5 AAPI Creatives On Culture, Craft & Making It In NYC

New York City is a place that is the sum of it's parts. Without the people that inhabit it—those who exist at the intersections of various cultures—the city would not be what it is: an incubator of talent, a melting pot of perspectives, and, ultimately, the place people come to follow their dreams, especially creatives.

This AAPI month, we rounded out the month by visiting the homes and spaces of the Asian-American New York City creatives on their lives and work. We went uptown to the home of model and musician, Varsha Thapa, who recently returned from Biarritz where she walked Chanel's Cruise 2026 show, and downtown to check in with style it-girl, writer, and brand consultant Michelle Li. Over in the West Village, Chrome Hearts public relations manager Michelle Yang introduced us to her new puppy, Dagger, and back in Brooklyn, writer and director Katarina Zhu welcomed us into her peaceful one-bedroom apartment to play dress-up and talk about her go-to writing spot in the city. Ending in Greenpoint, creative Tanya Ravichandran, who shot this story, got in front of the camera in her breathtaking loft as our final subject.

Ahead, we get to know 5 AAPI creatives on their heritage, how their culture influences their work, and their relationship to New York City.

Tell us about your heritage…

“So both of my parents are from China. Both of their parents were in the military so they moved around a lot. I feel like whenever I ask my mom where she's from, she names 20 different places, but then mostly she'll just say I'm from the Szechuan province. And then my dad—I don't actually know really where he's from. I think of him as being from Beijing because I think of him as a city person, but I don't know if that's actually right. Both of my parents are from China and I grew up in the States. I grew up in the suburbs of New York and Westchester.

When did you move to New York?

“I moved to New York in 2014 for school. I went to NYU. I studied acting, but I grew up coming into the city on the weekends to go to Broadway shows. My dad was really into musicals, so he would make us all go into the city on the weekend to see Les Mis or something. I think it definitely made the city feel like this very special glam place where that's where entertainment and art was. I remember going to see Madame Butterfly at the Met or something when I was really young. The city I felt was always this hub of art and culture so from a young age I knew that I ultimately wanted to get to New York City.”

Did you grow up in an environment that encouraged creativity? How do you feel like it affected the way you pursued your work?

“I feel really, really lucky because I feel like I grew up in an overwhelmingly supportive environment as it relates to creativity. My mom put me in every class under the sun.

Every instrument, every sort of dance, drawing classes, painting classes, acting classes, guitar, piano, ballet, tap, everything. I think she just wanted to give me the exposure that she hadn't had as a child. But she doesn't really have any aptitude for the arts or creativity, but I feel like my dad was that...My dad has a real aptitude for the arts and also I think he just had a different appreciation for the arts that my mom didn't have. My dad was just an amazing artist, like literally just drawing. He would just sketch and it would be the most amazing sketch. And his parents were like that too, like his dad was a playwright and then his mom was an actress, but they both worked for the military. So she was a nurse, but she acted for the soldiers or whatever.”

Tell us a bit about how your culture influences your work.

“I feel like it's just embedded in everything. Every choice that I make. And so that includes creative decisions about my work. Growing up Asian American, my references are so different I feel because my parents had such specific references. I feel like there's institutional cultural knowledge that maybe they didn't have that they couldn't pass down onto me. I feel like sometimes there's a shared reference that people have that I'm just not aware of. And I feel like in those ways it sort of seeps into my work. I think family influences my work for sure, and I do think that is cultural, this emphasis on family and the importance of family.”

How does your culture influence your style?

“I'm sure it does influence my style in these ways that I'm not even aware of. Growing up there was a real sort of effort to set myself apart from my culture because it felt like anything that made me different was going to be the thing that other kids bully you about. And so I feel like there was an effort to really blend in and not draw attention to the fact that my culture was different from my friends or the people that I was growing up around. I feel like now I have more of an interest in getting in touch with my culture. I remember for my brother's wedding a couple years ago, my mom got a custom green silk qipao and it reminded me of how seen I felt when I saw Lindsay Lohan wearing a qipao in The Parent Trap. It was like a co-sign of  seeing my culture in fashion and reflected back at me. “

How about New York? Has that had more of an impact on the way you dress?

“Completely. Yeah. I think it's the thing that everybody says where it's like you sort of have to dress for utility in many ways in New York. You have to be so considered about your footwear because you have to be able to walk 20,000 steps in it, but then also I feel like New Yorkers are so vain, it also has to be beautiful too. So I feel like it definitely has influenced the way that I dress and just living in New York makes me want to elevate my style.”

The creative AAPI community is very vast here in New York. Do you find inspiration from your peers?

“Completely. I've lived in New York, not necessarily New York City, but like New York my whole life and in 2021 I needed a change of pace, so I moved to LA for six months. And I think what really drew me back to New York, among other things, was I just was like, what type of work do I want to be making and who do I want to be making it with? And there's this amazing emerging group of AAPI filmmakers in the city in a way that I wasn't able to find in LA. I wasn't in LA for that long, but I just felt like it was already established in New York and I knew who those people were and I wanted to cultivate those friendships. I was just with my friend Jeannie Sui Wonders who is a filmmaker, director, and writer, and she's working on her first feature. We were writing together yesterday at Swan Room. That's my spot. During the day I drag everybody there and make them work with me, but it just feels really nice to be able to have this really supportive community who you can share things with.”

The city is changing and evolving all the time. What are some things that you would like to see evolve either in New York as a city or your creative sector?

“I think New York City has always been a hub for emerging creatives in all different disciplines, all of my friends are always coming together and working on projects and putting on shows in a grassroots way and I just think we need more of that in New York, I’d like to see that continue to grow,”

Is there a place in the city that makes you feel connected to your culture or home?

“I love walking...yesterday morning before I met Jeannie at Swan Room, I was looking for a legal pad, and there are all these little cute stationary shops around that area, but it was early so like none of them were open and so I stumbled into a Chinese-owned shop and it had everything you could think of. Specific snacks, plumbing equipment, notepads, toys, clothes, it was everything. And I feel like whenever I walk into one of those sorts of stores, I feel like that brings me back to my culture... My grandparents lived with us growing up and we would go to Flushing on the weekends to go to the big Hong Kong supermarket or something and I feel like that always sort of reconnects me with a sense of my culture and family and home, just like a little random shop in Chinatown that has everything. I always feel very comforted by that.”

Tell us about your heritage…

“I was born and raised in Korea until I was 10 years old. I moved to Canada when I was 10 and then I moved to North Carolina when I was 13 and then I moved to New York at 18. I grew up between Korea and the Western world.”

Did you grow up in an environment that encouraged creativity?

“Creativity was always around growing up because my dad would always bring around his camera, shooting all the memories. I would always be posing in front of him and I also went to an art oriented preschool. So I think that was just planted in my head to always think creatively from the beginning. And my family, my grandpa, my grandma, my uncle and they all are in the classical music world. My dad always encouraged me to be creative and he always encouraged me to do what I love. But my mom sort of tried to talk me out of being in the creative industry because she preferred stability. So I think that's why I sort of met in the middle. I wanted to be a fine artist, actually, but I chose textile design because it's not fully art, but it's drawing on fabrics. My mom was like a classic Korean mom so she just preferred me to do something else and just have more stability."

Tell us a little about how your culture influences your work.

“Korean culture influences my work in a lot of subtle ways. I think there's a delicacy and attention to detail with Korean culture that naturally shaped how I see aesthetics. And growing up, no mistakes were allowed in the household. I had to be a perfectionist. So I think I put that into my work and go from there. And also being in New York brings a freedom out of me, so I think they are now merged together.”

How does your culture influence your style?

“Being a Korean, you have to be very put together. Growing up as a Korean, you should not be too loud or too over the top, it’s a lot about restraint. But then being in New York, you can just be yourself. Everyone loves you for who you are. And so that just made me want to explore and push the boundaries.”

The creative AAPI community is very vast here. Do you find inspiration from your peers?

“I am inspired by how other fellow Asian Americans are pushing their boundaries. For me, I think inspiration also comes from just supporting one another and working together.”

The city is always changing and evolving, what are some things you'd like to see evolve in either New York City or in your creative sector?

“I think we're finally moving past a lot of old stereotypes and obviously K-pop is becoming very huge these days. I would say it is already happening, but allowing people to just be themselves and less judgment and freely be in their own world.”

Do you have a spot in the city that connects you to home or your culture?

“Koreatown always. Korean food is definitely my go- to.I like to go to Soju House with my friends if I'm feeling homesick, but I love Vietnamese pho. It just makes me feel so comforted and brings me back to life. I go to Nha Trang One in Chinatown.”

Tell us about your heritage…

“My parents grew up in Bangalore, India. They both are South Indian and they actually met each other in the newspaper in India when my mom I think was 17 or 18, and my dad was like 27 or 28. He basically said: “Moving to United States. Looking for a wife.” Which is very common in India. Arranged marriage still apparently is, but obviously especially back then. My mom met him once, married him, then didn't see him for a year or two because he had to move to the United States and her visa was still getting processed, and she was finishing up university. Then she moved to the United States and met up with him. They moved to Minnesota together because there were a lot of immigrants and there's still a lot of immigrants there at this time. They're very highly educated people and they got multiple master's degrees, living that “American dream”. They then moved to the Bay Area, California, and that's where I'm from."

When did you move to New York?

“I actually graduated college a little over two years ago and I booked a one-way ticket to New York one day after I graduated. I said, "Bye-bye." I studied computer science and UX design and just moved here two years ago. This is my first apartment, and I hope my only apartment because when are you going to find an apartment like this again? “

Did you grow up in an environment that encouraged creativity?

“Yes and no. I grew up in Cupertino, California. It's Apple headquarters’ city. Where I grew up, you're only allowed to be a few things in life: A doctor, engineer, lawyer, loser. You can't be anything else. Even my parents are engineers and doctors. I grew up in a 90% Asian community, so if you know a little bit about Asian culture, especially immigrant Asian culture, you really need to live up and do your parents good and make some money, especially if you also need to support your family because you're first generation. So there's a lot of trauma and bonding across working very high profile STEM or lawyer jobs. So creativity was not very well honored and it was not fostered or nurtured. I started in middle school doing photography because it was the one thing my peers couldn't touch and never influence. It's one thing my parents couldn't be like, "Yeah, we can get you a job." I don't like that. It was the one thing that felt very separate in my escape from everything else in the world. It was just my way of getting out of it, but my parents never really understood it. But I think what they did understand and to this day, what they understand is that I work hard and they do value that. “

How does your culture influence your style? 

“There's this really amazing article on Vogue by Christian Alaire, and he's talking about being a person of color with culture and reclaiming your identity in ways that Western fashion has exploited, like a craft that you're ethnically connected to. I've been practicing it ever since I read that article four years ago, buying back pieces where they stole your culture. So I feel like the way to reclaim the identity in a place where I'm not very represented is to buy back those pieces that use my craft. I don't really wear things that are very South Asian particularly because I feel like it's not a reflection of my personal style and I am part of the South Asian diaspora. So the way I've been able to find connection to my roots is through purchasing back pieces that belong to my culture.” 

How does that influence your work, if at all?

I think there is an overarching theme of working really hard in South Asian culture. I would just say any Asian culture, but obviously I'm going to give my experience as a South Asian or an Indian person because for a lot of us are first generation immigrants and even in India there's such a high level of competition. So I think the way that my culture's influenced my work is by working really hard. 

Do you feel like living and working in New York has had an impact on the way you dress?

“I feel like once again, this ties back into being South Asian. We're very extra. We love to overdress. I mean, look at an Indian wedding. We love to overdress. My mom was dressing me up in full, hot, pink, juicy, couture sweatsuits in middle school. So there's a chronic thing of overdressing. I actually think it's gotten more tame, which is interesting. I've dressed a lot more for utility. It's still very loud. I objectively know I'm a loud dresser, but it's much more for comfort.”

The creative AAPI community is very vast here in New York. Do you find inspiration from your peers?

“I've told so many people this and they're just like, "What?" but I think all South Asians hate each other. I think there's a lot of internalized racism within the South Asian community. It's because I think we've been pitted against each other. We need to really unlearn this in the community and we could really be uplifting each other. 

Is there a place in the city that makes you feel connected to either your home or your culture?

“I don't think there's a place in the city that makes me feel connected, but I think there are experiences that do. So maybe once or twice a month, I do big Indian meal nights. I make a group chat with 15 of my friends, and basically we basically do a four course Indian meal and I cook it all from scratch with my family's recipes and it's such a good time and then in the summer we'll sit on the roof and do it.”

Photography: Tanya Ravichandran

Senior Fashion Editor: Ella O'Keeffe

Talent: Varsha Thapa, Michelle Li, Katarina Zhu, Michelle Yang, Tanya Ravichandran.