21 September 2026 |
The influencer and creative director Bryanboy has amassed enough luxury fashion to fill six industrial shipping containers. Last year, he was intent on letting it all go. Then came Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel…
Despite his popular moniker, Bryanboy is a man now. After years of traversing the globe as a front row fixture, the Manila-born influencer – real name: Bryan Grey Yambao – is married and helming style content with A-list talent like Nicole Kidman and Sabrina Carpenter. He lives in Sweden with his pseudo-anonymous Scandinavian husband, a tech executive and “please don’t put me on social media” kind of guy. He has become a shopping soundboard for designers like Dior’s Jonathan Anderson and Chanel’s Matthieu Blazy, who give him unprecedented access to designer trophies like rare handbags and shoes, which Yambao acquires with the zeal of Thanos grabbing the Infinity Stones.
In 2022, Yambao realized he possessed six industrial shipping containers of designer clothes and accessories. “I swear, I’ve cut it down to three,” he insists, as if he were talking about a cigarette addiction. “I mean, for now.” Online and IRL, Yambao frequently acknowledges his luck at being able to cradle the latest Chanel bag, both because it is uniquely beautiful and because it represents an elite racetrack where the confluence of art, economics, and Olympic-level social jockeying result in one big victory lap. But Yambao is quick to correct the assumption that he grew up loaded. “I’m the oldest of four, and my dad ran a small fertilizer company in Manila,” he says. (He is delighted when I point out that Christian Dior’s father also ran a fertilizer company, which helped inspire the designer’s famous postwar rose garden, and later, his rose-based Miss Dior fragrance.) Yambao went to Catholic school, where pilfered copies of Vogue were dispersed among his textbooks. “They were four or five months out of date. There was no internet. We had to wait for the magazines to reach the Philippines! But I didn’t care. I was obsessed.”
At home, Yambao would tape Cindy Crawford’s pages to his bedroom wall. By 14, he’d switched his allegiance to Stella Tennant, photographed by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel’s SS97 campaign in a sharp blazer, white shirt, and black necktie. “She looked kind of boyish, which is basically the essence of Chanel, you know? And I related to it because at the time I was questioning myself. ‘Am I gay? Am I a boy? Am I a girl? Why do I have “girl feelings” when I’m a boy?’ And fashion was partly escapism but also a way for me to figure myself out.” At 14, Yambao performed Christmas carols in his neighborhood for cash (a Manila custom he compares to our Halloween) and saved for his first-ever luxury purchase: a pair of neon-orange trousers from Versace Jeans Couture. He still has them. Around the time Yambao graduated high school, online shopping was on the brink and Net-a-Porter launched with a small stash of Jimmy Choo heels. Yambao took gigs as a website administrator while blogging his way into the hearts and closets of an internet-starved fashion fandom.
By 2004, he was getting commission checks from Net-a-Porter. By 2006, he’d paid off his parents’ mortgage. (“They’re very proud of me,” Yambao says of his family. “But obviously, even now, they think it’s funny. It is funny! Like, ‘You’re making a video about your bag? In the food court?!’”) In 2008, one of those videos – about a Marc Jacobs ostrich bag the same deep green color as a crisp dollar bill–inspired Jacobs himself to rename the bag ‘The BB’ in Yambao’s honor. A star was memed.
In the ensuing 18 years, Yambao has worked harder and smarter than nearly all of his OG blogger peers. He’s judged America’s Next Top Model, modeled for Calvin Klein and Swarovski, and YouTubed with Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham. Why did people tune in? Yambao thinks it’s his mix of nonchalant luxury living and childlike enthusiasm. “The optimism and the joy, and the friendships we make going to fashion shows, those are the reasons to keep going,” he says, noting that his “fashion besties” – fellow online creators like Susie Lau and Veronika Heilbrunner – have been part of his friend group for nearly two decades. “We really stuck together and rooted for each other. It’s a big deal for us to still be here, still doing it. We never take that for granted.”
It’s that brand-friendly enthusiasm which helps Yambao access popular pieces like Chanel’s smooth-front flap bags and two-tone pistachio heels – which even A-list stylists aren’t always able to snatch. (It also helps that Yambao can purchase these things at regular retail prices, something he candidly concedes is because of his generous, off-camera husband.) He’s got the playbook down. Yambao has been working with the same saleswoman at Chanel for 15 years; as she’s advanced through the company, so has his access to first-dibs pieces. He says he’s happy to spend between $3,000 and $5,000 on a knitwear piece and $5,000 to $7,000 on a jacket. “It’s so beautiful. You’ll have it forever,” he says. Occasionally he’ll spy Blazy himself at Chanel’s famous Rue Cambon store, making his purchase all the more memorable. Eventually, this Chanel stash will become part of Yambao’s newly slimmed archive. But for now, he’s constantly wearing it – to the supermarket, to McDonald’s, to the Zoom call where he beams onto the computer from his living room in Sweden, happily sporting Blazy’s now-famous Superman sweater like a “Hello My Name Is” label at college orientation.
“We’re so lucky to be alive, as we are, right now,” he says with his famous, indefatigable smile. “Yes, make a collection. But first live in your clothes. Wear. The. Clothes.” We couldn’t agree more.
Taken from 10 Magazine USA Issue 7 – HERITAGE, LEGACY, FUTURE – out September 18! Order your copy here.
Photographer ANDREAS OHLUND
Talent BRYAN YAMBAO
Text FARAN KRENTCIL
Hair SAINABOU CHUNE at Mikas Looks
Makeup IGNACIO ALONSO at LundLund
Digital operator LUCAS LANTZ
Photographer’s assistant MAJKEN JACOBSSON SJÖBERG
