From The Magazine
It Girl, Lilia Buckingham, Isn’t Playing a Role- She’s Simply Bing Herself
For Buckingham, confidence isn’t crafted through glam or followers. It’s built through connection.
- Written By: Amanda Coscarelli / Photography By: Ben Allen / Videography By: Von Jackson
Lilia Buckingham arrives at her LOOP Magazine cover shoot sipping a passion tea lemonade with extra lemonade from Starbucks, settling into the hair and makeup chair like she’s easing into her natural habitat. She’s sparkling, cracking jokes, instantly shifting the room’s energy. “I’m in a funny mood today,” she laughs. Under the heat of the lights and the camera, she looks like she’s home. What’s striking is her ease. There’s no performance, no pretense. Talking to her feels like talking to your funniest, warmest best friend, which turns out to be entirely intentional.
“I think that’s what makes me feel like an It Girl when I’m constantly sort of making friends with everybody that I come across throughout the day,” she says. “And that makes me feel like because I’m making other people feel loved and seen and heard it, then in turn it makes me feel that way.”
For Buckingham, confidence isn’t crafted through glam or followers. It’s built through connection. “I also think a lot of it comes with authenticity and just consistently being unapologetically you and not being afraid of what people have to say. And I think when you are unafraid, people react really positively to that.”
But authenticity was not always accessible. Being thrust into the spotlight as a teenager left marks that are still healing. “One of my biggest fears and definitely something that I still deal with and I’ve been through a lot of therapy for it, but I think for a long time I was really fearful that I didn’t deserve what I had. I think that comes with people on the internet telling you that.” She pauses, recounting the moments that shaped her. “Things have happened in my life that came as an incredibly huge and devastating surprise to me. I was 15, 16, those really detrimental years of shaping who you are, and all of that was kind of happening at that moment in time. And so it left a lasting imprint of feeling like I deserve nothing.”
The pressure chipped away at her confidence, but it also hardened her work ethic. “It really pushed me to work 10 times harder and make sure I was earning all of these things myself.”
Her 1 Million+ followers would never guess the internal work behind her glow. Self-care, real, structured, daily self-care, is her secret weapon. While juggling school at Boston University, acting jobs in New York, travel shoots, and her life in LA, she developed rituals to stay grounded.
“Every morning I wake up and I meditate for at least five or 10 minutes,” she tells LOOP. “And then when I’m making my bed and I’m doing my skincare, I’ll do affirmations. If I wanna be super productive that day and I’m feeling like I’m gonna be sluggish, I’ll do affirmations about being productive. Or if I’m feeling like I didn’t book that thing that I got a bunch of callbacks for, I’ll do, ‘I’m successful, I’m on the right path’ affirmations. And I often find that it really does kind of change the trajectory of my day and puts me in the mindset of, ‘Okay, I do believe these things.’”
At night, she trades screens for candlelight, books and her cat. As a creator-turned-actress still living in the digital world, staying off her phone is a conscious, complicated discipline helped by romanticizing everything from a skincare routine to a matching pajama set. “When I wake up, I’m already wearing something that makes me feel good about myself,” she says, smiling knowingly at the simple trick.
I think that's what makes me feel like an It Girl when I'm constantly sort of making friends with everybody that I come across throughout the day
Fashion is central to her confidence. Buckingham is not a sweats girl and never has been. Boston winters forced her into a new aesthetic era, but LA remains her playground. “Every day is a fashion show,” she explains. Dresses are her secret styling hack. “Honestly, you don’t really have to think about an outfit. You immediately have a cute outfit on because the dress is the outfit.” Her process is instinctual. “I’ll just walk into my closet [and put on] whatever’s calling my name. I start with the dress and then I go to the shoes and the bag.”
She loves taking risks, especially at night. “Now, even if I’m feeling like maybe I’m gonna be overdressed in some sort of funky, fun little dress or like crazy gloss that I bought, I just wear it anyway.”
Her current muses include 1960s silhouettes and the icons who defined them, like Brigitte Bardot and Sharon Tate. For writing and world-building, the inspiration shifts to the 1970s, especially Eve Babitz. “I have been spending a lot of time since I’ve moved back writing these autofiction essays and kind of figuring out ways to fall in love with LA again. Right now she’s probably my biggest creative inspiration in terms of acting and performance.”
LA has always been home, even when she needed distance. As a new driver, she’d sit alone at Mulholland Drive lookouts journaling thoughts too big to say out loud. Now, after years away at school, she’s rediscovering the city through gratitude and friends. She misses her Boston crew deeply, and her ideal LA weekend revolves around showing them the magic she sees every day.
She paints the itinerary effortlessly: breakfast at Bravo Toast (“avocado toast every day for two weeks straight”), a Reformation Vintage haul, an afternoon playing mermaids in the pool, a summer shower, sushi from Katsuya. Nighttime means dress-up sessions with friends, lemon drop martinis (“older-girl lemonade”), and following the crowd to whatever party feels right. The debrief, plus Indian takeout, is nonnegotiable.
Sunday brings Malibu Farm, naps on the sand and a nostalgic dinner at La Scala followed by a movie at the Vista. It’s the blueprint for an LA dream weekend, but she’s clear about what really matters: people. Her chosen family saved her more than once. “I think I have really wonderful friends who see me who I am and not what I do,” she says. “And because they see me like that, I then kind of see it in myself. I can attribute a lot of that confidence to my friends who’ve helped me gain it over the past four years.”
Now in her post-college era, Buckingham is embracing a new rhythm: working in philanthropy by day, transforming into one of LA’s most magnetic It Girls by night. Her soundtrack includes “Dracula” by Tame Impala, “Maniac” by Michael Sembello and “So Easy (To Love)” by Olivia Dean. Her role is main character. Her energy is rising. And her future looks incandescent.
Because the real It Girl isn’t a trend or an aesthetic. She’s a woman who survived herself and came out on the other side radiant, rooted and ready.
And Lilia Buckingham is exactly that.
