PHOTO COURTESY OF KYLE AND STEPHANIE HJELMESETH
"WE’RE LUCKY TO HAVE BUILT SOMETHING THAT WE CAN COMPLETELY EVOLVE TOGETHER AS A FAMILY.” –KYLE HJELMESETH
“My fashion sense combines elegance with modern practicality,” says Stephanie Liu Hjelmeseth, an L.A. writer, photographer and tastemaker who’s collaborated on campaigns with luxury brands including Chanel, Tiffany & Co., Farfetch and Jenni Kayne. After growing up in North Carolina and Orange County and graduating from Berkeley, the storyteller started her fashion, beauty and lifestyle blog, Honey & Silk—which is how she met Kyle Hjelmeseth in 2012.
“I had very randomly stepped into the world of fashion,” says Kyle, a Washington state native who studied public relations at Purdue University. After dabbling in architecture, Kyle launched a menswear blog while working at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Downtown L.A. “The Los Angeles blog scene was pretty small, and both myself and Stephanie joined one of the first blogger official-feeling meet-up groups, Two Point Oh! LA.”
The pair immediately struck up a friendship, and after they began dating six months later, Kyle started helping Stephanie negotiate campaigns with brands and grow her social channels, officially becoming her manager in 2014. “My business changed almost overnight,” says Stephanie of Kyle’s keen business sense and relationship-building skills. Notes Kyle, “Stephanie made four to five times as much money in the year after I started managing her campaigns.” When word got out, Stephanie’s influencer friends all wanted to enlist Kyle’s management services—his curious, caring style setting him apart. “Soon enough, I had to quit my full-time job [as associate director of jewelry brand Chloe and Isabel] to focus on my growing talent pool and the idea that was G&B [Digital Management].”
Through the company he founded in 2015, Kyle now manages over 100 bloggers and influencers—including Stephanie, who’s proud to have helped small indie beauty brands like Tower 28 and Ranavat grow and to have served as the face of bareMinerals and Rose Inc. The couple, who married in 2016, is also doing family campaigns with their toddler, Jacob, for brands including Ralph Lauren, 7 For All Mankind and Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS shapewear. “The paradigm shift that occurred when ‘influence’ became a mainstream word was one of putting the power to storytell into the hands of the people,” Kyle says. “We can follow people that are truly just like us, instead of actors portraying an ideal of what it means to be human.”
Putting their most authentic selves forward has also been the key to their interpersonal success. “One of the best things about being in a committed relationship is letting your guard down,” says Kyle. Stephanie agrees: “At home we get to goof off and laugh, and there is at least one moment of just joy every day.” Valuing each other’s talent and guidance, and exchanging affirmations, is also key. She adds, “We tell each other we love each other a lot in the course of the day, amid all the silliness and seriousness.”
In 2022, the couple aspires to expand G&B into new categories of influence, to establish new brand ambassadorships and community partnerships that give back to L.A., and to balance their ambition with quality time together. Says Kyle, “We’re lucky to have built something that we can completely evolve together as a family.”
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