Mimiyuuuh at Home: Inside Her Whimsical, Hard-Won World of Beautiful Things

(SPOT.ph) Mimiyuuuh just asked me on a date. A Makati date. Really, Ms. Mimi? I replied. Who wouldn’t be surprised and extremely flattered by such a suggestion? We’ve only just met, and she’s Mimiyuuuh, after all. I’ve watched her for years: dancing in her small room in Baclaran while her mother slept in the background; unboxing one of her first designer purchases, a pair of silver Maison Margiela Tabis on sale; appearing in Lazada ads; buying a house for her family; buying this condo for herself; becoming a fashion-week darling; interviewing Anne Hathaway who would call her, endearingly, “that girl.”

I tell her yes, let’s definitely do it. We’ll walk. Because that’s what you do when you live in Makati: you walk. You walk to the mall. You walk to the park. No footbridges, and we can skip the underpasses. In my opinion, Makati real estate costs what it does not just because of the real estate bubble, but because its glorious, tree-lined sidewalks are folded into the price per square meter. “I love Makati, I love walking,” she says again and again. I agree one hundred percent.

We’re sitting in her walk-in closet, one of the bedrooms in her three-bedroom apartment converted into a full-blown boudoir, which also happens to be her favorite room. We chat while her glam team prepares her for the shoot. We’re surrounded by beautiful, beautiful gowns. Beautiful shoes. Beautiful bags. Beautiful things she has rightfully earned by turning one viral moment into a career that has outlasted the internet’s attention span.

By the time she bought the condo as a gift to herself for her 29th birthday, years of work had given her and her family a degree of security that many Filipinos only daydream about. Before turning 30, she wanted to try something she had never done before: living alone. To be even more specific: living alone in Salcedo Village, Makati.

She recalls the first night at her new place. “Galing ako sa kasal. Monday night iyon. Kaysa umuwi pa akong Parañaque, tulog ako dito. Tapos, ang ginawa kong kumot, ‘yung dress ko nung kasal,” she says, laughing. The next morning, she woke up hungry. She took the elevator down and walked to the nearest jolly jeep. “Masarap na, mura pa, lutong bahay pa,” she says. Anyone who has ever had to deal with a hangover will know the relief and clarity a good breakfast brings. “I felt like this is the life I want for myself.”

The allure of Salcedo Village living predates the rise of the Salcedo Girl. In a metropolis where daily life is organized around traffic, Makati offers a rare luxury that should probably be a basic right: the ability to conduct much of one’s day on foot. What young person wouldn’t want to fit an entire life inside a 15-minute walking radius?

Developed in 1975, Salcedo Village expanded gradually over decades. Its streets hold several eras of Makati: low concrete structures, white sandwashed stone façades, French-inspired apartment buildings, and the high density condos of the 90s and after. Acacia trees have since matured between them, softening the mismatched skyline. 

And it was these trees that sold Mimi on living here. She was already coming to Makati regularly for work and had grown tired of inching through the Sucat service road. “The trees! I want to be surrounded by trees!” she tells me. “Marami akong tinignan sa Salcedo. Nung pinuntahan namin ’to, na-feel ko talaga na home siya kaagad.” Oh, and the view! The gorgeous view. From her balcony, morning light falls across the surrounding towers, while the canopy of Jaime C. Velasquez Park spreads out below.

Every Saturday, the park becomes the Salcedo Community Market. Launched in 2004 to bring goods closer to residents, it soon became a destination in its own right: a place to discover food from home cooks representing cuisines from around the world, along with fresh produce and flowers. Two years later came Art in the Park, which turns the same patch of green into an open-air gallery once a year. The market, the art fair, and the bars, restaurants, and independent shops that have gathered around them have made Salcedo one of Makati’s liveliest cultural enclaves. They have also drawn a younger, upwardly mobile crowd: stylish, social, and fond of city life with personality — like the rats. “Ang laki kaya ng daga sa Makati!” Mimi says, almost like a compliment.

Upstairs, the neighborhood’s eclecticism finds its way into Mimi’s home. Art fills the living room walls: Summer de Guia’s Heart Lollipop, TRNZ’s Fool's Paradise, and a Pow Martinez work depicting two figures in a car. “I choose things that resonate with me,” she says. The furniture ranges between secondhand and new, local and imported: a pre-loved Studio Yakal sofa, Venzon lamps, a green Caracole chair, a red Louis Poulsen lamp, and the Persian carpet that, she says, makes the home feel complete.

Furnishing an entire home for herself made her see her own taste more clearly. “I love anything whimsical! I love anything na fun,” she says. Then, laughing: “In all fairness, may taste pala ako talaga.”

But make no mistake: You can have all the money in the world and not have a lick of taste. Not that girl Mimiyuuuh though! She cut her teeth digging through piles of clothes in her neighborhood ukay-ukay while studying Fashion Design and Merchandising at the College of Saint Benilde on a full scholarship and as a working student. On a July 30 episode of Fast Talk with Boy Abunda, she put it plainly: “Hindi kailangan sobrang mahal para maging fashionista.” Many of the best-dressed people she knows are often dressed head-to-toe in ukay best. Real recognizes real, and years of making do taught Mimi what was essential, what she liked, and how to make it work.

Anyone who’s ever tuned in to Mimiyuuuh’s rise to superstardom can’t not root for her. Life in the Philippines is hard, which is why her underdog story strikes so many familiar chords: a girl with a gift for turning ordinary life into comedy, propelled to celebrity status by the perfect alchemy of luck, hard work, and perseverance. The same audience that met her in Baclaran watched each new purchase, trip, and milestone arrive. As her world grew, so did the distance some followers felt from her: “Hindi na relatable” or “naiwan mo na kami sa kanal.”

Mimi understands what people are asking for. “Gusto lang nila makita ’yung personality ko as before,” she says. Part of working in show business, she admits, is giving people someone they can relate to. The criticism used to worry her. Still, she is older now, and the endlessly game energy of her earlier videos is difficult to keep producing on command. “Hindi ko masusustain ’yung energy ko, kung ’yung energy na gusto nila makuha sa akin is from before.” 

“Ito naman rin ang gusto kong life for myself, so iyon ’yung ibibigay ko sa akin.”

This Makati condo gives her one place where she doesn’t have to manage how she is received. She can be loud. She can be messy. She can enjoy the fruits of her labor. The best part of coming home, she says, is that she can be her “real, real self.” “This home really becomes my cave,” she says. “I feel safe whenever I’m here.”

As she approaches 30, she has begun thinking about what she would rather leave behind. “Siguro, leave ko na ’yung people-pleasing in my twenties,” she says. Much of that decade, she feels, was spent doing things for other people. “Now that I’m turning 30, dapat maging honest sa sarili ko, and sa mga gusto ko talaga.”

Some of this thinking has arrived through Sex and the City, which she discovered just in time to make turning 30 and her Makati life feel exciting. She loves Carrie despite everything, including the alarming state of her savings. “Kahit ang daming naiinis sa kanya, I like how vulnerable she is,” says Mimi, then adds: “Na naka-Dior! Na walang pera! Walang ipon, tapos naka-Dior.”

Miranda receives immediate professional respect, but it is Samantha’s panache and self-possession she hopes to bring into her thirties. “Sobrang secure niya sa sarili niya, na kahit awayin siya ng mga friends niya, alam niya kung sino talaga siya.”

Asked why she continues working after achieving so many of her childhood dreams, she answers immediately: “Family. Security ng family. Security also for myself.” Then, lest the answer become too noble, she adds: “And…the bags.”

Through all of this, her circle has stayed largely the same. On the same Fast Talk with Boy Abunda episode, Mimi observed that people often change when the people around them do. Her closest friends are still her closest friends, while her relationship with her family has only grown stronger. “They keep me grounded,” she said.

Almost a year into living here, Mimi can see herself growing old in Makati. She likes the range of people she encounters and the feeling that everyone is welcome. “City girl for lifeeeee,” she declares.

Still, when I ask where she feels most at home, she does not name the condo, the neighborhood, or the park below.

“Anywhere,” she says, “basta kasama ko ’yung people that I love.”

Photographs by JL Javier
Photographer's assistant Jom Ablay
Produced by Jerome Gomez and Georgia Uy
Hair by Dale Mallari
Makeup by Thazzia Falek
All clothes and footwear Mimiyuuuh's own.