The Single
Tee That Made
Over a Thousand
Confident Girls

When your life’s purpose is on the line, the fight for funding gets creative.

BY JACKELYN GILL
BY JACKELYN GILL

SEPTEMBER 7, 2026

Taylor Hui holds her pose as the flash washes over her. She knows just how to wear the clothes, part her lips, catch the light. She’s traveled across the world to be on this set.

But there’s one thing the camera doesn’t catch: she’s about to run out of money.

“In my second year of university, I was getting so burnt out. I was traveling overseas constantly. I was working and trying to balance school, trying to run BeaYOUtiful, but couldn't keep up with the fundraising,” she says.

Taylor founded the BeaYOUtiful Foundation to help girls build self-esteem, mental wellness, and confidence. She kept it alive with bake sales, car washes, bottle drives, door-to-door canvassing, and the occasional partnership.

No matter what she poured in, it wasn’t enough.

“I was just hitting my head against the wall,” she says. And as she held her next pose, there was something else the camera didn’t see.

The fashion. The storytelling. The campaign. Something clicked. “Why couldn’t I do this with BeaYOUtiful?”

The thing about funding a dream, Taylor learned, is sometimes you have to get creative.

Setting the Scene

Taylor’s cell phone beeped. A new text. She was 13 years old when she checked that message.

The threatening, ridiculing, and taunting words it contained marked her first encounter with cyberbullying. It hurt. And it opened up a world of other young girls who were fighting their own battles. “As I got into my later high school years, I had different friends struggling with eating disorders and lots of different self-esteem challenges,” she says.

She saw the problem and didn’t wait around to tackle it. At 17 years old, she knew how to start BeaYOUtiful. She knew how to put in the work. Sustaining it was another story.

For eight years, the foundation was entirely bootstrapped, running on volunteer power and generosity. “We were getting snacks donated. Some of the dollar stores would donate the supplies. We were trying to get facilities donated,” she says. “If we didn't have the funding, the program wasn't going to run.”

Behind the scenes, Taylor stretched herself between multiple jobs. She took an events coordinator job with the city of Surrey while working other events on the side. She continued helping her parents with the family business. She moved to Thailand for three months on a modeling contract.

All to help support something she wasn’t even sure would be her full-time career. “I still don't think it was going to be my job, but I loved that it could be a huge part of who I was and my purpose,” she says.

Cue the burnout. And a new clothing line called The Roster.

Getting the Shot

It’s a white scoopneck tee, buttery soft to the touch. Just heavy enough to keep it from being too sheer. Just light enough to drape effortlessly and modishly in equal parts.

You might not notice the message on the shoulder at first. It’s a light line of script, right where a tattoo might be: Smile darling, you are beautiful.

“The intention was that if you were standing in front of someone waiting at a grocery lineup, and they looked at your back, they could read the quote. It would be a sense of empowerment,” she says.

It was The Roster’s first design, and it sold out in three days.

“It was only supposed to be this one-time fundraising campaign … It was enough to fund the whole season.”

That overseas photoshoot in second-year university was the inspirational kick Taylor needed to give the idea a shot. “My love for fashion and the spark I saw—how could this keep funding ongoing programming—was really appealing to me,” she says.

She worked her industry connections, reaching out to a manufacturer behind some of the clothing she liked. She found a designer who helped refine the shape and silhouettes of her sketches. She even roped in her mother to help test and model different cuts and fabrics.

The name said it all. "It was like building a roster of people that supported the common goal to uplift our next generation," she says.

And she was blindsided by its success. “It was only supposed to be this one-time fundraising campaign,” Taylor says. To her surprise, “It was enough to fund the whole season.”

So she created another design. And another. “We started adding more and more quotes. We had them on the sleeve. We had them on the back of the neck. We even had one that was in the shirt pocket—no one could see it, but it was over your heart.”

Critically, it was much easier than wrangling volunteers and organizing bake sales. And it let her focus on bigger things, like formally registering as a charity, launching their annual BeaYOUtiful Benefit gala, which raised over $125,000 in its first evening.

The Roster has grown into a full line of women’s clothing. Taylor still has a hand in the design—though there’s a team behind it now.

And these days, “Things feel a lot smoother.”

The Whole Picture

That moment on set, the one the camera didn't catch, turned out to be the most important shot of Taylor’s career.

Because now, the pieces of her life—the modelling, the fundraising, the fashion—aren’t pulling against each other. They’re working together to reach more than 6,100 participants, build a team of over 500 volunteers across Canada, and secure support from over 50 sponsors.

“What I struggled with the most was, how am I interweaving everything without burning out?” she says. And while she says funding will always be her biggest challenge, it’s now a welcome one. “I think my biggest success, or something I'm most proud of, is that I've been able to find the alignment in it all.”

At this moment, cameras off, “I feel just very aligned with where I am.”