The Exchanges

Q But still, there was no, like, Catherine didn't say, what do you want from us? Like, at what point did she say, okay, this looks cool, now what? Like, what then?

A Yeah, so timing is so important, right? So, again, unbeknownst to me, Victoria Vogue was suffering at the time, and she had gone back to her bosses. Apparently, this is what she told me. She'd gone back to her bosses, and they wanted nothing to do with my project. But if you want to work on it, you can work on it, but you need to work on it on your time. You can't work on it on our time, and it'll be your project. We want nothing to do with it, which was such a blessing to me because I was not tied to Victoria Vogue. However, I was able to Work with Catherine, who had all of this knowledge about sponges and, and tools. So we then continued to discuss the development of Beauty Blender on her free time.

AI assessment note: “So we then continued to discuss the development of Beauty Blender on her free time.”

Q I guess it, it, it would kind of look like a teardrop, or Or like an egg shape. And, and from, from what I understand, like, around this time, you, you went to like a, some kind of workshop where you, you, like, you get another idea about how to use this sponge that involves water, and like, can you explain that? What, what was the idea that you got?

A Yeah, yeah. I mean, I went to this one seminar with this really prolific makeup artist who's still working today. Her name is Kelsey Fry. And, um, the thing that she said that stuck in my head was, um, that she would wet her sponge. Like, I know it sounds crazy, everybody, and everybody always says to me, why are you wetting your sponge when you're using this makeup? Because it's going to dilute, it's going to eh, eh, eh. And she said, but trust me when I tell you, this works. And by the way, it's not like a drippy sponge, like you wet the sponge, you wring it out, and you towel dry it. But what ends up happening is then the sponge starts to repel the makeup. So it's then pushing the makeup onto the face as opposed to grabbing the makeup and trying to suck it in. So, I don't know, is that like physics or something? Like, I don't, I don't know.

AI assessment note: “the thing that she said that stuck in my head was, um, that she would wet her sponge.”

Q All right, so you switch over to, uh, to selling cosmetics at Bullocks, and I think around this time you also moved to a new apartment, and I guess by chance in that apartment you meet someone who works in the movie business, is that right? Yeah.

A Yeah. I met this woman who was a makeup artist. She lived in the building. She lived in West Hollywood. And, um, so I, it was very interesting because I got to see two slices of life when it comes to makeup artistry. You can work retail or you can be lucky enough to live in Los Angeles where you can be in production. So I was able to see, okay, this girl that I met, she goes on set and she works and she does makeup. And as my friendship Went on with my friend who was the makeup artist, and I met other makeup artists, I started to focus my attention to moving in that direction, because their life seemed really exciting. They were working with, you know, all kinds of different producers, different jobs, celebrities, and I thought, and they were making great money. I was like, wow, that's, you know, that's, that's how I actually got the bug or the interest in makeup. Hmm.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. I met this woman who was a makeup artist. She lived in the building.”

Q capital or one of the world capitals, because I think you could make the argument that Bollywood is another one, but a world capital of the entertainment industry. And so presumably there was work for makeup artists, but I can't imagine it's easy to get into. There's probably unions and there's probably, right. There's lots of people who want that work. How did you break into that, to that industry?

A So, you're right, and if you think about the time we were in, you know, early to mid-eighties, it was the MTV revolution, and you're absolutely right, there are unions for makeup artists, and literally for anybody who works behind the scenes. Um, however, there are non-union projects that go on as well, and it was the MTV revolution, like I was saying, and I started to understand through my research, you know, Where these music videos were getting made, where the production houses were, what their names were, and I, I'm kind of bold. I would just walk in and say, hey, I'm a makeup artist. Can I talk to, you know, the head of production or somebody there? I'm looking for work. I just want to leave my resume if you guys ever need anybody. You know, the, these were the days when you walked in somewhere, you, you didn't do it online, which, you know, I find it so hard for young people now because nobody ever gets that eye to eye

AI assessment note: “I started to understand through my research... I would just walk in”

Q Right, the wedge, ok. So, and, and so what I'm trying to understand is that was what Presumably you used and lots of other makeup artists use. So what was wrong with that shape? Why couldn't that shape do what you needed to do?

A Well, the thing about that shape, right, first of all, we never use the wedge just like you get it out of the package. Makeup artists always cut and bevel the sharp edge off of the wedge. That's something the kids at MAC don't teach you. They don't get taught that. See, this is where there's that separation between fashion, makeup, TV, film, you know, there's, and these are the kind of like, Proprietary trade secrets that makeup artists keep that make themselves feel different from that person over there, that person over there, whatever, right? So basically what we're talking, if you, it taught, and if you were ever to go to a makeup school, a school of makeup for film and television, you would have been classically taught to take that wedge and take some scissors and bevel the edges so that there's no straight lines of demarcation, because it can look good to your eye, When you go in on a close-up, and, you know, you're in a theater, and a face is, like, you know, 300 feet by, I don't know how many feet, you see those lines of demarcation. Like, you try to work as perfectly as you can, so you cut those edges off the wedge to kind of ensure the fact that there's going to be a softer line of demarcation. So, you know, Beauty Blender is a wedge that I trimmed. Into a teardrop. The sponge itself has no edges. We round the sponge. And listen, I didn't create cutting sponges into r…

AI assessment note: “bevel the edges so that there's no straight lines of demarcation”

Q And how long did it take before you sort of landed on, on the right blend of material and shape and, like, six months, a year?

A Oh God, no. It was a couple years. Yeah. It, it almost felt like it was gonna take forever at one point because, you know, when, when you, when you're making something that has never been made before, and you don't have a huge investor behind you throwing money at labs and manufacturing companies, You're relying on the goodness and the kindness of people that believe in your idea to make the time to, to help you make that idea happen, and it's not happening in that nine to five space, you know what I mean? They have to do it in their off time. So I remember, I remember, um, uh, going to set because I was still working. I was still very, very active in my makeup career, and And they would, my friends, the other makeup artists would be like, what are you doing here? Aren't you starting a company? I'm like, girl, I still gotta work.

AI assessment note: “It was a couple years.”

Q Yeah. Yeah. And what could you do about it? Because you couldn't, you didn't have the patent protection, so how are you able to stay ahead of that?

A There's a couple of things. So the fact that beauty blender is rooted in the pro community is a very important foundation for my business because the consumers, the editors, and everybody listens to the pros, right? So when pros only use beauty blender, then that's, you know, that's, that's an important message about the knockoffs. Secondly, The way that I soothe myself about knockoffs is that I remember this fact that, you know, Coke needed Pepsi. Xerox needed IBM. Beauty Blender needs knockoffs in order to prove why we are the category creator and the best. I mean, there's still, even in my biggest retailers now, there's, there's brands within those retailers that have, um, Beauty Blender type sponges, but All that does for us is give us a target to market our superiority to. Do you know what I mean? Like, if they, if they didn't exist, we couldn't talk about why we're the best.

AI assessment note: “the fact that beauty blender is rooted in the pro community is a very important foundation”