In 2015, I was invited to be a contestant in L’Oréal’s The Brush Contest, which came a year after I had won Simon Cowell’s The You Generation competition—an achievement that, sadly, received no press release. At the time, I was extremely busy, working internationally as a makeup artist. I remember that when the contest was scheduled, I was actually in Dallas, Texas, working at BeautyCon, so I was unsure whether I should take part at all.
The incentive that convinced me was the originally advertised prize: €75,000 in cash and the opportunity to design makeup for L’Oréal Paris. Obviously, that was a significant amount of money and aligned perfectly with my goal to break into product design. I felt I could create something truly provocative with prosthetic makeup and build on my work with male-to-female transformations and trans representation. It was a lovely feeling because it was fan-voted, and I wondered whether I could overcome the sense that I was being minimized. The format of The Brush Contest involved submitting a video that fans would vote on, and the competition was presented as a digital campaign with tutorials and online advertisements for L’Oréal Paris.
During the contest, many people were using voting systems to cheat, and the whole thing became a bit of a fiasco. I was in the top three vote-wise, and suddenly people began adding automated voting systems, which delayed the entire interview process. While in LA, I learned that I would need to fly back to the UK to appear in the campaign videos and online presentation. I was incredibly jet-lagged and had expected to meet Val Garland and Cheryl Cole, who were judges. I was elated but absolutely exhausted. There were four other contestants, all of whom were lovely; I’ve stayed in touch with them on social media, and they’re all hugely talented.
In the hotel room, I discovered that the cash prize was no longer happening. Instead, the prize was assisting Val Garland as a makeup artist in Cannes. While that would be a wonderful opportunity for a fledgling artist, for me it felt like an incredible waste of time. That wasn’t why I was there, and I was pretty deflated.
The judges didn’t come over to speak to the contestants; it genuinely felt like everyone was annoyed to be there. I filmed as much footage as I could, thinking, Let me get everything I can—this is going to be another You Gen situation, and I can’t end up in that position again. Don’t get me wrong—being the first trans person involved in a L’Oréal Paris campaign was still a massive honor. I had also worked with Rimmel (in collaboration with Beamly) that year, which was fantastic, and I felt that was the real accomplishment, although it also wasn’t promoted.
I was so tired that I almost fell asleep while waiting with the other contestants, and I had to order room service just to stay awake. Overall, it was a very long and largely unrewarding day.
I had my model, we had to do something on a stage with L’Oreal products, I decided this was not gonna work for me and I took every camera opportunity to get footage. I remember talking to the model when we were doing the contest and I just said, ‘Honey I’m really sorry… but I’m gonna make you pink - because I don’t want to do this.’ I colored her face in with red lipstick. She was a great sport, the look was from my David Bowie inspired tutorials with the colourful contours. Back in that era of Youtube you couldn’t find a tutorial that used a red blusher as a contour, it was like outrageous at the time and I thought it would better promote my videos lol!!!!!
Noone came over to greet us or take a photo after, it was incredibly strange and I remember the staff in the audience from L’Oreal all coming to me after saying how awesome my work was which just confused me evenmore. Val followed me my social media and I was like… I felt that there was a mix up between the L’Oreal team, who loved the fact I was trans and there and knew I was kind of like a killer whale amongst guppies, but the organization of the competition put a dampener on everything. Sadly, because of this, I was approached later that year about whether I would be interested in being in the televised commercial for L’Oreal Paris and I was a bit scared to say yes. I also don't want to be the example of someone who is put in a campaign as 'other', I feel that my work speaks for itself and I should be considered next to any model to sell makeup, I've done that successfully for ten years, and I did not feel at that time it was a great fit. But I love L’Oreal and I will be forever grateful to have been the first trans person to have broken that boundary, as a result of my amazing audience on Youtube who voted me into that position.
So let’s speed on - because in 2017 I worked with Jessica Blackler who organized her company under L’Oreal Innovations, based on my trans tutorials. Full article is listed on this website. It was an amazing feat and we launched to great success. The next big moment was to actually be contacted to speak internally with Ellis who helms the Out @ L’Oreal movement and talk about our stories putting the brand together and my personal journey as a transgender person in the beauty industry. It was amazing and Ellis has been super effective internally because now the company offers support to LGBT+ people, my experience and how things have unfolded in my career has served as an example and I’ve been fortunate enough to do more campaigns with L’Oreal brands in 2020.
L’Oreal Paris is an incredible company, we received the entire makeup range which was lovely. I am forever interested in creating new work with them in inclusivity.
