Your Face Or Mine
If the beauty industry had a motto, it would be: ‘Empowering women while quietly raiding their wallets since time immemorial.’
I would know. I have been obsessed with skincare for as long as I can remember. Not in the lighthearted, ‘Ooh, apricot face scrub day’ way, but in the slightly destabilising way that only someone who has endured the emotional scarring of uncontained teenage acne years can understand.
In the 90s, having perfected the art of the aesthetics, I started Bliss Spa, gave facials to Uma, Oprah, Madonna etc., in between, launched a good-for-you footwear brand (FitFlop) and a fun drugstore beauty brand called Soap & Glory (long story). Most recently - built the buyer’s club- BEAUTY PIE- to take the bullshit and blah blah blah out of shopping for everything from skincare to collagen supplements.
Why? Well, when you spent an embarrassing 10 teenage years with your face as a battleground, your wardrobe stacked with turtlenecks you could pull up to cover the acne that’s encamped on your chin and your bangs grown to cover the tip of your uncontrollably greasy forehead, you do not view skincare as a luxury. No. It becomes a mission, a calling, a relentless pursuit of salvation in a bottle (or, let’s be real, dozens of bottles). And once it’s your direction, it’s weirdly difficult to ‘pivot’.
So decades in, I find myself in the beauty business—not as a casual participant, but as someone who has spent years interrogating every new ingredient, every price tag, every peel, new machine, and every ‘miraculous’ breakthrough.
The Truths? The beauty business delivers an oxymoron of the highest order. On one hand, beauty is sold to us as a form of empowerment—a self-care ritual, a confidence booster, an artistic expression. And in many ways, that’s true. Who hasn’t felt joy finding a perfect red lipstick and figuring out how to wear it, or the fresh ‘can do’ of glowy, just-exfoliated skin? The twist? That kind of empowerment often comes at a staggering markup, dressed in marketing designed to poke at our deepest insecurities and make us feel just inadequate enough to reach for our credit cards.
We are told we need pricey 10-step skincare routines because the four-step routine (uh, SPF is always included) is not good enough. We are sold ‘miracle’ creams that often contain just trace amounts of active ingredients, packaged in jars that cost more than the 50mls of ‘formula’.
We are whispered to by luxury brands that ‘we’re worth it’ …as long as we pay up.
Now, this is not to say that beauty is a scam. Science-backed skincare is real. Retinoids are real. Vitamin C, real. Niacinamide, yes. Peptides are VERY promising. And great skincare used regularly can make a big difference. But there’s a lot of ‘meh’ out there, and you can kiss a lot of expensive frogs before you find something that really works.
So, why am I here? Because I love beauty. I love the ritual of it, the power of it, the sheer joy of discovering a product that actually delivers. But I also believe in honesty. In cutting through the fluff, the fear-mongering, and the egregious upcharging.
So I’ll share what I’ve learned—both from my own face-first dive into the industry and from my years of working behind the scenes with the world’s best labs, scientists, raw ingredient suppliers (yes, it’s just like commodities trading but with collagen peptides.)
If you’ve ever stood in Sephora, baffled by ingredient lists that read like a chemistry exam, or felt your brain explode while watching a stream of influencers pushing one commissioned product after another (spoiler alert- the really expensive stuff pays those influencers a really hefty commission for saying it’s great) I’m hoping I can help!
So this will be a place where you get the REAL deal info—no beauty bullshit, no blah blah blah—just straight-up facts, so you can be a smarty pants shopper and also look fabulous Ask me anything 👇.