In the month of love, we look at the importance of female friendships and solidarity in the world of business. Kim May Chee of COCOdry, Jessica Chaw of Lilian’s Cake House and Josephine Yap of Fondest open up about being ‘girlbosses’ in the modern world, and their shared quest in making women everywhere feel confident and good about themselves.
On this sunny morning, the set of our cover shoot is awash in pink and we are embracing the vibes: the romantic notes of Kate Spade Chérie Eau De Parfum are lingering in the air, Taylor Swift’s “The Man” is aptly blasting through the speakers, TGIF. Kim May Chee slips into the studio, flashes a bright smile at us and ushers herself to the makeup chair all brisk and businesslike. Her hair is perfectly coiffed even at this unreasonably early hour — the perks of being the mind behind blow-dry bar COCOdry. (I don’t believe she’s ever had a bad hair day.)
Within the span of ten minutes, our joint cover stars Jessica Chaw and Josephine Yap arrive and abruptly bound ahead towards where Kim is seated, immediately gushing about how radiant her makeup looks. At once the energy in the room feels stronger, the day more purposeful. To have not one but three women entrepreneurs, whose businesses were all born from passion, be featured on our February digital cover — it’s as if fate had fortune in store for us.
Helming the online label Fondest since late 2020, Josephine’s love for fashion has run deep since she was a young girl. And Jessica, with her natural bent for decorating, is the artistic architect at Lilian’s Cake House — an online cake shop back during the peak of the pandemic with her mother, the business eventually bloomed into a café; a sweet spot at Society Mont Kiara. Together, the girls teach an important lesson in entrepreneurship: achieving the dream is only half of the journey — keeping the dream alive is a feat of its own.
From a mother’s loving touch to a life’s calling
Speaking of ‘sweet’ spots, yet another star of our digital cover is Chérie Eau De Parfum by Kate Spade. Fruity, floral and feminine, this love potion in a bottle is the perfect sweet summer scent. It evokes a warm, citrusy and cosy feeling — much like strolling down an old Parisian boulevard. This is also exactly how it feels to step into Lilian’s Cake House on a drizzly afternoon, the smell of earl grey and hōjicha chiffon cakes filling the space.
“I used to travel a lot before I opened the café — to South Korea, Paris, London,” Jessica shares. “And I drew a lot of inspiration from different countries. I felt like Malaysia was lacking retro style cafés. You know, most Malaysians like to keep it minimal or create industrial style cafés. So, I thought, why not bring something new to the local café scene? I played around with some bold colours, like green and red. When I first came up with the concept, I presented it to my boyfriend — he studied architecture, so he helped me illustrate it. I was a bit scared that it would be ‘too bold’ for the Malaysian crowd, but I’m quite happy with how it turned out. People come for the food, and then they would stay just to take pictures all around the café.”
Lilian’s Cake House is a true maximalist’s dream. Think Western home kitchens of the 1950s: chequered floorings, tartan tablecloths, bright colours clashing in the best of ways. It’s clear that a lot of love went into crafting the café. An elaborate archway gives a little glimpse of the magic that happens behind the scenes: mother Lilian doing the baking, daughter Jessica on decorations.
“Growing up, my mom always baked for us,” Jessica goes on. “I wasn’t really into baking when I was younger, but because of COVID-19, it became kind of a mother-daughter bonding thing. So, I really want to attribute the café’s success to my mom. She has never really worked her entire life; she’s always been a housewife, taking care of us — baking was just a hobby. She never thought that in her 50s, she would still be able to pursue her dream of opening a café and actually making it come true. I feel that’s very inspiring. Like, sometimes when I get tired, I would just look at my mom and see that she still hasn’t given up yet. So, why should I?”
Jessica threw herself head first into the business, and was greeted with instant success. But with it comes the naysayers: “When we first opened the café, I received feedback saying, ‘Oh, how can you be so successful overnight? How did you open this café so easily? A lot of these kinds of stereotypes. They don’t see that [my mom and I] have actually been doing this for three years. We worked hard; we saved the money from our earnings from those sales, and we used it to open up this café.”
Now nearly a year into its official opening, Lilian’s Cake House is thriving. “My mom is still the one who bakes all of the cakes in the shop,” she says. “And I make the custom cakes. I would experiment with different kinds of designs. I would research and try to keep up with the trends. And the trend now is the ribbon cake design and I’ve been leaning more towards that.”
It’s just as well that Jessica brings up the ‘coquette’ aesthetic trend. Her finished hairstyle is dotted with tiny pink bows, a fitting tribute to Old English elegance and femininity — as it’s captured in Lilian’s Cake House.
Mastering the art of the ‘girlboss’
As soon as Josephine gets in front of the camera, Kim starts whooping with joy. She pulls her phone out to snap a couple of BTS shots, cheering Josephine on, “You look so good, babe!”
For her own close-up, Kim is dressed in a fuchsia pink Kate Spade blazer with matching work shorts — very Career Girl Barbie, I comment. Her face is alight with pride and we launch into a lengthy discussion about the 2023 Barbie film, how it altered the cinematic landscape, and America Ferrera being nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the upcoming Academy Awards. “You know, I couldn’t stop thinking about that scene after I got back home from the movie,” Kim tells me, alluding to the film’s iconic monologue at its midpoint. “I just feel like it’s so important for girls to hear that because it’s really true, everything she said! I’m glad that the movie brought attention to those things, because some people really have no idea.”
The year she conceptualised COCOdry, Kim had not only been reading Sophia Amoruso’s best-selling autobiography #Girlboss — she’d binged the Netflix series, listened to the podcast, and made the ‘successful woman’ trope the mantra of her life. But even as the certified girlboss she is today, Kim is very in touch with her femininity. “It’s how I started [COCOdry],” she says. “Passion for beauty and hair, well, yeah. I’m a girl! I’m just attracted to pretty things. I see things that sparkle and I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, I want that.’”
As a child, Kim grew up surrounded by all things hair care — her father is veteran hairstylist Simon Kim of Hair Impression (and later, Wave Salon), based in Penang. Knowing this, I can’t resist exclaiming: “Oh my, I bet you always had great hair growing up!”
Kim grins back at me. “Yeah, I got my hair done every day before I went to school. My ponytail was always very intact. And my friends back in high school would always say that I was spoiled. Because it was professionally done! Like, I didn’t even know how to do my own hair back then.”
#Girlboss also gave Kim the push to open up her blow-dry bar — a hairstyling hub that doesn’t do cuts or colouring; a complete one-eighty from the traditionally run salon business that she had grown up around. Back in Penang, she “felt like a big fish in a small pond”, restrained and often undermined. Thus her girlboss narrative for herself began. Like Jessica when she’d first started Lilian’s Cake House, Kim also had her fair share of naysayers. “People were telling me things like, ‘You will fail’,” she confides. “‘You’re not even a hairstylist, you’ll have no customers, you have no one. What makes you think you can make it?’” But an Aries woman thrives on challenges — and today, COCOdry has three outlets in Bangsar, Publika and Platinum Park across from KLCC.
“It’s a lifestyle,” Kim affirms, about COCOdry’s unique concept. “It’s about catering to women from all walks of life. The whole idea is that we want to be there for all your big and small moments in life. Like, when you’re having a bad day, we’re here to wash your worries away. When you have a date night, we want you to show your most confident self. When you have a job interview, we want you to slay. When you go for a girls’ night out, we want you to dance and let your hair bounce. And when we look back, it’s true — there are so many customers that have come for a wash and blow and you could really see the stress just get washed away.”
Being a girlboss may mean you’re self-made, but it doesn’t have to mean you’re doing it alone. Besides her amazing team behind her, Kim credits her husband as her biggest cheerleader. “I think that as a woman, having a partner that supports your dream is so important,” she says. “Imagine if when I was first starting out, he told me, ‘I don’t think you can make it; I don’t think this would work.’ I would just give up. Because we trust the person that sits next to us, that sees us in the morning and at night. So, I feel like that mental support is so important. He believes in me more than anyone else in the world.”
In October 2022, Kim and her husband, Vernon, welcomed their son Kobe. I tuck away a remark about how Kim doesn’t give me ‘mom vibes’ at all, with how lively and energetic she is, and instead ponder aloud what it’s like to be a working mom. “The guilt, babe,” she says without any hesitation. “Every time I say goodbye to him, when I walk out the door, it’s very heartbreaking. Sometimes he would just run to me, and he’s, like, 15 months. He’ll be like, ‘Mama, mama.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry, darling, mommy has a shoot, I gotta go.”
Now, over a year into motherhood, Kim has more or less gotten the hang of it. “Sunday is Kobe day, it’s non-negotiable,” she says with a laugh. “You can feel like you don’t have enough time with your kid, but how much time is enough time? Also, I want to show Kobe that everyone has a place. I want him to see that his mommy is out here chasing her dream, doing what she wants and having that kind of freedom to just do whatever she wants. I think this is actually a very good thing to instil in him. That he can have it all.”
Of course, as she says this, Kim recognises the position she’s in — and adamantly reveals her short-term plans for COCOdry in the near future: “Financially, it’s just not easy to have that balance. I told my team that eventually, if we have the capacity in the office, I would want to have a nanny service. Because among my team, some of them are moms. They tell me about their struggles. These women are still very passionate about their careers, doing what they love. And of course I want to support that.”
Confidence, a woman’s best accessory
“Just a second!” Josephine says to me, as soon as she scoots aside and Kim takes her place in front of the camera. “Gotta take some BTS shots for Kim — yes, love that look!”
We watch Kim pose — one hand lifting a large pink bow above her head, the other cradling the Kate Spade Chérie Eau De Parfum bottle. Only ten minutes earlier, Josephine has had her hair crimped and blown away from her face, in a brick red number. And immersed in all our Barbie talk, Kim has also referred to Josephine’s look as “very dance party Barbie” — it helps, too, that the iconic Dua Lipa song pierces through the speakers.
The truth is, Josephine can pull off just about anything. (She cites Audrey Hepburn and Emma Watson as her major style icons, and it’s not difficult to see that the influence is even in her demeanour.) She’s got those model good looks and her own sense of style that she’s built since she was a young girl.
“I’ve had it since before I even turned two,” she tells me. “My mom was so excited when she first got a daughter, and she thought she would be able to dress me up and stuff. But when she put something on me, I would go into my closet and remove it, and I’d put together my own clothes. And if I didn’t get to wear that, I would cry very loudly. I was probably very annoying as a child.” She laughs. “Yeah, even in primary school, during break time, I would just start drawing dresses — designs for my Barbie dolls and stuff like that. I think, for a very long time, I’ve been into ‘effortless styles’, but I never really got into it because I felt that it wasn’t very profitable. It’s a very high-capital industry.”
Fast-forward years later, and Josephine is now the ‘mother’ of Fondest, an online fashion label that caters to curvier silhouettes and less conventional body types. “I tried a few different things, and realised that this is what I really, really love,” she shares. “I know with all my heart that this is something I’m very passionate about. I see girls — especially girls that are curvy and struggle [to find clothes] with their larger hips and to fit in clothes properly. And I see them put on Fondest and they say, ‘Oh my God, this is my first time wearing something more ‘fitted’ and have it compliment them very well. I think that was when I knew, like, with all my heart, this is what I meant to do.”
Fondest’s primary goal, from its very beginning, has always been to make women feel confident about themselves — something that Josephine herself is still learning to navigate. When I bring up her brand’s success despite how new it still is, she shrinks a bit with discomfort. “Thank you, but I don’t think I’m successful,” she downplays. “But if you were to put that word, what I think has helped me achieve the things I’ve achieved today is charisma. You have to be able to be genuine, like, be authentic online. It may be difficult, but I realise from my content, the one time that I’ve been very vulnerable in a video was about my social anxiety.”
She’s referring to the episode of Maggy Wang’s Head Over Heels podcast in which she gave an honest tell-all about her burnout, and how she redirected the focus of Fondest to what it is today. Prior to Fondest, you might have seen Josephine as a regular on JinnyBoyTV across YouTube. Thus, with her experience in content creation and a rapt female audience, Josephine’s set to be in business for the long haul.
“Be authentic to who you are, and also work hard,” she adds, after a pensive pause. “There’s no ‘fast money’, ‘quick cash’ or shortcuts in life.” In everything she does, Josephine never gives up her feminine touch. She’s not about that tough girlboss exterior — she finds that she shines through feminine strength. “We girls are more sensitive,” she quips, grinning, “and I think embracing your emotions is something we can put to use, to be more vulnerable. And using that to tap into and to relate with other people is so, so important. ‘Cause everyone’s just trying to sell things for the sake of selling, so having that emotional touch and that sentiment really makes a difference.”
editor-in-chief MARTIN TEO | interview PUTERI YASMIN SURAYA | creative direction by MALLIE MARAN | assisted by RONN TAN | styled by AZZA ARIF | photography HERRY CHIA EE | videography JOE NG | makeup KF BONG | wardrobe KATE SPADE, BEHATI, H&M, MAARIMAIA & KREE | fragrance KATE SPADE NEW YORK
Find out more about JESSICA CHAW and JOSEPHINE YAP and KIM MAY CHEE in the latest issue of LSA Digital Cover Vol. 017 HERE.
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Written by
Puteri Yasmin Suraya
Senior Writer, Features and Tech
Hailing from an English Literature & Creative Writing background, Yasmin has a deep love for fiction and poetry. When she’s not reading or café-hopping, she spends most of her time in the comfort of her own room binge-watching period romances, (badly) belting out show tunes, and curating Spotify playlists to match her mood for the week.
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