Geek geekery...
...featuring two of my favourite geeks, Tom Pellereau and Lauren Bowker, as well as a new mascara that has genuinely wowed me
Because during the Christmas and New Year break, I’m unlikely to be meeting beauty types and having beauty conversations that I can tell you about, I thought I’d use this episode / instalment / issue (still not decided what the terminology should be) of BeautyGeekery to introduce you to two of my favourite geeks. (You’ll note I did not do a Christmas must-buy list and am not doing a new year resolutions type one. No shade on those who do and never say never — if you want that sort of thing just let me know — but I feel like there’s loads of that stuff around and as I’m not massively big on buying tonnes of stuff or making resolutions, it seemed a bit off brand.)
There are a handful of people in the industry who don’t necessarily have the highest profile but who are the people who genuinely spark joy in me, the ones — a bit like Marc Elrick from Byoma — who I will gravitate to in a room because they’ve always got something interesting to tell me, a new insight, something they’re passionate about.
I’ve also included links to some of the stories that, in various ways, I’ve worked on with these people. Looking back on these stories made me a bit sad because it reminded me of when my bread and butter was these sort of geeky stories and that’s just not the case any more. These sort of forensic investigations just don’t get commissioned so much these days, but they’re the sort of thing that make my heart sing. Maybe one day, BeautyGeekery can become an outlet for more of these types of story. When I started BeautyGeekery on Patreon (RIP) that was kind of my aim — to let my subscribers be my commissioning editors, and to get to the point where my income from Patreon could fund more of these types of features. If that’s the sort of thing you might be interested in, let me know.
There are obviously other people in the industry I fangirl in this way — think of this as a part 1, with more to follow — but, here are two of my favourite industry geeks — both of whom I think will be doing exciting things next year…
Tom Pellereau
Tom is the founder of StylIdeas. You might remember him as the inventor who won The Apprentice in 2011. He started out creating a revolutionary curved nail file, and clips that looked a bit like chunky clothes pegs designed to hold pads of acetone against gel nails instead of foil. He’s since gone on to create a whole range of beauty gadgets and recently popped up on my Instagram feed because he’s bought Sir Alan out of the business that they founded together after Tom won The Apprentice.
I first met Tom in January 2016. He’d emailed me telling me about plans he had for “a totally unique way to clean and dry makeup brushes” and I was intrigued. He offered to come round to my flat — as a freelancer I work from home most of the time — and demonstrate it to me and I can still remember him turning up with a black case, like an old-fashioned travelling salesman, and sitting with me at my kitchen table to show me what became the StylPro Makeup Brush Cleaner & Dryer (£29.99). We talked for HOURS about the research he’d done and while I genuinely loved the product — to this day I use the original model he gave me to clean my brushes — what I loved just as much, if not more, was his attention to detail. How he’d come up with the concept, how he’d tested whether it worked better than existing methods of brush cleaning, what the problems were in early models, how he’d found solutions.
Later that same year, Tom introduced me to the microbiology lab that he used to test to see if his cleaner was effective at removing bacteria. They agreed to let me test a load of different brush-cleaning methods — including the StylPro — for a feature for the Daily Mail. (You can read that feature here.)
When the results came back, they actually showed that while Tom’s device had removed almost all of the makeup, it had left some bacteria on the brush. Another brand owner might have tried to get me to pull the feature, or at least their product from it. He didn’t. Instead he focused on launching a new cleansing solution to go with the brush cleaner which would make it more effective at removing bacteria.
StylIdeas now sells all sorts of beauty tech and what I love about Tom is that he’s constantly curious and won’t take no for an answer. When he wanted to launch an LED mask for under £100, people said it couldn’t be done but he looked at all the different ways he could cut costs without cutting efficacy — and ended up with a mask that, according to the data, is more effective than most on the market, while still being the least expensive. You can read more about that in the feature I wrote about LED masks for the Telegraph here. Or take a look at the Instagram Live that I did with Nadine Baggott on the subject.
Tom’s always got something new on the go and I’m excited to see what he does next, now StylIdeas is entirely his.
Lauren Bowker
The first time I became aware of Lauren was back in 2017 when she created a colour-changing hair dye called Fire that was showcased at London Fashion Week. It basically transformed your hair into a Global Hypercolour T-shirt (remember them?) Although the design studio, The Unseen, that Lauren, a materials scientist, founded had been around for a while, working on various projects that encapsulated their ethos of making the invisible visible, this was their first foray into the world of beauty.
When I interviewed her about Fire in 2018 (for a Sunday Times Style feature that never made the magazine) I loved what she had to say, loved the fact that she effortlessly segued from talking about magic and the occult into thermochromic science (stuff that changes colour depending on the temperature) so I was really pleased that the hair dye adventure inspired her to look deeper into the beauty space.
Even before Fire became commercially available, she was on to her next project, Spectra (now available in a wide range of shades, £24), an eye shadow that used similar reflective technology to that found in cats eyes on the road. In natural light it looked black, but the flash of a camera turned it silver. It was both clever tech and a reflection of how the world of beauty was increasingly obsessed with - and marketed towards - life through a lens, rather than IRL.
Around the launch of it in 2021, I interviewed Lauren for Metro. It was a time when I was feeling quite jaded by the industry (as I think you can tell in the accompanying Instagram post and video that I posted at the time — and rewatching that video was a real smack in the chops as I hadn’t realised that I was feeling like this four years ago, and I feel like stuff has got worse since then), but speaking to her and hearing her unique take on beauty reinvigorated me. I really clearly remember her telling me about her plans to do something different. “Everyone in the beauty industry seems to be formulating from the same soup of ingredients, we wanted to create our own soup.”
I had badgered Lauren incessantly to keep me in the loop about when Fire would be commercially available and, five years later, when - finally - it went on sale in 2022, thanks to a partnership with Schwarzkopf Pro — now known as MyChroma (£33), I was thrilled to be the first journalist to write about it.
I know this last year has been hard from a business perspective for her but I’m so glad that the setbacks haven’t derailed her. The world of beauty needs these big thinkers. The people that challenge the orthodoxy, that come from different backgrounds and want to shake things up and do things differently.
She posted on Instagram recently “As we head into the new year, There’s a quiet momentum building, something new taking shape behind the scenes. It’s bold, considered, and rooted in everything I’ve learned over the last fifteen years. I’m not ready to say too much just yet, but I can say this: next year will open a new chapter, and it’s one I’ve been working towards for a long time.” I can’t wait.
A truly impressive mascara for under £13.99
Excuse the extreme close-ups of my eye with no makeup on and the really inexpertly applied mascara (I’m not a makeup artist, I know I should curl the lashes first then wiggle the brush at the bottom of the lash and blend upwards, but mostly I don’t. And I don’t separate my eyelashes with a pin, I literally slick it on and hope for the best. If you’re more skilful than me, I have no doubt you’ll get better results) but this mascara is genuinely one of the best I’ve tried.
I’m a big fan of budget mascaras — I really don’t think you need to spend a lot to get great results and there are a load of L’Oreal Paris mascaras that I’ve loved over the years but their latest, Telescopic Extensionist Lengthening & Curling Mascara (£13.99), might well be my favourite. It’s properly black, gives — as the name suggests — length and curl, and although it’s not a tubing mascara or a waterproof one (it uses fibres that grip the lash), it doesn’t budge until you use remover on it. The wand is small enough that even I and my cack-handedness can get into the corner of the eye. I honestly couldn’t ask for more from a mascara. And I am not easy on mascaras. I touch my eyes, they water, and many mascaras end up halfway down my face. This doesn’t.
This is a (not very good) picture of my eye the other night, just before I took off the mascara that I’d put on 12 hours earlier. The lighting was crap but I was so impressed that it was still there.
Anyway, that’s my recommendation for this week. If you try it, let me know what you think of it.
Re links, I saw this wording on jean godfrey june’s Substack and it eloquently summed up what I want to say “Note: While I only write about products I genuinely love, I can earn commission on products I mention here. If this horrifies you, let me know; I am new to this, and not set in my ways yet.”
Until next time…
I just bought a StylPro light io mirror for spotting chin hairs. Also have fond memories of being in the green room at QVC with the team so of course they were the ones to get my money!