A beginner’s guide to beauty

Vipasha Sinha meets three make-up video bloggers on a mission to make the world a prettier place

May 18, 2014 06:49 pm | Updated 06:49 pm IST - chennai:

The last time I tried a smoky-eye look on myself, I scared the kids in my apartment. With so much black around my eyes, it seemed like I was early for Halloween. It was then that a make-up video came to my rescue. A 13-year-old girl showed me how to do it right. She was Talia Castellano, a cancer patient who used make-up to heal herself. She had lost her hair during treatment but she hated wearing a wig. Instead, she wore make-up. She lost the battle against cancer last year. Her videos not only helped me look beautiful but also feel beautiful about my life. There are young women from the city who have discovered the joy in this art and are using social media to share their expertise. Samiksha Danish (25), Shrutilaya Ramanathan (22) and Akriti Sachdev (24) had studied to be elsewhere but have transformed their lives through make-up and now are stars in their own right.

>Akriti Sachdev

A graduate in International business, this 24-year-old fashionista joined Mac, a leading cosmetics brand, with no idea about make-up. During her year-long stint there, she witnessed how the right make-up could enhance the way someone looked. “I loved my job at MAC but I wanted to do something on my own and help out people and train them to not just look beautiful but also feel beautiful. I then started blogging and making YouTube videos,” she says

A few weeks after she uploaded her first video, an employee of Hindustan Unilever saw it and decided to bring her on board. She is now their official beauty blogger. And her association with the brand is the reason why she appears in the ‘Be beautiful ’ads on YouTube.

She has now >followers from across the world and people have started recognising her in public. She says that she has to upload new videos regularly and take the requests of her followers very seriously.

Akriti looks at make-up as an accessory that enhances one’s look and confesses that while others match their make-up with their clothes, she wears her make-up first and then decides her attire accordingly. Her future plan is to launch her own line of make-up brushes.

>Shrutilaya Ramanathan

A student of fashion designing, her tryst with make-up started when she was crowned the eyeliner specialist in her college. “I studied in NIFT and during one of our fashion shows, my friends discovered that I was the only one who could apply eyeliner properly. I realised I had a flair for it,” says Shrutilaya, who decided to explore further. She read blogs, spent hours on beauty magazines and experimented on her classmates. “I eventually started doing make-up for all our shows. I even got an opportunity to work with other colleges,” says Shrutilaya. Then started a blog and titled it ‘Colliding Interests – where make up meets madness.’

As the name suggested, she wanted to add a bit of quirk to the daily routine. However, she had to give the blog a break because she was busy with her college work. “I revisited the blog after I finished college and have been active since one year,” she says.

Her blog is not just about make-up but a platform where she talks about styling and offers beauty tips “It gets monotonous after a while if you keep writing about the same things. I don’t want to come across as just another trainer, but a friend who could help when you can’t make up your mind. I have subscribed to hundreds of beauty blogs and YouTube channel and experiment with new style.”

Now a bridal make-up artist, she has also done work for many fashion shoots, and wants to take it up professionally. “I am self learnt and now want to master the art. I will be taking a professional course in UK on special-effects in make-up,” she says

>Samiksha Dasnish

A model and an airhostess, make-up was a vital part of this city girl’s life. She had to later move to Dubai after she got married and it was here that she decided to share her expertise online. “Makeup has always been my love. After moving to Dubai, I used to watch YouTube videos out of sheer boredom. I then thought why not make my own videos as a lot of my friends asked me for beauty advice and thus SuperMakeupish was born. Teaching came a lot later. After starting my YouTube channel, I went ahead and did a professional make-up course,” says Samiksha.

To apply make-up in front of a mirror can be easy, but to do the same in front of a camera is a task. Samiksha explains, “Initially I had a really tough time as the camera that I was recording from didn’t have a live view screen , so it became really difficult for me to see whether I was in the frame or not. But now that I've bought a new one, it is no longer a problem. The only thing I need to do is to make sure I'm in the frame and in focus. Also I make sure I give a long pause after I finish speaking,” she says.

Following the popularity of her channel, she has now >started a blog .

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.