Lisa From Blackpink's Transformation Is Turning Heads

How did Lisa from K-Pop girl group Blackpink go from an unknown to a global superstar with 38.1 million Instagram followers? According to Facebook, Lisa was born under the name Pranpriya Manoban in Bangkok, Thailand. She later changed her name to Lalisa. When she 13 years old, she entered a competition in Thailand for South Korea's YG Entertainment company (via French Vogue). She was the only one signed out of 4,000 candidates. From there, she moved to Seoul, South Korea, to become a trainee for the entertainment company.

Her training was no cakewalk. Billboard reports that she trained seven days a week, 12 hours a day, and was graded every month on her singing, dancing, and rapping skills. "Lisa would always get A's for everything," her now-bandmate Jennie said. After five years of hard work, which included performing in a dance group with her fellow trainees, she took the stage name Lisa and joined Blackpink, which launched in August 2016. Today, she's famous for her unbelievable dance moves, and she's the most-followed K-pop star on Instagram.

You can see some of Lisa's famous dance moves at her YouTube channel, where she posts solo performances and travelogues. This past April, she became a meme when one of her videos, "LILI's FILM #3 – LISA Dance Performance Video", showed off her incredible legs. According to Insider, the Twitter-verse started taking a screenshot of her legs and combining it with other recognizable characters like Luigi and Spock. Even celebrities got in on the fun. Stephen Colbert and Dolly Parton were among the stars who posted themselves with Lisa's incredible legs (Dolly definitely pulled it off better!). The original video has almost 37 million views.

Most recently, Blackpink dropped an album on October 2nd. The album featured the song "Ice Cream," the group's collaboration with Selena Gomez that first dropped in August. 

"[The collaboration]'s definitely a joyful thing. Being a part of it brought me joy," Gomez told Variety. "It's hopefully what everybody else will get from it too. I just want people to feel good."

As if Lisa's incredible dance, rap, and singing skills weren't enough, she's also a star in the fashion world. In September, she became a global ambassador for the French fashion house Celine (via Harper's Bazaar), the first global ambassador since the brand's new artistic director, Hedi Slimane, took over in 2018. Even before the partnership was announced, Lisa had a very public relationship with the brand, having appeared at past runway shows and posed for portraits taken by Slimane. 

Lisa said in a statement published in British Vogue, "To me, Celine is unrivaled, and Hedi Slimane has such a multifaceted talent — from clothing design to photography. He creates this rare, incredible, and desirable world through his vision. I'm always inspired by his work. It's truly an honor and pleasure to be able to work with Hedi as Celine's first ambassador."

It's not Lisa's only luxury fashion collaboration. In September, it was also announced that Lisa would be the ambassador for Italian luxury brand Bulgari in Korea. The brand announced the collaboration with an Instagram post of Lisa wearing an assortment of Bulgari jewelry and looking predictably amazing.

"Sensational in every language," the caption read. "Her enviable talents have taken the world by storm, and now the newest horizon for @lalalalisa_m is becoming Bvlgari's ambassador for Korea. Making our infamous snake her spirit animal, Lisa immerses herself in the daring world of Serpenti."

It seems that Lisa loves to make her fellow group members laugh. In fact, the other Blackpink members like to call Lisa the "happy virus." She's known for playing practical jokes and pranks on the other group members, keeping things light for everyone, as her bandmates told Elle Korea (translated in Republic World). 

"Lisa just makes a lot of jokes; she's like a class clown," Blackpink's Rosé told Billboard. "Yeah," another group member, Jennie, added. "She would be the one making jokes, but when we put her in the spot, she gets really shy."

What does the group do when they're just hanging out? It might not sound all that different from what you like to do with your friends. Lisa told Jalouse China (via L'Officiel Malaysia), "In general, we go to bed very late and we like to eat supper while watching movies." 

Despite the group's huge international fame, Lisa doesn't think that success has changed them. As she said in the same interview, "The only difference is that we have more fans who love us!"