Keeping Face with Kathleen Baird-Murray

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, f...

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...

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...

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!

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/ h...

He was a young hairdresser from the south of France, who learnt the business by listening to the likes of Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and other role models. But when others stopped listening to him, Frederic Fekkai had no choice but to fight back. And he did. Here he talks about what it’s like to get your business back, when you’ve already sold it for millions. https://fekkai.com/ Please follow or subscribe to Keeping Face wherever you’re listening. For more information...

Recorded in Kenya (her) and Shropshire (me), Alexia Inge is living the dream. But it’s a well earnt dream, following 15 years of 100-hour work weeks, and the kind of ups and downs that would often leave her in tears, laughter, and with several huge problems to solve. Resigning from CultBeauty in 2022, the ecommerce site that revolutionised the way we shop for beauty, the co-founder reflects on a time very early on, when it very nearly didn’t happen… Please follow or subscribe to K...

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..” Charles Dickens But wasn't it always the worst of times from which we learnt something? Something useful? Welcome to Keeping Face, a podcast about beauty founders and the moment they might have, almost did - and in some cases most definitely did - lose the plot and had to scramble to get back on track. From the moment Tina Chen Craig collapsed on the floor of her hotel bedroom to Frederic Fek...