Bay Doucet’s budding modelling career, growing social media platform and a business endeavour close to her heart are keeping her busy. photos: YAP CHEE HONG/The Star
In a vintage Celine top, white trousers, rocking her signature shoulder-length curls and short bangs for our cover shot, Bay Doucet serves up a unique vibe which is a combination of free-spirited manic pixie dream girl, bold modelling energy and a start-up owner who means business.
The 25-year-old model, content creator and entrepreneur is comfortable in a variety of ensembles, but dubs her personal style “grandma-chic”.
Her growing social media presence includes short clips of her mixing and matching everything from quirky brogues and colourful socks to vintage blazers, chic hats and a wide variety of accessories.
“I love vintage fashion, but I also love being comfortable above all else,” says Doucet. “I love wearing colour, I just think it’s fun to mix and match. Fashion should be fun, comfortable and should make you feel good rather than the opposite. It’s nice to not take yourself too seriously, and just have fun with it!”
With a keen interest in photography and videography, Doucet has always wanted to be a part of the creative industry in Malaysia, and has found several platforms to express different facets of her personality.
Juggling a budding modelling career, a business and building her profile on social media keeps her busy, and she’s loving it.
The term "influencer" or "KOL" (Key Opinion Leader), at times comes with it a bit of a stigma, as the audience only see the end result: happy, smiling, posey photos and reels, edited to perfection, of a life meant to be admired, coveted and desired.
Behind the scenes, a lot of conceptualising and planning must happen before a personality even appears on camera, and after, that’s where the editing comes in before the final product is posted.
With a keen interest in photography and videography, Doucet has always wanted to be a part of the creative industry in Malaysia.“I think I’m used to being someone who really likes to have control over my image, and the narrative that’s being put out about me. But when you are in this industry doing this job, you kind of have to learn to let that go,” she says.
“I’m actually quite shy and introverted by nature, which I think is why starting a business was so important to me. I really derive a sense of fulfilment from it that I didn’t get from doing content.
“And modelling, I think maybe because those industries tend to be quite reliant, obviously, on your face and on your name, running a business is where I feel like I can just be me. I can work behind the counter so it’s quite a free feeling for me, which is a nice balance to everything that I do outside of it that requires me to be a bit more glam or a bit more put together.”
“I guess it’s finding my competence in that space, and learning how to be confident to just be me rather than trying to project like, this is what I think an influencer should be like. You know, trying to find my own path.”
The communication design graduate began her professional life with Riuh, a curated platform for a variety of pop-up stores, food vendors, creative workshops, showcases and live performances, where she met two friends with whom she would later start a business (more on that later).
Unfortunately, three months into the job, the Covid-19 pandemic forced everyone into their homes and all events were cancelled for many months to come.
“I really wanted to learn event management, it’s a very whirlwind environment to be in and that’s really what I wanted to learn, but obviously, because of the pandemic, that didn’t happen, so when my contract ended with Riuh, after a year, I decided to leave and freelance full time.
“That whole time with all the lockdowns, I was already taking on freelance jobs, so that’s how I guess I got into content and modelling.”
Of start-ups and sustainability
We are sitting in the office of Looop, a 1,300 sq ft space in suburban KL, which was set up by Doucet and former Riuh colleagues Adani Bakhtiar and Emma Megan Khoo a little over a year ago. The curated second-hand store is a popular destination for buying and consigning good quality, vintage clothing, accessories and shoes.
This space has also served as a venue for small-scale events, where the team work with other local businesses once or twice a month to hold activities like tarot card readings, doodling workshops, flower arrangements and more.
Looop, a second-hand store which Doucet co-founded with two friends, has served as a venue for small-scale events, where the team work with other local businesses.
Several events happen off-site, depending on the occasion – from pop-ups to one particularly standout philanthropic endeavour.
On International Women’s Day the team worked with Heidy Quah, founder and executive director of the NGO Refuge for the Refugees to hold a shopping event for women in the refugee community.
“Basically Heidi was talking about how so often clothing donations just come in these big bin bags or come in boxes and aren’t sorted through by size, they’re not really looked at or cared for properly,” explains Doucet.
“We discussed the idea of a private shopping event where we would set up the racks the way we have them at Looop and have a photo booth and basically give the women (in the refugee community) the shopping experience of being able to pick out what they want, and try on things and get their photo taken. It was for us, a nice experience to not just have it be this touch and go thing where we put things out of our car and move on.”
“It was so nice to meet everybody, a lot of them brought their kids along and to also talk with them about their experiences.”
At their store, Doucet and her team see the amount of clothes that people take for granted – clothes that are bought without a second thought, something that most people take for granted.
“We really saw how much these women value the things they took home with them, and I think this is something we take for granted, just being able to walk into any store you want and browse the racks and pick something that you like,” says Doucet.
With one of the main reasons behind the startup being sustainability, for Doucet, it came from her love for vintage shopping.
Reducing consumption is something that she practises in her daily life, with sustainability and climate change being a huge a conversation of her generation.
“I never come at sustainability from a place of like, ‘you have to be perfect, you can never use a plastic cup, you can never shop from a fast fashion store’. We live in a complicated world where it is very difficult to live a perfect life. I think where you can shop second-hand, you should. Where you can reduce waste, you should. And it’s not ever going to be perfect,” says Doucet, adding that it’s all about making better choices.
Finding a balance
In a time when the boundaries between work and personal life has become a bit of a blur, most people are making it a point to switch off and find ways to recharge after a long day.
The seemingly unglamorous part of the day for Doucet is clocking in at her laptop and replying emails, just like many of us, a far-removed scenario from the glamorous events, soirees and campaign shoots.
“Spending time with my mum is really good for decompressing. I used to love going out and looking for new cafes and new events and stuff like that, but I think when your job revolves so much around events, I just enjoy staying at home,” says Doucet. “I decompress by cleaning my room and reorganising my life and spending time at home with my mum.”
“I think it’s important to have people in your life who know you for you. I think spending time with my family and loved ones really helps because they don’t see me a certain way. They see me as a human being, which I think is the most important feeling for me,” she says, adding, “I love spending time with my cat.”
Her career in modelling and as a content creator, not to mention a growing business – all of these are taking off, but there are still many interests that Doucet hopes to cultivate in the future.
“I’ve always been someone who has a lot of different interests. Growing up, you’re always taught you have to pick one. But I’m very thankful to be working a job that allows me to have many, many hats, and there are still more hats that I have yet to wear that I want to.”
“I would love to go into music eventually, I would also love to have more Looops. I think mainly, I do see myself eventually transitioning from being in front of the camera all the time to being behind it more, that is where I’m more comfortable,” says Doucet, who used to have a music channel as a teen where she would do covers and record her own music.
With many more possible endeavours to immerse herself in, it’s fairly certain that we’ll be hearing Doucet’s name plenty in years to come.
