Welcome to Beauty Geekery

AKA why I'm here and what you can expect

I know, I know, a journalist writing on Substack - groundbreaking, right? You’ve probably read a million times why people like me are here. But let me tell you why I’m here and what you can expect if you subscribe to Claire Coleman’s Beauty Geekery.

I’m here because I’ve spent almost 25 years writing features for national newspapers and magazines — The Times, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, The Sun, The Daily Express, Grazia, Elle, Red, Women’s Health, Stylist, Boots Health & Beauty, and many, many more — with a particular focus on what I like to think of as the geekier side of the beauty industry. I have loved it. It’s not the job in journalism I ever thought I would end up with (more on that another time) but it is, when I think about it, the job in journalism that, in many ways, is perfect for me (more on that below). I would do it for ever if I could. But I can’t.

I might write more about the ins and outs of this another time — right now I can’t think how to do it without sounding like a whingeing luddite. But the bottom line is that national newspapers and magazines are commissioning fewer beauty features from freelancers than they were at the beginning of my career. And the features that they are commissioning from freelancers generally tend to be shorter, less well paid, and less the sort of thing that I like to write.

So where does that leave me? Well either twatting about in front of a camera on Instagram or TikTok (with absolutely no disrespect to anyone who can shoot and edit video, it is just very much not my skill set), or playing to what I consider is my strength — words. It should, in many ways, have been a no-brainer. I should probably have been here years ago. But I got a bit burnt by another subscription platform that I tried to make work — shout out to the Patreon Beauty Geekery OGs if you’ve found me over here — but didn’t manage to in the way that I wanted to (probably because I overcommitted myself and didn’t do enough marketing around it.)

So what can you expect? Honestly, I’m still figuring it out. But I’m thinking this will be a repository for a mixture of things — snippets from the brilliant people I meet in the beauty industry, from founders to cosmetic chemists, dermatologists to makeup artists; behind the scenes stuff about the stuff I do write, and how they get put together; plus some of the features that I want to write tha aren’t being commissioned by more traditional outlets but that I still think there is an audience for — and probably loads more.

Above I said that although I’d never anticipated being a journalist that writes about the geekier side of beauty, in many ways it’s perfect for me, and that’s because I think I’m very much a product of my upbringing. My dad is a scientist who works for NASA and CalTech, my mum is an actress who just wants to know how to get rid of her wrinkles (and switches off at the mention of the word “molecule”). When I write, I want my dad to be impressed with the rigour with which I treat the science, and I want my mum to want to read to the end (without zoning out).

I hope you haven’t zoned out yet. In the next newsletter, as well as some actual beauty stuff (if there’s anything in particular you want to see/know, just let me know) you can expect to learn a bit more about me. But for now, have a look on Instagram to get an idea of the stuff that I’ve been writing about recently, and take a look on LinkedIn for more of an insight into the consultancy work I do.

That said it's all a work in progress. I’m in the process of rethinking what my career looks like, and this Substack is part of that. Given the choice I’d have dicked around until everything was perfect, I’d got a beautifully designed logo, a tonne of images and six months of newsletters written and ready to go. But I feel like Emma Rowley might kill me if I ask her any more questions about Substack, when the answer is “just bloody write SOMETHING” and seeing Jules Von Hep ✨ on Instagram reminded me of his “do it before January or you’ll find a reason not to do it” chat — so I threw something together on Canva, and wrote this. Thank you both, and everyone else who’s listened to me bang on about how I’m going to start a Substack. Look, I actually did it.