Sitting in the reception area of L’Oreal‘s Toronto headquarters is downright intimidating. Everything is gleaming white (which is the reason I refuse coffee….I’m a spiller) and everything is arranged perfectly from the fruit trays to the floral displays.
And then there’s the endless loop on a nearby television playing makeup tutorial videos from YouTube mega star Michelle Phan. I was able to watch the full loop and silently steam about my own makeup stupidity before I was taken into a room to interview Phan. Clad in Zara’s pristine fish print dress and bright orange heels, she looked every inch the perfect spokesmodel.
Since 2007, Phan has been filming, editing, and uploading her tutorials at the request of some persistent blog readers. What started out as a hobby between classes has turned into quite the lucrative profession. A few years after Phan started creating the videos in her bedroom, the head of PR at Lancôme couldn’t understand why the brand’s own high production makeup videos weren’t garnering the attention they should have.
After a quick Google search for Lancôme product videos, she landed on one made by Phan that had already amassed over 500,000 views. Several phone calls later, Carrie Diamond sat down with Phan in an attempt to learn tricks of the trade that might boost their video popularity. Instead of giving away all her secrets, Phan agreed to shoot and star in makeup tutorials for Lancôme that follow the exact formula of her own. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
“They let me have my space and we just learn from each other constantly,” Phan says. “I have unlimited freedom. They send me products, I look at them and tell them what I’m going to do and how I’m going to do it. One hundred per cent of the time they’re okay with it.”
With an interest in painting and art from a very young age, Phan honed her beauty skills in the nail salon her mother owned. Stopping by after school to wait for her mom to finish work, Phan would flip through piles of magazines and memorize makeup tip and tricks from their pages.
“A majority of my techniques come from the memories of those magazines,” she tells me. “Also it comes hand-in-hand with painting, and I’ve painted my whole life, so I feel like makeup is just an extension of my art and what I love doing, which is just creating.”
The collaboration with Lancôme combines the artistic field of makeup with another one of Phan’s favourite things: connecting with her audience. After all, it was her blog’s readers who initially asked her to start doing videos. Making videos for Lancôme (like the one I watched in reception about finding the perfect shade of red lipstick) has allowed Phan the ability to use better equipment so viewers can see every speck of makeup she puts on. Telling me about a specific camera so detailed you can see the reflection of the cameraman in her pupil, Phan admits that she now has to slow down application.
“It’s is kind of a good thing because when I’m applying mascara you can see how well or how bad it works,” she sighed. “You can actually see the speck of an eyeshadow pigment on the inner corner of my eye. It used to take me an hour to shoot a video, but I have to move so much slower to prevent mistakes so it’s more like two hours now. But I think viewers appreciate that because they really see makeup on a different level.”
Saying that she’s received so much positive feedback, Phan is excited about the future with Lancôme. Citing the meteoric rise in popularity where beauty tutorials are concerned, Phan expressed happiness that everyone in the industry is looking to ‘up their game.’ With raw, unairbrushed, unedited videos showing exactly what makeup is and isn’t truly capable of, Phan believes companies are beginning to release products that have the qualities of their more luxurious sister brands.
While others might worry that keeping beauty tutorial videos fresh is a difficult job, especially when you’re working with only one brand, Phan isn’t the least bit fazed.
“There’s nothing trendy about learning new things,” she said energetically. “People will always be hungry to learn and will always want to know more about how to use makeup and I think finding creative ways to get women to apply makeup is really the key. We’re entertaining and inspiring women to really go out and try different products they may not have tried yet.”
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Bianca Teixeira writes about style for Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter at @BeeLauraTee.
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