Latest / Skin Anarchy / E.283: Re-Discovering the power of the perfect Nude Lipstick ft. Bina Khan

Transcript

E.283: Re-Discovering the power of the perfect Nude Lipstick ft. Bina Khan · Skin Anarchy

• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Hey guys, first episode of this video making the first episode is very special.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Dina is a dear friend at this point.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: I am just so thrilled.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: And also, um, I had the privilege of making her episode a dual episode for my color fan girl as well.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm looking to do that more because this concept of high beauty, Indian beauty is something that I really care about.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, um, you know, the more I can highlight um this amazing brand, and people really doing something in such a beautiful way that's so increasing, I mean, it makes you feel like comfortable.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I feel like doing this and you all see it, really.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's more about getting it from here.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we are very much booked up by I just wanted to say I love this plan.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: It stands for so much on top of having quality funny.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I hope you guys take a listen and really listen to our Pina story.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we touched on a lot of really cool stuff.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: So stay tuned, guys.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you again for tuning in.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: You're the best, and we love you so much.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: Stay tuned.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: Hi guys, uh, welcome back.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm super excited to introduce you to our guest today.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: This episode has been a long time in the making, and I'm a huge fan of her work and um what she's doing in the beauty space for um, you know, women of color and everybody, really all entrepreneurs.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think that um the vision here is definitely something that we all need to really, you know, uh listen to and focus in on.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I uh, you know, I can't wait.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: So without further ado, I want to introduce you guys to the founder of Just Be Beauty, uh Bina Khan.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show, Bina.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so excited you're here.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, and and thank you for uh having the patience to keep rescheduling.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad we're finally here.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, me too.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: I know that it's been very difficult to get our calendars synced, but I I want to actually just spend time and really dive into um your beautiful vision for the brand and what um, you know, everything that went into it and and what the journey has been like for you.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because I know that, you know, I I don't want to ruin it for anybody, but you know, creating a brand that is so inclusive and so geared towards making sure everyone fits into it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that can be difficult.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, Bina, if you could get us started with your journey and just your background and um what led you to becoming an entrepreneur?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, that's a that's a loaded question.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, lots of answers to that one.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think uh I've actually been uh quite entrepreneurial since I was a kid.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've always been a problem solver.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if there's ever been an economic need, I'm I've never been somebody who sat back and thought, I'll let somebody else handle that.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, from the time I was a teenager, I've jumped in and hi guys, I'm joined by Lauli Maryam today.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm sorry.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So after this, um sorry she's been my uh one of my YouTube videos that I'm editing just randomly started playing.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry about that.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh yeah, so uh I think I've always had a bit of an entrepreneur uh entrepreneurial spirit.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been a problem solver.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I started work as a makeup artist when I was 19 and very quickly found that um I wasn't finding uh very nurturing space to be in, which I think is the experience for many uh young makeup artists.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I sort of opened my own business very quickly.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I remember I had to do the makeup for 75 extras in a uh, you know, back in the day when you had like uh cigarette commercials and they were always with sports people.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it was um a long jumper, and I had to do the makeup for 75 people in the crowd, and that gave me enough money to start my first um little makeup studio.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was my big gig.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I I've sort of always had little bit like I started my my makeup studio, which then became a salon that became quite beloved in um in my city, um, one of my cities, I guess.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh then uh you know I've I guess the way this happened, just be happened, is because we felt a need.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I don't think that there's any uh other reason why you should uh you know use up resources and people's attention unless there's an actual need uh for something.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that's kind of how we came to just be, which is um we felt personally um as a professional and and and as a as a brown woman, um, we felt that there was a vacuum in the market and our needs were being unaddressed, and uh we wanted to address them.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there's a like a subtle messaging when um you know uh makeup companies are not considering you and your skin tone and your needs.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we we felt that, you know, it's something you just absorb that uh you don't matter, or or there's something wrong with you, that the products aren't working for you.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So there's something wrong with you don't think of it the other way around, that the there's something wrong with the product, it's not for you.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, we felt this need and we were poised to uh well poised to respond to it.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Madihar with her background and um me with mine.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think we were just, you know, I was solving these problems already on the daily.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we just wanted to um put it into the hands of uh everybody we could, that same solution that I offer as a personal um as a makeup artist.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to give that solution to as many people as we could.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that, you know, that's really what um, you know, for me really it drew me in so quickly into just me because first of all, the name is brilliant.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm I'm a huge believer in the name, is which is you know, really the essence of I think just finding out who you are and how you fit into everything, right?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: Not just like from a beauty perspective, but the you know, I I really just love the the strategy that you took with, you know, naming your brand and the way you're um, you know, approaching it because honestly, you know, I've ranted so many times on on the show and in general in life about how I I grew I was the kid who grew up without a new lipstick, you know what I mean?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: I never had that perfect new to wear to interviews or to application interviews, you know what I mean, that kind of thing.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a problem.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's something people don't talk about um when it comes to beauty, is like we all look at it and we look at makeup as this like luxury, right?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: That we can use and we can um, you know, have in our life to kind of enhance our features and enhance a moment.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: But really, it's about you know functionality of products.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's where a lot of brands for me are lost in translation because if you don't have if you're a makeup brand and you're saying that I'm fully inclusive, then I need to be able to pick up your lipsticks in any shade of nude that looks like it would match me, and it should work, right?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's that's the problem.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's like it should be a a fix to a solution, which is something I you know, you're saying this, but a lot of entrepreneurs don't have that mindset, that solution-oriented mindset.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Really, yeah, I would have thought that that's really where people come from.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um for me uh as a professional makeup artist as well, um, and it's interesting you touch on the name because it is it is uh deeper than uh even the simple thing of um you know just telling somebody you can relax and be who you are, while that is, you know, such an important message and with social media and um all of these pressures to uh to look a certain way and fit a certain mold.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like you're being also um uh fed this lifestyle, which is, you know, you have to have um, you know, that certain kind of house and that certain kind of car and have that certain kind of body and wear that certain kind of teeny dress with the right bag and the kid and the ring, and you know, it's this this idea and the vacations, you know, there's this really set homogenized idea of what beauty and success and happiness looks like.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's really um limiting and also really is going to make most of the planet feel like they're not good enough.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, while that is a very important message that you know you just be that it is like you are more than good enough, you know.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um the other thing behind that name is that as a makeup artist, I've always struggled with it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not the first makeup artist to struggle with the idea that somebody has to um be something else in order to be uh beautiful.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, darling, powder your nose and like the 50s kind of attitude to beauty where everybody, you know, looked the same, beautiful, but that's a lot of effort that God forbid, you know, perspiration should make its way through uh your perfect powder.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that idea of you know, sort of making women slaves to makeup has always troubled me.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And even with my brides, I'm primarily a bridal makeup artist.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I do editorial work too, but um I gained popularity in Karachi as a makeup artist, and uh will still come to me for that.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the reason why I very quickly actually, I was about like 19 within six months, I was booked.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the reason why I think it happened for me very quickly is because uh the ethos I have now is the ethos I had then, which is the idea of changing the way you look uh because it's your wedding day, seems utterly bizarre.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um you are getting married and you are gorgeous and unique and beautiful, and we should be celebrating you and your features.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, this whole idea of changing everything to look like this cookie-cutter version of you know, brat's doll-like beauty that everybody seems to be being told is the only way to look, it's very troubling to me.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a there's so many layers to this name.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, when my uh my bestie is the one who suggested it, when it was suggested, like a light bulb went off because it's it says a lot um in a in a simple name.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope it's a message that when somebody picks up that box, they immediately get that message that not that you need anyone's permission, but you know, FYI, you can just be.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: No, I I completely, you know, I I really love everything you've said, and I think um this is a problem and this is uh really a perception that not enough people are really propagating or even discussing um, you know, in any way is the idea of what you know of what you said, which is women becoming slaves to their makeup and the and to their um their rituals and their routines.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that is exactly, I think that's the best way I've heard it um phrased, because when I started, um, you know, for example, with skincare energy, when I started this podcast, I realized that there's a lot of brands, you know, not just in skincare being beauty.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the problem is that people are solving like little minute problems and creating brands out of it.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: But to create a brand that is focused on such a big problem, which is true inclusivity and true representation of women, not just of color, but just as women in general, right?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's like making your life, making women's life lives easier rather than more difficult.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that is a huge feat.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I really want to get your opinion on, you know, as a woman of color, um, you know, how was that in terms of launching your brand, getting the right eyes on it?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm sure it's it's an uphill battle.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I I just want to hear your your story behind that and how that all unfolded when you launched uh Just Be and how the media has been, how people have perceived it and stuff.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: So if you could like walk us through that.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, what I will say is that, you know, obviously we have such great partners that we work with, the one of whom is on this call.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have such good advisors, and I think one of the first things that um uh Madiha, who's my partner and her husband Sean, one of the first things I remember saying, because I've actually I come from a I have to say Pakistani women, uh, we got Moxie, you know, we we're go-getters, we want to do stuff, you know.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's this perception in uh globally speaking, um, that where these put upon uh little creatures, and I'm sure that might be true for some people and many people, um, but there are so many women who I meet um who are just uh and I and I appreciate I come from a place of privilege, but um who are just you know, they're not necessarily happy to just sit at home and be the wee wife.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: People want to be something and do something and contribute.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I have to say Pakistani women are genuinely incredible, um, which is one of the campaigns to digress, one of the campaigns we run for just be is called just me.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we are honoring one after the other women who have just blazed trails and um you know done the you know unthinkable or the achieved what seemed to be the unachievable.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I have to say that in general, uh Pakistani women are constantly creating businesses and ideas and solving problems.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not completely unique to me, I have to say.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I watched one of my friends launch a business um in London and she launched Pakistani food.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was observing this, I think it was about three years ago, and I was observing the way it went.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um very early on, they understood that there's no point having the most incredible product in the world, though, yes, your heart and soul has got to go into that, and your intention has got to be uh clear and clean because your consumer, your customer, your client, I'm in service, so I know uh this firsthand by touch, even that anyone can smell, smell a phony story.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And even within my salon, for example, I never allowed my staff, we'd have meetings about this.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're never gonna upsell by insulting somebody's something in some way.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're not gonna say, Oh, you know, your hair's really fried, you should get this treatment for your hair.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's like I would rather not make money than make money off somebody's unhappinesses and insecurity.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I was told my staff, if somebody says to you, hey, um, Farah, I feel like my high and my hair, is my hair looking dry?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Should I do something with my hair?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then you're more than welcome to give that piece of advice to her and say, Yeah, you could do this at home.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we have this if you want like a more deep fix, let's say.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea of making money off women's insecurities on any level just seems morally upsetting to me, you know.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to put that out into the world.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I've watched my clients absorb this from social media, you know, uh, you know, but I still have a line.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um like you're human, you'll have a line.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you didn't have, I literally have to say, if you don't have a line, that means you don't have enough skin to look up and down.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's how God made it.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you know what you're seeing is a filter, they also have lines, you know.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So uh this idea was very much uh, you know, something that has always bothered me.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: But going back to it, to to, you know, you can make your product with, you know, or whatever it is you're putting out into the world, in our case, a product.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: I really believe in, you know, uh what we say in Pakistan is good niyath, um, good intention.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do it with a good intention, do it because you want to help someone, because you want to celebrate someone.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can do all of that, but if nobody hears about it or sees it, you know, it doesn't matter then.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just for you and your friend, and you know, that's it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we were very uh I watched my friend as she launched her restaurant, and um as her PR team kicked in, and as you know, people came in and saw stuff and tasted stuff, and then they wrote about stuff, and then I saw that have its sort of ripple effect.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I remember telling Madiha early on that you know, it's not about um anything uh being uh like a trick.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: You just need the right people who know how to tell people what you're doing.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I feel like you know, Rachel and her whole team um have been so instrumental in understanding what it is that we're doing, you know, and they were very attentive to understand um, you know, our experience and even in our brand creation.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had people first asking us, so we are not South Asian women, so we don't understand what you're talking about.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we're just gonna be, you know, receiving the information you give us.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been really, very beautiful.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, in that telling, it's kind of like therapy.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you go to therapy, the therapist doesn't know your world, and the words you choose to describe your world to that therapist are almost the therapy because you are placing um uh placing meaning and you're having to think through uh what you're just kind of going through on the daily.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, in explaining to our, you know, the team that helped us understand um, you know, what our brand would be, we wanted to sort of understand uh so we went through a brand exercise where we talked about what they asked us loads of questions and then gave us back what they saw our brand as.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it was actually really emotional when we saw it.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a lot of crying through this whole process because um, you know, I think any woman of color or any um anybody who's from another part of the world, you'd you have felt quite left out a lot.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um felt quite unseen, and you felt whether you realized it or not, uh, you know, subtly I hate the word discrimination because you don't want to sound, you know, people who are genuinely going through awful discrimination.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it seems silly to say nobody made a lipstick color to match me, so that's discrimination, but kind of is, you know, it's a it's a gentler form of discrimination, but you are being told you don't matter to us, you know, we don't care.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: There are only a few billion of you, but we're not interested, you know.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it's a really big problem, Vina, because I think this idea of like, and this is actually a huge point I want to touch on.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think when it comes to inclusivity and diversity and true representation of all women, regardless of what shade of color we are, you know what I mean?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Are we dark enough to be represented or not, or are we light enough to be represented?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like that that is an underlying idea that really needs to be addressed, I think, in the psyche of just you know, consumers, obviously, but also just uh business professionals at this point, because it's not about I feel the way I look at the markets with beauty and the way I'm seeing the business, uh, you know, the businesses and everything change.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: What I'm seeing is that there's another trend being formed within a trend, if you know what I mean.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's and the trend is we gotta all jump on this bandwagon of inclusivity is in and we gotta be more, you know, diverse, but make sure you're doing that the right way, you know, make sure the inclusivity falls within these parameters.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: That is a problem.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, and that is something that nobody wants to come out, you know, come out and just be honest about.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: I posted on White Collar Brown Girl, like one of my first static posts was, you know, I went on to Canva and I found this like, you know, typical like Indian Pakistani prints, like of the elephant in the back, you know what I mean?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like a wedding print almost.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I put that on there and it was like a little pop-up window, and it says, Is this brown enough for you?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: Because this is exactly what I was talking about is this idea of just because I'm a woman of color, just because I'm a man of color or and I I enjoy makeup doesn't mean that I have to fall into this, this, this, this category.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you're further limiting me and what I'm allowed to experiment with.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: So if you create a brand.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's profound.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're limiting me in what I'm allowed to experience.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's profound, Ecta.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I mean it's true though, you know, and that's that's the bubble that I think we've all been trapped in for a very long time because it's a bubble within a bubble within a bubble, because the bubble never gets burst.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: It never bursts, it never pops.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: It just be it's like someone just creates another one inside of it.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: And we all sit there thinking, oh, look, a new perspective.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, look, we've broken the glass ceiling.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: Nope.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: Nope.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: You've just been yeah.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where, you know, and that's where I am, I really love the opportunity to speak to brand founders and yourself because um, you know, this is the difference.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, when I look at Justine and I look at your products, I look at the shades on my skin tone, on my on my actual lips and the way it makes me look, that is the product.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the lipstick, it's the way that product is making me feel as a woman of whatever color I am.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: I feel great being who I am because I'm Oh, that's so amazing.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, this is the thing that uh so in in in that brand creation exercise we went through to kind of understand who we were.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, you uh just sort of flesh it out in actual words.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not that it's so interesting because you don't actually necessarily use the words you went through in that brand exercise, but it gives you a place of understanding of where you're coming from.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we were asked to sort of put down like the main points of what we wanted to achieve.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I did want to uh, you know, I'm always afraid of saying something as arrogant as works for everyone.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can't say that.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: I hope it works for most people, but I haven't met everyone on the planet, I haven't tried it on everyone on the planet, but I hope it works for most people.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's providing a solution for a lot of people, and certainly the people who I have come across.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, in Pakistan, it's like 220 million people, so that's quite a lot of people to be going along with.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, that the the Desi diasporas and so many Indian friends, and you know, so many uh I'm aware of the color tones that are gonna work.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: But what was really interesting was I remember one of the things that they heard from us was you want to create a product that sparks joy.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, God, yes, like we want that experience of a woman putting something on, woman, man, anyone, um, putting something on and feeling like that product gets them and sees their beauty and shines a light on their beauty and brings out their beauty or their uniqueness or their whatever it is.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there have been powerful moments like that where I've watched my mother, um, who's a very, I kind of call her like a coffee with a tiny bit of milk in it.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: She's this very pretty color.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: She's got quite a deep skin tone.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um I made a couple of the colors thinking then of her skin tone, of my sister's skin tone, of my bestie's skin tone.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can I make colours that will tick everyone's boxes, you know?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when she tried on Poison Apple, I don't know if you've if you've tried that one, which is the not just red, the deeper lipstick glaze.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um she's 75.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: So uh she was in my pod, so I was able to use the sample on her, and it was really sweet.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: She was holding her mirror and she put it on, and you know, she'd sort of take another shampoo and gone, I don't like to.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: She's you're a very bright colored lady, like she likes to wear oranges, and you know, she'll never wear a beige outfit or black, or these are not her, it's like parrot green, she's that lady, you know.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she looked at the the sort of younger colors, like the champagnes, and going, hmm, very nice, very pretty for you people, not for me, you know.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then the red got to her, and uh suddenly she was like, and she opened the the poison apple and she put it on her lip.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you have these experiences as makeup artists, which are genuinely heart shattering, where you can suddenly see somebody looking at themselves in the mirror, and they, if they're older or if they're more mature in years, um, where they see their younger self, you know.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I could see my mom put this lipstick on and kind of start like, you know, like getting pretty, and you know, like I don't know, brown moms are not easily impressed, you know.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's they'll they'll say sweet loving things, but impressed is tough to, you know, get to.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, very good, nice, well done.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is the max you're gonna get out of a brown mom.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love you guys, of course.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so proud of you, but it's so moving on, you know.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Un you know, unsatisfying validation ever.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: I know exactly what you told me, you know.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but she just put this on and she went, Bina, oh my god, you know, I've spent 60 years looking for this lipstick, you know, and she was just like, either they're too blue or they're too orange or they're too they just or they make my teeth look funny, or oh my god, you've really done something, you know.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: This was genuine brown mom validation.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: This was like the most it got, and I could see she was like looking at herself with joy, like it was not about her telling me, it was between her and her mirror.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: She was feeling herself, you know.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can deliver that to people, you know, everybody, why are you not feeling yourself anyway, right?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: I hate the fact that we've been made to think, oh my zit and oh my eye bag, and oh my this and oh my that, you know, I hate that.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if we lived in a different planet altogether, where you know, I don't know, maybe it was it's so arbitrary.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're painting certain like a slightly altered version of our faces on our faces.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I always tell my students when I'm teaching them, like, if you imagine, you know, in The Simpsons, the aliens who are watching outside Earth and they send a report back about how the humans are behaving.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, if you think about it, I'd be like, how bizarre.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, how most of the population, like 60% of the population, uh puts a layer of colors on their face that are kind of like their face, but not really their face, but in some sort of form that makes them happier.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of mad, you know.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I I love that.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: I really love that you made that analogy because it's true, it's so true.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I want to I really want to follow up with this because um, you know, this is for me, it's such a great, it's such a refreshing conversation because I literally had um kind of like you know, I heated debate with my father, I think about you know, four four or five months ago.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: And we were discussing, you know, what it's like for first generation people, like, you know, um, you know, for me, it was my my parents brought me to America when I was like what five years old.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: So it was like really relearning um at that point because I already knew Hindi, I already knew you know the Indian culture growing up in India, I was going to school there.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: So when I was relearning that, it was a whole process.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I was telling each other, uh, you know, you know, one thing that you don't understand is those of us that come into a Western society from an Eastern, we are not just you didn't just immigrate here with us, you immigrated here or we are here, and we have to redefine what it means to feel normal in our own skin in a society where we don't ever see ourselves reflected, like you know, directly in what we're looking at outside.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a huge difference, and that plays into the mental development of especially um younger children, you know, whose father whose parents are immigrants, right?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like they they come into this new society, this new culture, and they have to really find not just with makeup but with everything, what can I pick and choose to really create my own and your parents can't help you in that sense because they haven't come as children, they've come as adults.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly it, and that's what I was telling my dad.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, you can't compare your success and your mentality after having grown up to a full adult in India around people that look like you to any of us that came over here when we were five years old or 15 years old or whatever our story was, and we have to redefine our own, you know, identity in a completely different space where no one looks like you.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's a whole different challenge, that's a whole different battle.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, to be able to say that you have done that and then also created something, you know, in the form of a product that helps other people feel that even for a moment.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think I would call that joy, I would call that bliss.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's I yeah, it's yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the funny thing is that I kind of have the the reverse.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: So uh up till the age of like around 11, 12, I didn't live in Pakistan.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we left when I was a baby.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we were in uh uh the UAE for some years, um England for some years, and um we actually have a really strange upbringing because my mother, like I keep telling my mother, you should really make your like write a book or make your life a movie or a book.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's it's a bizarre story.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: My mother, uh, when she was six months old, her mother died.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: So my maternal grandmother died when my mom was six months old, and my maternal grandfather, this is in Prepatian India, um, in Hyderabad Dakan.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And my maternal grandfather was so shattered by this that he left my uh mother and her elder brother in India, and he was a doctor, and he said, Okay, I'm just gonna go to London and do some training.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he was an eye doctor, so I think he was working at then Moorefield and whatever.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And his mother, who had the kids, was pressuring him, as you can imagine, that you should get married again, you should get married again, you should get married again.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um, she he said, I how can I do that?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have two small children, and one day she sends a telegram to this poor gentleman, my nana, and says, Your children have died, so now you can get married.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what she'd done was she dropped them off at an orphanage and sent this telegram to sort of clear the path for wife number two.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a bizarre way of behaving.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, luckily, her my mother's uncle had had sort of seen what she was doing, grabbed the children, sent another telegram saying they're not dead, uh, but I think you need to get them.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: So my mother at the age of two was picked up from Hyderabad Dhakan, and my mom, who was four, they were picked up in Plonkton boarding schools, um, she in a ballet boarding school in Shropshire.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: And because she was so little, you couldn't leave her in the general halls.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the headmistress kept her in her her little house.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh to my mother, that lady is her mother, her the headmistress.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Her name is Laithi, and to date she has her picture on her bedside table.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I always giggled with my mom, I'm like you're such a coconut because she's this brown lady, but she's you know, she in fact would even say, quite, you know, she's really old school, you know.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: So very sweetly, when we were growing up, uh, she told us that, you know, I came here on a school trip from boarding school.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: I came to Wimbledon and I said, when I grow up, I'm gonna bring my children to Wimbledon, and that's where I'm gonna have them grow up.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And she did.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we we were in Wimbledon then.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny because growing up there, because my mother, I suppose, felt so at home, I don't recall feeling other while we were in in England at all.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm sure that I remember hearing some sort of slurs, but I was like, who can they mean?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it just passed right over me.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I was too young.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when I came here um back to Pakistan, so we moved back to Pakistan, um, and I remember just thinking, you know, people are obsessed with color over here.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I would get a lot of praise, which would make you feel ridiculously like it's so conspicuous and uncomfortable.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the kid who's getting praise for being, you know, uh lighter skinned or with lighter eyes, and there's kind of a little bit of like, oh, what are you complaining about?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: You've got like green eyes, I guess like winning the lottery or something, or my siblings who were warmer skinned being told, you know, not being praised, you know.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I sort of grew up around this weirdness around skin color with absolutely no understanding of what are these people talking about?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my mother's gorgeous.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: How are they computing, you know, the shade of the skin with gorgeousness or not gorgeousness, you know?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I really grew up feeling weird about I noticed a weirdness about beauty and arbitrary attitudes to it back to Simpson spaceships.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: It just seemed bizarre, these ideas, you know.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And like I remember when I was a young makeup artist, and you know, it was uh I guess 97 is when I started work.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Cindy Crawford was, of course, everything, and I was obsessed.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was obsessed with the supers.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I remember thinking, oh my god, this Cindy Crawford thing can really work here.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen so many people with Cindy Crawford's skin tone, and you know, we can do these caramel tones and this is a brownie eye, and you know, oof, she they can be like, you know, uh Cindy Crawford's walking around.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I would sort of pull out these caramel tones, and from the beginning of my career, I've had this reputation as, oh, you know, um, she makes people look very dark because in Pakistan, and as in many countries, and I've seen some really extreme cases like in Indonesia, and I've seen their makeovers things on, you know, TikTok and and Instagram, where they just literally paint them like wall white, nothing to do with their faces, and they put in these blue lenses, and you genuinely cannot tell who this person was by the time they're finished.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I got this reputation of you know making people dark because I worked with their own skin tone.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I struggled because I couldn't understand why you would want to change a skin tone.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: It just I couldn't compute.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, this is like in Alice in Wonderland.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can't you can't paint the red rose white or the white rose red, like you are the color you are.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: You crazy?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you want to mess with that?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand, you know.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so uh I mean I think that that's a really great point because you know, people have used makeup for so long to become become this like blank canvas, I feel like.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that for me is you know, that that's a really big problem in the sense of like, unless you're a you know a Broadway artist or unless you're a movie actor playing a different role, you don't need that full reset.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I think um problematic now, no?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: When you see like brown face happening, or like a lot of movies that happened even five, ten years ago, you're like, you couldn't do that now.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's like nobody is like really talking about it because again, you know, we wait too long as a society to talk about anything relevant, and it's it's really turning into this like you know, just misinformation propagated over like you know, years and years and years, and now people are just looking retarded, you know, what they're out there making a fool of themselves and a fool of, you know, just what what it's like.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I I think that that whole culture stems from just not caring, you know, and that's really where where I'm trying to go with this whole inclusivity conversation around beauty, um, you know, because you have to, you can't just say that, you know, these these products, these 10 brands are falling into what we consider to be inclusive, but then you don't have an actual representation of that change in your social media outreach or in the way that your consumers are interacting or what they're posting.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's called just marketing hype and marketing gimmicks.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I really I I have a huge pet peeve, especially now, especially after having a podcast and talking to amazing founders that are really creating brands like yours that are uh making a change, making like steps forward, because these brands get diluted in all the garbage out there.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a problem because you there's no cookie-cutter answer to the massive uh, you know, just misinformation and and and misrepresentation that's happening in the beauty industry and has been happening, you know, globally, right?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a huge problem.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we keep covering that problem, like you said, we keep painting over it.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: You can't whitewash or you know, you can't put a brown face or whatever, you know, whatever weird analogy I need to give.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: You can't paint over a problem like this of this magnitude.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: You have to fix it.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: And when I, you know, so that's that's really, you know, coming back to the the lipstick shades in the brand, you know, I see that.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: I see an immediate solution when I put on one of the shades in your collection.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: I see an immediate, you know, solution.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that, you know, for me, that's that's really what where it's at.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's you don't need the marketing, you don't need the marketing hype because the product speaks for itself.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, in in that regard, I want to actually ask you, um, you know, what were some of the challenges when you were formulating and when you were really coming up with the final colors in your palette, um, you know, for your collection, what were some of the challenges that you did face in terms of, you know, whether it's shade matching or or any kind of uh hurdles?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I would say that we probably started with uh, you know, the reason why we started with lipsticks, for example, because I think when you start talking about inclusivity, and um, you know, I don't want to, I'm always careful to say I don't want to tread in on other people's stories, you know.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not, you know, treading uh on the black experience, um, though I would really like my products to also show them that we also see uh the beauty in in any skin tone, right?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want it to stop at South Asian.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, a lot of us South Asians are, you know, as you know, as deep-toned as, you know, as it gets.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh so I would say that the first thing I wanted to say was while we are uh shouting about South Asian skin tones, we would hope that everybody enjoys it and sees that we think everybody is, you know, got their own unique beauty.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say the challenge became how do we get this to uh you know translate?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because what I've given you is actually my professional solution.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that wasn't the hard part.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: I knew the colors.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: The second we said we're gonna make lipsticks, already through my social media, I'd been mixing these colors and putting them up as brides, and you know through the you know, which one gets 1500 likes and which one gets five likes, um, which colors people are like, oh, that lipstick.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: And people have asked over the years, you know, that red that you make, or that, you know, the magenta that you make, or that brown that you make.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew already if I was gonna give people a core collection of colors, and that's the other side of just be, is um, I'm Bina, my pet name is B.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: My husband calls me B.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so when we say just B for me, that was also these are my core core colors.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's just who I am as well.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the essence of who I am as a makeup artist.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of already knew that these were the colors that I wanted to do.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the challenge became because you want to try and be as inclusive as as many skin tones as is possible, it became we can't I can't do one lipstick and say this is uh, you know, uh uh a soft brown.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: A soft brown for who?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I immediately said, well, look, in my my work, what I'll do is I'll take a liquid base tone and shape the lip, and then I'll take the top note of that lip color that I'm trying to create and usually something juicy and put that on top.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: And only when it's uh like a red or a magenta or like a burgundy where you want it to be matte, I would reverse it where I would put, you know, a creamy lipstick behind and then use a liquid lipstick like a mattifying agent, um, where I would mix it in with a lipstick and then seal.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you would get a comfortable but matte lip.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, how to deliver this in a system that was visually easy to understand.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why the break system seemed like really exciting uh to us.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: That you don't have to explain, you know, it's like here's a set of colors, here's the deep end, here's the bright end, this one is matte, this is juicy, and either end, how much do you want a layer is up to you.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we were keen to get this across the idea that um it's two bookends of a of a range, and we want you to find your shade.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the way we addressed that first challenge of how do we get as many people as possible to find their peach and Their champagne and their magenta, right?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if you give them the tools both of lasting staying power by giving them, you know, the fluid and giving them the glaze, and that's why we didn't call them liquid lipstick and lipstick because I don't use them that way.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: I use the liquid lipstick like a fluid, liquid lip liner, and I use the lipstick as a glaze on top of that.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why we call them what we call them.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I use the liquid lipstick like a mattifying fluid over a glaze.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's where that language came from.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it we are introducing a lot of new ideas, and I didn't realize because when you're in it and you're working this way, it doesn't seem worldly revolutionary to me.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: But then when I explain it to the next person and they're like, ah, you see, this is see, it seems you're a makeup artist now, so you understand this, and it seems simple, but I, you know, I can't do it that way, Beena.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is how I would uh, you know, when I was teaching students, and I'd say, hey, use a liquid lipstick like this and use a lipstick like that.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, this seems to be some sort of um stumbling block in the delivery system that if I tell them to mix these three things and then do these two things, but once you put it into, you know, an easily understandable form, so that was the first challenge.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we've achieved it.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been fun to watch people have the learning curve, you know, where they'll sometimes they'll take it and they'll put on tons of the fluid like it's a liquid lipstick.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we kind of tweaked the formulas too, where we asked, you know, our manufacturers and our lab that, you know, can we make this more like the fluid?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want it to be um, you know, our brief for the first samples of of textures.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was like, I want it to be like a whipped, um, like quite oily, and then the oil should evaporate and it should dry down like an acrylic stain, maybe.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we gave them these descriptions of something that um that's a little bit different, and we wanted um a lipstick that was thin and smoothing.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I sent like pictures of Brie Vanderkamp's lip and desperate housewives.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I want this, I want this smoothness, you know.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we sort of came up with samples that match these ideas.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we had really great partners to help us achieve what we were talking about.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's been the challenge, and now to just communicate it.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, if you have good partners to help you do all of these things, I have not found that uh like yourself, people seem to get the idea and like the idea.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I think it comes back to that.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's if your kernel of truth is there, if you're coming from a place of genuinely trying to meet a need that you see, the people who have that need are gonna pick up the thing and go, okay, you've solved it for me.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh journalists and interviewers have all understood that.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I've had a uh pretty overwhelmingly positive and wonderful and pinch me constantly kind of experience where these incredible publications are talking about us, and I'm just going, am I in like some sort of hallucination?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how is this happening?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: No, Bina, it's so well deserved.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I really and I mean that, you know, because it's not about, you know, it's everything what we just said, and I don't want to repeat myself, but I just I need to stress, you know, that it's very, it's it, you know, you said what I said was profound, it's profound what you're creating here because you're creating experiences and moments and memories for people, you know, and and those are the things I think that really that that's what beauty is supposed to do.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's what makeup is supposed to do, it's what skincare is supposed to do, it's about it's what any self-care is supposed to do.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think um, you know, that focus, it needs to stay there if we want an industry that is genuinely going to be creating solution-oriented products that are for everybody, like you know, just like just be beauty.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful, you know, you've really created something that you can tell immediately.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, it is it's inspired.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's a vision behind it.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: This is yeah, and it's it's a truth, you know.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's a people always say to me, well, you know, everyone loves being flattered, but I'm like, no, everyone likes sincere flattering.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's that's what people, you know, that's what people call validation, and they call this, you know, uh getting an affirmation from somebody else, but it's really that sincere appreciation for what you've done.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I have a very sincere appreciation because you know to be able to for as a brown woman to be able to say this is my go-to lip color, especially with a liquid lipstick, you know.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's huge.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think people really uh fully understand how huge that is, you know.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: For me, before your lipsticks, and I'm not even joking, before I I discovered anything that looks normal or remotely good on me in terms of a nude color, the only lipstick I remember this distinctly, the only lipstick I could go to was by Kat Vondy.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: It was her lip lip uh liquid lipstick in the color Lolita, and I don't know if they still sell it.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think either Lolita is coming or hair is coming, or I knew one of them was coming.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and so it was, you know, and I was so baffled.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: I remember thinking, you know, in my college days, and I was like, man, this is the only liquid lipstick I can use.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you will not believe this was the only lipstick Vina I could ever use through all of college, through all of graduate school.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, why?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why can I and there's so many of us?
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're such a huge market, and you know what?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, as I keep saying, I don't want to tread on anyone else's, you know, experiences.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, uh, the trauma of, you know, being a post-colonial country, it is a trauma, you know, and there are traumas um of the things that have happened to you for hundreds of your people to why are we so obsessed with lightning creams and you know it's because somebody has systematically told you over hundreds of years that you will rule you because you're not quite good enough, you know, and we're better because of da-da-da-da.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those would have been skin tone, obviously, right?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we've sort of internalized this this and and we internalize it, and now we're doing it ourselves.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where's we're continuing to?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: I say this to my uh, you know, my uh uh people who say this to me that could you make me a bit fairer?
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you know, there's nobody here to please by making yourself fairer.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're all brown here, just be brown, you know, own it.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful, you know.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in fact, with the representation and the brand, that's what was so important to us.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: I A wanted it to be, you know, um, and we've just reshot, and I, you know, I'm dying to share those pictures.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I wanted a uh uh Pakistani models or you know, uh brown girls, and I wanted every shade of brown girl that I could find, and I wanted them to be able to just not have some sort of crazy over-the-top makeup.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to make their skin like their skin, and you know, just give them a bit of mascara and put on these lipsticks and let their hair be the texture their hair is, and you know, and it's it's an immediate payoff because just um in my uh um home, um our cook um they live in and her little daughters in the kitchen all the time.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: She's this cute little mite.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I don't know if you've noticed on my feed Iman, who's my sister-in-law, who is uh always constantly being dragged by me in front of a camera.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um so she's now working in this house with this girl who's modeling, who's you know, happens to be um, you know, quite pale-skinned and blue eyes and all of that.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this little girl has got this idea that um the only thing that is beautiful is Iman, because this is what she's seeing.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: So she's hero worshipping her and wanting to be her and saying, I want to have skin like hers, and that this was happening in my own home, like just blew my mind.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I immediately grabbed this little creature who must be like six, and I pulled out the pictures from our campaigns, and our most recent one, in fact.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I'm so sorry while I was doing the makeup, I didn't make you meet the other model who is Trinette, um, who I adore, um, whose uh uh social media feed is called Rich in Color and Life.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: So she's this beautiful, um I think I'm not sure where she's from originally.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think Gone Christian, I'm not sure, but she's got this gorgeous, you know, that red-toned, beautiful skin.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know, we sort of did the the curly girl method and you know really made her curls, you know, amazing.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I showed this little six-year-old, I was like, okay, so here's Iman, and no doubt she's beautiful, and I adore her, she's my baby.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: But here's Trinette.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think this one is more beautiful than this one?
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this little girl just went, I don't know.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was like, wow, so this is it.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: When we say these catchphrases, you know, like representation is everything, but representation is everything.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was able to show this girl um this appreciation of this skin tone and this hair right next to somebody who most of us have been taught to think is, you know, what we're all aiming for, which is, you know, somebody who could literally pass for white.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: That was a that was a win for me that you know, I want to put these images out there of beautiful South Asian beauty, all shades, you know.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: I and I and I I hate discriminating against, you know, paler skinned girls too.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's nonsense as well.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you can't uh exoticize like like Trinette.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I I did her makeup and we shot YouTube.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she said I sometimes feel exoticized.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like they'll make me even darker in the shoots, they'll make me even oilier in the shoots than I am.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, they'll kind of give me this kind of peasant, what they think is like a peasanty hairdo.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm like, I see what you're trying to do to me, you know?
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it's such an it's such an interesting line that you're constantly navigating.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, there'll be missteps, and I don't want to hate on anyone for those missteps.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're all learning.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if your intention is to uplift and to uh shower with love, then you stand a better chance uh than not, I think.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's also about application above just you know, just you have to you have to apply what you learn.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: You can't just learn and then be like, yeah, we learned it.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're good, we learned that.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, where the where's the actions?
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and that's that's a big problem.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh let's be let's be 100% transparent here.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: There are so many people in the beauty industry, in the you know, any industry really, makeup, fashion, you name it, right?
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone is saying, look, we went to this class, this class, we did this study, we interviewed this many brown people.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_02: We're good.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: We know what we're doing, really, because we're coming out with products that don't represent any sort of knowledge.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a problem.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because again, once again, the same idea comes out, which is nobody knows what you're what you're dealing with until you you have to dive in.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: You have to hear stories, you have to hear the stories of the women and the men and the people that grow up with these problems and what that has really translated into um in a day-to-day level, rather than just saying this umbrella term of, yeah, I've dealt with racism in my lifetime.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that could mean anything, you know.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_02: And just by saying that, you know, we're a brand that doesn't believe in racism, that doesn't make you inclusive.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: That just makes you uh just not caring, you know, you don't put any thought into this at all.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_02: You just know the word racism and you know there's a lot of brown people in this world and you want to monetize on that.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's not called being an inclusive company.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to be inclusive, you really want to, you know, um trailblaze and and and march this movement of you know, beauty and body positivity, so you know, uh shade positivity, whatever you want to call it, then you have to get into the trenches and do the work.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: And or yeah, if you if you want somebody to feel the love, then you have to be feeling the love.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to give it out there.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can't say I feel love, you have to feel the love, man.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: So uh if you're not coming from a uh a place of honesty, we're all smart consumers, all of us, you know, you can smell uh phony baloney stuff from a mile away, you know, and these young kids are way smarter than you know, I am, or you know, like these, like a 17-year-old will be able to read between the lines of you know, who's trying to just make a quick buck off a trend, and who's trying to address a wrong and is trying to make people feel I don't I don't know the word is I don't like the word validated, seen, seen, appreciated, loved, um, like somebody's interested in them.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and it is true.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the experience you had when I got uh Kashmiri chai, I had the same experience, which is even though I made it, I made it, I mixed it, I tried it on my lips a million times, but when I received it in lipstick form and tried it on my lips and it worked for me, I burst into tears.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just burst into tears.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I'm an interview and I mention this and I start crying about it too, but I won't do that here.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, the fact that we have not felt that love, right?
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's just a reality.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really, really proud that we are, at least in your case and uh and my mother's case, and you know, messages that we get and selfies that we get are people going, I cannot believe, and you know, because it's got the right brown base tones, um, and I don't mean that just the brown colors, I mean even um the Kashmiri chai or the or the peach tone or the all of them have got some brown to them.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: So when you put them on, you don't necessarily feel that desperate need for concealer like you do with lipsticks that are not appreciating your skin tone.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I've had quite a few selfies of people going, I don't understand.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've just got lipstick on.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I look this good?
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I keep sharing them on social media because it is true, you can just put on one of these lipsticks and just just be like it is the celebration of you.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not you better do five things, then you can wear this color.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that you could just wear this color, man.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's just shove it on your eyes, shove it on your cheek, shove it on your lip.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: You look good.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're done, it matches.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's all that matters.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: Does it match?
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: Does it work?
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, okay, cool.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_02: That makes my life a lot easier.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's what we're trying to do, and that's exactly it.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's like cut out the BS, put in the real, you know, the solutions and the and the real stuff, you know, put in the quality there.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one of the, you know, I really want to take this time and I want to round out the interview and and mention this because um it's very important that we understand that with this new evolving consumer market where we're seeing a lot more women of color come into this playing field as consumers, you're I just want to put this out there for the brands and the and the you know uh executives that are listening in, is that you have to re-evaluate your strategy when it comes to understanding through um, you know, true diversity, true inclusion, true problems of real women that are, you know, of color and have lived in Western societies or, you know, in whatever situation they're in, because it's gonna be a very uphill battle for brands that have not done the legwork.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_02: If you have not done the legwork and you don't know what it means to find a good mauve that works on the brown skin tone, and only the people who who've done this know what I'm talking about.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because finding a mauve color that looks good on you is very hard.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_02: But if you find the right one, it'll make or break your makeup look.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you don't know these things and you're making a brand or you're part of a brand that's a huge brand, you you need to reevaluate and you need to step back because the consumers you're gonna be dealing with, and I really believe this, being a the the upcoming, you know, trends and beauty and the way that um, you know, brown women are hopping on this uh wagon of really we're tired of the BS and we want answers and we want solutions.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_02: We I really feel like as consumers, the market is at a it's at a place where um, you know, you either give us the good stuff or we're leaving, you know, that kind of mentality.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think when we get there and we we're approaching that, it's gonna really weed out a lot of the, you know, the fake versus the good.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's where I think, you know, it this conversation comes in very heavily is this idea of, you know, it's not always gonna be a world for, you know, people who are just making it up as they go along.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be a world for people who've put in the thought.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and tokenism.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's funny, um, just to uh quickly mention also that uh it's funny when you mentioned the Canva with the, you know, the the Paisley print and the elephant and the, you know, when we were designing this product, uh, you know, one of the first things we sort of spoke to everybody about, whether it was the design of the box, the division, I was like, you know, none of this, like, we don't want a social media feed that is like full of like cute earrings and like us playing dress up.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um no shade to anyone who's doing that, but this is not about that.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is about colors, and this is about systems that help you and make you work.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to um limit it to like a cute token brown thing.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's yes, it works for brown skin, and we're definitely acknowledging um finally um that bit of the market, but it is just a really great product.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're really beautiful colors, and anybody with any taste should wear these, you know, it doesn't matter what uh shade range you are.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree with you.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I think that, you know, it's a very powerful message, you know, that's really underlying the creation of, you know, just be beauty.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think that you are really working for a place of true inspiration and true insight.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I I can't tell you how, you know, just how genuine and beautiful that is.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I I really value um the work that you're putting into this and how much thought has gone behind um what you've created.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I I really genuinely want to thank you for that.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I I can't wait to see all of the amazing uh products that you come up with next because I'm a I'm a lifelong, you know, fan.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm always gonna be.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think you know, everyone just be beauty, you guys.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: Come on, let's let's make this, you know, as big as we can make it.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because honestly, this is the time.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_02: This is the time to really support the people who are doing it right.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, Bina, you you're killing it.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I can't say enough good.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, thank you.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, color, I I really, you know, you have all the awards I can offer because you know, what you're doing right now, I wish you were, you know, you were around when I was growing up.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because if I had just had one of your own custom shades that you made, you know what I mean?
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like I decided to wear to an interview or something, my life would have been a lot easier, you know, in in certain moments.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's like these I'm sorry I wasn't there for you.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay, I won't hold it against you too much, you know.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_02: You gave me something, you know, really good.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I love that I love that I have uh, you know, these lipsticks, and I love that I have products that I can look at and say, hey, you know, this is my product.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: This lipstick is my lipstick, and it works for me every day.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_02: I can put this on no matter the circumstance.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's a huge statement, and I I don't want to thank you, you know, genuinely for giving me that as a consumer.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I really appreciate you know everything you're doing.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're like making my month and year and all of it.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_02: No, I mean it's the least I can say.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I just want to uh, you know, uh re you know, readdress this to everyone listening that um, you know, if you really like our content, if you like what I'm trying to do uh with skincare anarchy or white collar brown girl, you know, give us a follow, but give all of the brands that I interview a follow to.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, don't listen to this interview and then just no go not go follow, just be beauty.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_02: Go onto the website, go onto the Instagram, check out the brand, uh, you know, buy it an awesome color, you know, do something to really engage um with these kind of brands because these are the brands that are going to be redefining the way we look at ourselves in the coming years in terms of makeup, beauty, self-care, and I don't know.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_02: I just I can't stress that enough.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you to everyone who tunes in.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you to everyone for listening, and I will be back next time.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_02: Hey guys, so I hope you love that episode.
• 1:05:20
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• 1:05:25
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• 1:06:25
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