Ashley Rous (born: May 4, 1998), better known online as bestdressed (also known as bestmess), is an American fashion, lifestyle, and vlogging YouTuber.
Early Life[]
Ashley Rous was born on May 4, 1998, in Columbia, Maryland. Ashley’s parents are first-generation immigrants. Her dad's side is from London, England, and her mom's side is Burmese and ethnically Chinese. The pair met at graduate school and married 6 months later.[1] One of her parents has a Ph.D in chemistry, and another in physics.[2] Ashley also has an older sister.
The family would later move to Ellicott City, Maryland, where she would spend the majority of her early life. Being a second-generation immigrant of British-Burmese descent, she described the town as ‘super accepting’ of her ethnicity. She has mentioned being fans of YouTubers like Natalie Tran and Jenn Im.
At high school, she excelled academically while managing extracurricular activities. She had aspirations for screenwriting around this time, and her academic proficiency opened doors to a couple of film schools at prestigious universities, including Stanford (whose offer she rejected) and the University of California, Los Angeles.[3] She would later attend college in the latter, majoring in film with a concentration in screenwriting and graduated one and a half years early summa cum laude to cut down on tuition fees. Influences of her film background are apparent in her YouTube videos.
Career[]
Before and During YouTube[]
Ashley held several retail jobs before making YouTube a full-time job. During her YouTube career, she has mentioned doing freelance editing jobs for the Sorry Girls, and interned at several film-related companies.
She was in the process of starting a clothing line, but production has been halted. She has also partnered with En Route Jewelry and designed pieces for them.
YouTube Career[]
Prior to starting the channel now known as bestdressed, she recalled starting a YouTube channel ‘around the age of 8 or 9’ dedicated to stop-motion animation called PipeCleanerStudios.
She started her YouTube channel at 2015, and a then 17-year old Ashley posted her first video in the same year under the username modelcitizen. She later changed her YouTube alias to bestdressed, after winning the title of ‘best dressed’ from her high school. She worked on her YouTube channel in her high school and college years - some of her videos dealt with her experience with the latter. She was initially secretive about her channel, but her classmates eventually discovered it.
Her style of videos include fashion, lifestyle, advice and vlogging videos (both notable for being transparent and blunt) and, occasionally, videos relating to film. Her channel is barely dependent on YouTube collaborations - the few YouTubers featured including Haley Pham and Ryan Trahan. She also started a second channel called bestmess, which deals with bloopers and outtakes from her former channel.
Aside from these, she uploaded two short films on her channel, FRIDAY NIGHT and VINYL.
She has appeared on the Harper’s BAZAAR channel.
bestdressed was nominated for the 2020 tenth annual Streamy Awards in the Fashion & Style category. The Streamy Awards took place on December 13, 2020.
Reception[]
bestdressed has been praised for her fashion sense, humor, and personality on several news sites. A Fashion Revolution article comments ‘There is something different about Ashley’s videos. There is no big agenda, no preaching or bragging, no shaming when she talks about clothes. There is just this subtle little undercurrent of care and attention in the way she approaches her wardrobe’.[4]
In 2020, Ashley posted a video titled "how 2020 has me feeling" which garnered 1.8 million views. The video is very short film-esque, documenting her thoughts and feelings throughout the pandemic situation in New York City. Her video received mixed reviews, some praising for her artistic and creative style while others claim she had been romanticizing the pandemic. Some viewers also pointed out the lack of mask wearing in some clips and how she had been deleting comments that criticized her.
Personal Life[]
Ashley was in a relationship with a man named David, but they have since broken up. She also dated her childhood friend who briefly appeared in her videos, but some time in 2021 they had also broken up.
She moved from Maryland to Westwood, Los Angeles and later to New York City in 2020. She has dual US and UK citizenship.
She describes herself as a feminist, having been influenced by her mother, who was a second-wave feminist. She describes herself as ‘being 1.5 on the Kinsey scale’.
Ashley currently seems to be on hiatus as she has not posted once in 2021. She remains active on Instagram and TikTok.
Gallery[]
