Anokhi Fashion Lifestyle Entertaiment

**scroll to the end for the complete list of beauty bloggers**

Determining the best foundation for your yellow-based skin tone isn’t easy with only a few products on theshelf that target women of colour. Add to that everyone’s busy schedule (read: minimal time to shop) and a recovering economy (read: limited personnel and customer service), and making a great beauty buy is not an easy feat. But with the rise of the beauty blogosphere, a new service-oriented web experience is available at your fingertips to inform your purchases even before your trip to the store. The old ways of finding out about beauty tips and bloggers—including asking your friends, waiting at the beauty counter, and clipping advice from magazines—are no longer the go-to methods for a growing number of women. Over the past decade, beauty bloggers have evolved into the new cosmetic and skincare service providers for the everyday woman who wants informed makeup, skincare, and hair advice fast. These tech-savvy beauty mavens, the beauty bloggers, have changed the scope of the beauty industry from the way consumers receive information about new products to the way stylists and makeup artists gain clients and creative inspiration.

In 2005, Nadine Haobsh, known in the beauty industry as Nadine Jolie, was termed “the poster girl for the blogger generation” by the New York Post when she was fired from her job in a well-read American magazine’s beauty department for her anonymous blog that revealed shocking truths about the fashion and beauty industries. Among other things, Haobsh blogged about swag, editor gifts, and workplace hierarchy, things known in the industry, but often not divulged to the general public. Her scandalous blog shed light on the magazine world from a perspective only an insider could have, and grew a fan following that led to her penning two popular books: Beauty Confidential and Confessions of a Beauty Addict. Haobsh’s straight-up honesty and girlfriend-like beauty advice set a precedent for online beauty editors to reveal the truth and nothing but.

Canadian beauty blogger Janine Falcon of Beauty Geeks reminds us that the power behind the screen must be balanced out with a blogger’s greater responsibility to provide fun, engaging, and informative content to site visitors. Known for her virtual *grin*, Falcon’s witty beauty blog received recognition at the 2009 P&G Beauty Awards as the Best Fashion and Beauty Blog. When the site launched in 2008, only a few like-minded Canadian blogs, including Lipstick Rules and Canadian Beauty, existed. Otherwise, beauty blogs were primarily American. Today, Falcon is among a growing number of Canadian beauty bloggers helping countless visitors each day to oodles of accessible and credible information on the latest beauty products and style tips.

Born out of this awesome blogging revolution, niche beauty blogs targeting ethnic minorities are popular with women who may not find their beauty blunders and queries addressed on mainstream websites. Online communities such as Desi Beauty Bloggers provide evidence of the huge number of beauty websites serving South Asians. For some of these Desi bloggers, such as Zerin of Xina Rox, known for her impeccable makeup looks, comprehensive product reviews, and swatch comparisons; beauty is simply a lifelong love. Similarly, Henna Singh, editor of Canadian Beauty, an impressive site that posts up to four times daily and gets about 2000 readers a day, is a teacher by day and a beauty lover by night. Singh’s website fills the gap created by American beauty blogs that don’t mention Canadian product and Canadian releases. Singh hopes to expand her beauty expertise by one day getting trained in perfumery and aims to continue blogging as a hobby.

By following a beauty blog, women invest personal faith in the person running the site. Knowing this, freelance SouthAsian makeup artists Anjali Handa of Rock that Look and Farah Balolia of Faces by Farah wow readers with their impressive portfolio of work and insider knowledge on their blogs. Rock that Look’s highlights include beautiful pictures of Handa’s makeup artistry and her playful “Temptation Tuesdays,” when Handa shares her weekly fashion and beauty desires. “Blogging is a great marketing tool to demonstrate our skill sets by posting pictures, writing about our work, and building one’s personal brand,” says Handa. “A lot of my bridal clients have found me through my blog.” Faces by Farah’s strengths lie in the informative and credible articles about topics including the beauty benefits of lemon and how to store makeup in a large purse. Balolia’s weekly “You Go Girl!” interview with pop-culture icons and industry professionals keeps her readers coming back for more. Balolia is also the creative mind behind the Toronto Beauty Bloggers community. The group started off as a lunch date between eight girls, and blew up into a full-out beauty event now with 27 bloggers, cosmetic company reps, and product sponsors. The community lives on with their online membership of over 100 beauty divas and daily conversations on Twitter—these women support each other like any other group of girlfriends.

Blogging’s impact on the beauty industry is most clearly seen in the new directions taken by companies when promoting their products. Isabel Picard, Public Relations representative for Marcelle Groupe, takes the relationships she builds with beauty bloggers seriously and uses bloggers to get information about new products directly to the consumer. “When (beauty) companies get into social media, you have to get into it knowing that you don’t control everything. Consumers will usually believe bloggers more (since) they review the product (as if) they have paid for it themselves,” says Picard. Marcelle Groupe also benefits from the speed and quality of feedback received from bloggers that traditional mediums can not provide: “We may think a packaging works great, but then we get the new product into the hands of 30 beauty bloggers who all comment negatively. . . its something we’ll look into.” Companies serve the average consumer better when bloggers willingly act as product guinea pigs. Similarly, South Asian-focused Vasanti Cosmetics recently dove into working with beauty bloggers. “We want to promote them as much as they are promoting us,” admits Priti Patel, one of the company’s founders, who is currently working on a section of their website that will be exclusively devoted to reviews by beauty bloggers.

Brown beauty bloggers including Canadian Beauty’s Henna Singh, who attends beauty events alongside magazine editors and has even covered New York Fashion Week, are even an influential force on traditional sources of media. “Magazines now need to work harder to distinguish themselves,” says Tayaba Jafri, who is the lead makeup artist for Laura Mercier and also has her own blog called Musings of a Vagabond Beauty Expert. “You just aren’t current if you don’t have someone blogging or you’re not on Twitter.” Yet Jafri is disappointed by the level of information provided by some beauty blogs. “When I look at the main beauty bloggers I just see a lot of product pushing. I (need to) see through into the relationships behind screen.” Jafri’s work in luxury cosmetics, which prides itself on service and not the hard sell, influences her frank but wise advice for bloggers to simply keep it real. “I love the grit of seeing a person’s true personality show through raw and unkept because that is when one shares openly.” Jafri’s blog is more a portal to her inner world; her professional experiences as a beauty expert are only mentioned as an expression of her “random musings.” Rock That Look’s Anjali Handa reminds all of her readers to keep an open mind: “Engage in the community, but just be aware that people have different opinions, so do some research on your own!” 

ANOKHI' Beauty Blog Roll:

Anjali Handa's Rock That Look
rockthatlook.ca

Desi Girl Does Makeup
makeuptrialsandtribulations.blogspot.com

Deepa Berar's It's All In The Makeup
blog.deepaberar.com

Farah Balolia's Faces by Farah
facesbyfarah.com

Henna Singh's Canadian Beauty
canadianbeauty.com

Janine Falcon's Beautygeeks
imabeautygeek.com

Nadine Jolie
nadinejolie.com/blog

Tayaba Jafri's Musings of a Vagabond Beauty Expert
tayaba.wordpress.com

Zerin's XinaRox
xinarox.blogspot.com

BY: AMANPREET DHAMI / PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 2010 ISSUE