8 of Chriselle Lim’s Favorite AAPI-Owned Brands
AD presents the Clever Guest Edit, a shopping series in which our favorite design enthusiasts share the products and collectibles that bring their homes to life. This week’s special guest is Chriselle Lim, cofounder of Bümo and Cinc Studios, and owner and creative director of Phlur. Get the exclusive on what’s at the top of her wish list here and don’t forget to subscribe to the Clever newsletter to get these picks delivered straight to your inbox each month.
Chriselle Lim is a worldly woman known by many titles—mother, entrepreneur, content creator, and fashion influencer are just a few of them. As TikTok’s “single rich mom,” millions of viewers regularly tune in to watch small doses of her exhilarating life and travels. (Before growing her TikTok audience, she’d spent the previous decade building a massive following as a YouTube vlogger.) But when Chriselle is offline, she’s busy being the owner and creative director of Phlur, a modern fine fragrance brand, and running Bümo, a resource hub she founded in 2020, dedicated to helping working parents find better solutions for childcare.
In terms of designing her household, Chriselle prefers classic neutrals with subtle pops of color. She doesn’t adhere to a specific aesthetic, preferring not to limit herself by sticking to a specific theme. From her POV, the more character a space embodies, the more natural and comfortable it feels. “I’m minimal, but I do like to throw in some more modern pieces here and there. I try not to think too much about it,” she explains. “When you just gravitate toward things that speak to you, it doesn’t necessarily have to fall into a category per se… I buy things as I’m traveling to collect, and it all comes together somehow.”
For Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, Chriselle partnered with Love, Bonito to further support their mission to empower Asian women across the globe. Here, she shares eight essentials from some of her favorite AAPI-owned businesses.
“When I relaunched Phlur, it was just a passion project because I was going through a divorce and scents really helped heal me. I was able to envision myself being confident and feeling sexy again. So a lot of these scents were created and developed through my own personal stories,” Chriselle says. “Missing Person was the very first fragrance, and the story behind that was there was a void after being married, and being with the same person, for 13 years. The hardest thing for me was waking up to an empty bed, so I wanted to bottle up and capture up something that smelled like, not the person and how they smelled, but the feeling of longing and almost like the scent that’s left on a pillowcase; a lover that left his T-shirt there and the warmth of skin. It’s all about missing a person, missing a memory–scent memory,” she adds.
“It’s a unique shape and because we do a lot of entertaining, it’s a conversation starter for people. I’m obsessed with all their glassware.”
“I’m obsessed with [Jing Gao] as a founder, but also her products and the spices just remind me of home and it just makes everything really good. I actually travel with it because I go to Europe a lot and Europeans don’t really eat spicy food so I carry around the Fly By Jing little bottle everywhere I go. People think I’m absurd there, but I’ve got to have my spice.”
“I have five of them at my house. It’s a planter, but it’s a piece of art. It’s just so unique in how it’s shaped. This is definitely a little bit of a splurge, but it is a statement piece for your house, if you love plants. I say everyone has to have at least one Light + Ladder ceramic planter in their house.”
“Sarah Paiji, a Korean American woman, launched [Blueland] a few years ago, and their whole mission is to offer cleaning products that are also good for the planet. Their very first product was pretty much a little tablet and you’d drop it in water…It’s so much healthier for the planet, it’s very effective. Their products have helped eliminate over one billion single-use plastic bottles from landfills, since 2019.”
“Charlotte Cho owns Then I Met You, a Korean skin-care line that is very simple and effective skin care. It just makes me feel good, I’m huge on beauty and skin care.”
“It’s the most gorgeous soap, it’s a piece of art. You don’t really want to use it, you just want it to sit there in your bathroom, but it’s a beautiful soap.”
“I’m very intentional about only keeping the things that I actually wear. I go through at least two big purges a season—I get a lot of things gifted and I also shop a lot, so it’s important for me to constantly be on that schedule of purging and keeping the things I actually want in my closet. This white button-down I’ve had for a while, I just throw that on. I love that [Love, Bonito’s pieces] are very flattering and work with different trends, but they’re classic pieces and you’ll never necessarily get sick of them… Those are the staples that glue my closet together.”
