Clara Lee
Photographed by Eric Guillemain - Styled by Romina Herrera Malatesta - Hair by Ayumi Yamamoto @Bridge using Oribe - Makeup by Linda Gradin @L’Atelier NYC using MAC Photo Assistant - Keya Goldfein Production - 2b Management Production Assistants: Greta Westcott & Louis Guillemain
Interview by Mely Kornfeld
Shirt: Officine Générale Jacket: HYKE Coat: ROMAN Pants: HYKE Shoes: Camper Bracelet: Cartier Necklace: David Yurman
“I’m going to wear minimalism from now on,” Clara Lee declares. We’re sitting in the photographer’s home office, and she’s changed back into a corset dress. After only a few days in New York, Clara’s already excited by the possibilities of her own style—and broader career—reinvention. She instinctively reaches towards her neck, feeling for a necklace that isn’t there. “No more jewelry.”
In New York, Clara has maintained a cool anonymity. She has a sort of blank-slate in the U.S. “I feel human here. I don’t feel like a celebrity at all.”
Coat: HYKE Pants: HYKE Shirt: Officine Générale Shoes: Prada Bracelet: Cartier
As she enters a “third chapter in her acting career”—building a home base in L.A.—Clara is accustomed to the palimpsest she makes of herself. Born in Switzerland to Korean parents, Clara spent her childhood in Korea. As a child, Clara followed her father, the leader of the band Koreana, around, who was always playing instruments, singing, and dancing. Her mother was the one who encouraged her to become an actress.
When she was 14, she moved to California to learn English, where she lived away from her parents for 6 years.
There, she “became very independent. I’m an only child. I could be a princess, but I’m a leader...I can survive anywhere.”
Coat: Officine Générale Dress: Karla Colletto Shoes: Prada Socks: Fogal Necklace: David Yurman Bracelet: Cartier
After returning to Korea to study acting and modeling, Clara moved to China without speaking any Chinese. “I felt very lonely there and it was hard, but through those experiences you become stronger. And then you’re not scared of the small things.”
“I did it!” Clara says. “When I give people advice, I say: you should send your kids away!” Clara’s ability to thrive anywhere is obvious in her career, which spans from T.V to film to music to modeling. Most recently, she finished a Youku tv series in China, Seven Heart Letters (七根心简) set to release in fall 2024, where she had to act as a villain, an action—and perhaps moral— role she isn’t used to performing.
Pants: Officine Générale Shirt: HYKE Bracelet: Cartier Necklace: David Yurman
But Clara brightens when she talks about playing a villian. Acting is “limitless.” When asked if she feels like she has to always be evolving, she laughs. “Forever. Until I’m a Grandma.” Everyone calls Clara a workaholic. “I’m an Ox,” Clara agrees. “So I work hard.”
Shirt: Officine Générale Pants: HYKE Shoes: Prada Bracelet: Cartier Necklace: David Yurman
In Korea and China, Clara is a sensation. Her success boomed following her role of Yoyo in the 2016 box office #1 Chinese movie, Some Like it Hot. As we talk, Clara is nostalgic; she still resonates with Yoyo. “My character was just like me,” she explains. “I was wearing a red dress. I feel like I have to wear a red dress all the time in China because that’s how people recognize me.”
Because she is always on the move, Clara creates communities wherever she goes, and doesn’t divide her friends and co-workers. As a long day of shooting wore on and a longer night of social events loomed ahead, Clara’s sense of humor and lightness remained—even the photographer’s dog couldn’t stop following her around.
Shirt: Officine Générale Jacket: HYKE Coat: ROMAN Pants: HYKEShoes: Camper Bracelet: Cartier Necklace: David Yurman
Of course, Clara holds onto the traces of her past to inform this continuous reinvention. Family is very important to her, and she’s inherited her parent’s love for performance. Clara also has role models outside of her family; on the other side of her villain arc in film, Clara looks up to Scarlett Johansson and Gal Gadot, specifically their roles as Black Widow and Wonder Woman.
Shirt: Officine Générale Jacket: HYKE Coat: ROMAN
Clara’s evolution—her constant state of becoming—has always been on her own terms. Now, in L.A, her eagerness for reinvention is thrilling, not only because she’s already an expert at it, but because of the new opportunities it holds, whether that means acting in action movies or changing into streetwear instead of a red dress.
Shirt: Officine Générale Jacket: HYKE Coat: ROMAN Pants: HYKE Bracelet: Cartier Necklace: David Yurman
Photographer: Eric Guillemain, Stylist: Romina Herrera Malatesta, Makeup Artist: Linda Gradin at L’Atelier NYC using MAC, Hair Stylist: Ayumi Yamamoto at BRIDGE using Oribe, Photo Assistant: Keya Goldfein, Production: 2b Management, Production Assistants: Greta Westcott & Louis Guillemain
