdom 