Isamaya Ffrench’s eponymous beauty brand ISAMAYA is very new - two years! But what an impact it’s made. Shocking us with her lipsticks in penis-inspired packaging (a sentence I never thought I would write!) and her Steven Klein campaigns, her brand of cosmetics has landed - as she says  - “exactly where I wanted it to land”. 

But juggling it alongside her day job - creating campaigns and catwalk looks for some of the most influential global stars in the fashion and music industry, from Balmain, Giambattista Valli, Vivienne Westwood as well as contributing to international magazines like Vogue, Dazed, and Beauty Papers, recently took its toll. When she experienced one too many burnouts, Isamaya finally learnt that she’s the only person who can improve her own life quality. And so that's just what she did. 

You can find out more about Isamaya Ffrench here: 

https://britishbeautycouncil.com/advisory-board-announcement/

https://isamaya.co.uk/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAuYuvBhApEiwAzq_YiYrJfHNc5Xt1q1Gp6SZIaqymoGvNcyuCiJC2gARBzo5-wGP7WBPJBxoCFPcQAvD_BwE

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/style/isamaya-ffrench-beauty.html

https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/article/42106/1/isamaya-ffrench-my-life-in-make-up

Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening, and if you enjoy it, please spread the word! 

Please visit the website https://lapyae.com/ to find out about Keeping Face founder, Kathleen Baird-Murray’s new, special project. 

For more information about how to sponsor an episode, please contact [email protected]

Produced by Parkview Creative. For more information please contact them at [email protected]

Music composed by Armand Daniaud

Editing by Armand Daniaud

Keeping Face logo by Paul McNeil

Social Media by Angelika Wiatkowska

AMAZING AMY: THE PERFUMER WHO WANTS TO CHANGE THE WORLD FOR THE BETTER

Passionate about fragrance, Amy Christiansen, founder of Sana Jardin, created her luxury perfume house of intoxicating scents with a Master Perfumer. A social justice activist, her business model has a strong social conscience driving it - she ensures that the women harvesting the petals for her fragrances are in turn able to develop their own businesses. On this episode of Keeping Face, Amy shares the joy she experienced at being able to support female micro-entrepreneurs - but also the immense sorrow and worry when she was in Morocco when 6.8 magnitude earthquake exploded and witnessed the subsequent humanitarian disaster at first hand. One of the nicest, kindest people you’ll ever meet, this is an inspirational listen about a brand whose values have always been more than just virtue signalling. It shows that doing good and running a successful luxury brand are not mutually exclusive. 

For more background, these links are useful: 

https://sanajardin.com/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA5-uuBhDzARIsAAa21T8adeLWwSeEds5CXqLZuuNu2_doPMct5Odl9cSvJKOsFJtykpD3rIgaAimGEALw_wcB

https://wwd.com/business-news/financial/clean-fragrance-perfume-sana-jardin-raises-2-million-us-market-1235741004/

https://perfumesociety.org/discover-the-sustainable-future-of-fragrance-with-sana-jardins-amy-christiansen/

Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening and if you enjoy it, please spread the word! It helps others to find us. 

Please visit the website https://lapyae.com/ to find out more about Kathleen Baird-Murray’s new, very special project. 

For more information about how to sponsor an episode, please contact [email protected]. 

Produced by Parkview Creative. For more information please contact them at [email protected]

Music composed by Armand Daniaud 

Editing by Armand Daniaud

Keeping Face logo by Paul McNeil

Social Media by Angelika Wiatkowska

How Nyakio Grieco Learnt to Be Her No1 Advocate

Nyakio Grieco is what they call a beauty industry veteran, having lived and breathed it for years before starting her own brand, Nyakio, which was acquired by Unilever in 2017. She’s now both a retailer with Thirteen Lune in the US, a beauty emporium that focuses on brands developed by people of colour, as well as the founder of Relevant Skin check, which launched in June 2022, and now sells at Sephora. Besides creating products that really work, like her One and Done, a three in one primer, moisturiser, and sun protection, has been about tapping into the need we all have to feel seen, to feel relevant. 

In this episode, Grieco, who was born in Oklahoma to parents of Kenyan heritage and who now lives in Los Angeles, reveals the stumbling blocks in her way - specifically the challenges that lurk around taking on investment. An inspirational listen, she discusses the importance of family heritage, and how that played into her learnings around the Black Lives Matter racial reckoning of 2020. “You can’t stay too long in a place of negativity, you have to turn your pain into purpose…”

For more background, these links are useful: 

https://thirteenlune.com/blogs/shop-talk/a-note-from-nyakio

https://relevantskin.com/

https://www.nyakio.com/us/en

https://wwd.com/beauty-industry-news/beauty-features/inside-nyakio-griecos-unyielding-vision-for-borderless-beauty-1235620655/

Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening, and if you enjoy it, please spread the word! 

Please visit the website https://lapyae.com/ to find out about Keeping Face founder, Kathleen Baird-Murray’s new, special project. 

For more information about how to sponsor an episode, please contact [email protected]

Produced by Parkview Creative. For more information please contact them at [email protected]

Music composed by Armand Daniaud

Editing by Armand Daniaud

Keeping Face logo by Paul McNeil

Social Media by Angelika Wiatkowska

Visit the Westbourne Grove branch of Kama Ayurveda and it's like stepping into India. Jungles with elephants and banana leaf murals, smart red striped ceilings and marigold garlands invite us to discover the ancient wisdoms of Ayurveda. Started by the former graphic designer Vivek Sahni over 20 years ago, Kama Ayurveda is now owned by the Spanish family-owned beauty conglomerate, Puig. 

For Keeping Face, Vivek, a self-proclaimed "non-businessman" describes his anxiety during the Covid years, and the learnings he experienced from his staff as shops shut, the business had to pivot rapidly, and the pandemic tried to shut him down. The secret ingredient? Kindness. 

For more background, these links are useful: 

www.kamaayurveda.com

https://www.travelandleisureasia.com/in/people/interview-with-tl-champion-of-conscious-beauty-vivek-sahni/

https://www.forbesindia.com/article/leadership/how-vivek-sahni-is-taking-kama-ayurveda-local-and-global-at-the-same-time/86693/1

Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening, and if you enjoy it, please spread the word! 

Please visit the website https://lapyae.com/ to find out about Keeping Face founder, Kathleen Baird-Murray’s new, special project. 

For more information about how to sponsor an episode, please contact [email protected]

Produced by Parkview Creative. For more information please contact them at [email protected]

Music composed by: Armand Daniaud

Editing by: Armand Daniaud

Keeping Face logo by Paul McNeil

Social Media by Angelika Wiatkowska

I first met Kate when I was beauty director at Tatler magazine many years ago. I happened to be in LA, and asked some friends which facialist might be worth visiting, and hers was the name that came up time and time again. But her's is not an overnight sensation type of story - she worked in a top cosmetic surgery office for many years before setting up on her own as an aesthetician and developing her own skincare line.

 For Keeping Face she shares the struggles of her childhood, growing up with a mother whose dependence on alcohol rocked her own confidence, until she was brave enough to leave home and find her own positive role models. Acquired by Unilever Prestige in 2015, she's come a long, long way since then. 

For more information on Kate Somerville:
https://www.katesomerville.co.uk/?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gclid=*

The book she references:
https://www.melodybeattie.com/codependentnomore

Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening. 

Please visit the website https://lapyae.com/ to find out about Kathleen Baird-Murray’s new, special project…  

For more information please contact [email protected] 

Hosted by @kathleen_bairdmurray, a @parkview.creative production 

Produced by: Parkview Creative 

Music composed by: Armand Daniaud 

Editing by: Armand Daniaud 

Keeping Face logo by: Paul McNeil 

Social Media by: Angelika Wiatkowska

John Demsey Doesn’t Know Anyone Who Thinks They Look Too Good 

The author of Behind the Blue Door, a book about his home in New York, is also the former senior executive at Estee Lauder Companies. At the forefront of the key acquisitions and creative directions of many of their brands including MAC and Tom Ford for over 30 years, his fall from grace was monumental. Here he talks about his career, his regrets, and his hopes for the future.

For more background, these links are useful: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/fashion/john-demsey-meme-estee-lauder.html

https://nypost.com/2023/09/02/canceled-estee-lauder-exec-john-demsey-is-back-with-big-support/

For information on Behind the Blue Door: 

https://www.vendomepress.com/book/behind-the-blue-door/

Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening. 

With grateful thanks to https://www.shleep.co/gb/ for their sponsorship of this episode. 

Please visit the website https://lapyae.com/ to find out about Kathleen Baird-Murray’s new, special project… 

For more information please contact [email protected]

Hosted by @kathleen_bairdmurray, a @parkview.creative production

Produced by: Parkview Creative

Music composed by: Armand Daniaud

Editing by: Armand Daniaud

Keeping Face logo by: Paul McNeil

Social Media by: Angelika Wiatkowska

We're back with another incredible line up of beauty brand founders and c-suite executives. Tune in every Wednesday where ever you get your podcasts!

We’ve saved the most mellifluous of our interviewees til last. Well-known as an award-winning singer-songwriter, what’s it like being the new kid on the block in the beauty industry? By all accounts pretty good. Don’t expect much from John when it comes to sharing LovedO1’s  insurmountable problems (the brand’s too new to have had many yet); but do expect the kind of gentle wisdom about race and beauty that will one day move mountains. 

https://loved01.com/

https://www.allure.com/story/john-legend-loved01-review

Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening.

For more information please contact [email protected]

Hosted by @kathleen_bairdmurray, a @parkview.creative production.

Rose-Marie Swift is full of surprises. Plot-spoiler alert, she once played in a punk band (wait til you hear which band she supported!) and her business strategy has as much to do with astrology as it does with Excel. With a 38 year plus career as a make-up artist, and  an organic, natural, make-up brand  - RMS Beauty -  that has always been ahead of its time, is no unicorn story. Her's is based it all on trust, talent and lots of hard work. 

https://www.rmsbeauty.com/

https://www.ft.com/content/03c56756-c0cd-11e4-9949-00144feab7de

Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening.

For more information please contact [email protected]

Hosted by @kathleen_bairdmurray, a @parkview.creative production.

 From a tough start in life aged three months old, to achieving global recognition for her work in the hair industry, how did Charlotte Mensah overcome the huge loss of her mother and bullying at school to make it on the world’s stage? Through hair of course. Is there any other way? 

https://www.charlottemensah.com/shop-online/manketti-hair-oil

Good Hair: The Essential Guide to Afro, Textured and Curly Hair

https://amp.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/oct/18/charlotte-mensah-queen-of-black-hairdressing-interview-hair-became-a-form-of-healing

Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening.

For more information please contact [email protected]

Hosted by @kathleen_bairdmurray, a @parkview.creative production.