Fara Homidi – Soft Glass Lip Plumping Oil8 Images
All the cool girls love Fara Homidi. Look inside any Balenciaga City Bag or Chloé Boho Paddington and you’ll be sure to find the brand’s signature sky blue lip compact or the shiny red of the concealer, most likely with the companion make-up brush not far away. It happened almost immediately. When the brand launched in 2023, it was quickly hailed as the latest buzzy brand, and the blue lip compacts as “status items” and “objects of desire”, stocked in the most discerning boutique beauty retailers (Dover Street Parfums Market, Violet Grey etc), and worn by all the it-girls.
It was a rare instant success for a beauty brand not founded by a big-name celebrity; Fara Homidi is an IYKYK figure for those who love editorial make-up, having worked on shoots, campaigns and runways for brands like Miu Miu, Celine, Off-White, Vaquera and Heaven by Marc Jacobs. With her eponymous brand, she brings together her expertise, taste and practical knowledge from years as a professional make-up artist to create a curated collection of ultra-luxe, refillable products that feel easy to use but still impossibly chic.
Alongside the lip and concealer compacts you’ll find a bronzer compact, lip pencils and – released today – the new Soft Glass Lip Plumping Oil, a hydrating and plumping balm with a high-shine finish. And that’s it. Rather than rushing out products to hit a trend, Homidi takes her time, making sure that what she’s putting out is worth it. “Our ethos is slow beauty,” she tells Dazed. “It’s taking the time to consider every angle before anything comes out. It’s going that extra mile to try to really push the boundaries of what is out there and what can be done.”
Born in Afghanistan and raised in California, Homidi grew up helping out at her mother’s beauty supply store and salon. It gave her a window into a world she didn’t yet have access to; an immersion into beauty at a time when the industry was really coming into its own thanks to a new guard of creatives – Kevyn Aucoin, Pat McGrath, Bobbi Brown, Guido Palau. “There was this era of glamour, which was really entrancing to watch, and then it slowly started turning into the grunge movement,” she says. “At that time, Kate Moss was new on the scene and I just remember thinking that was the first time I felt that there’s room to look different and also be considered beautiful. Then things started to shift and it was about grunge and ugly beauty. That was definitely a turning point for me.”
Following Fara Homidi’s launch in the UK, Dazed caught up with the make-up artist to find out more about her philosophy, products and new lip oils.
You’ve said before that you’re not necessarily trying to make a look ‘pretty’, you’re trying to make it look alive. Is that ethos at the core of your work?
Fara Homidi: Definitely. I speak about signature looks a lot because I think the most interesting and exciting thing about beauty in general, but specifically make-up, is that you can create a character that looks how you feel inside. Then you can emulate that. Sometimes it is fake it until you make it. If you want to be seen in a certain way, or you want to be taken seriously at the office, or whatever it is that you want to emulate, you have the opportunity to do that through make-up. Being alive to me also means, ‘who are you?’ and how are you showing that through your make-up, your hair, your clothing?
What pushed you to launch your own brand? You were already so successful, it must have been a big jump to say, ‘I want to start this new thing.’
Fara Homidi: I’m always someone who is curious about the next thing. I always want to be moving forward. I did see some holes in the industry, especially when it came to the luxury beauty space. One of those being that as you’re offered more and more luxurious beauty, the shade range gets less and less. I wanted to bridge that gap.
I also noticed that on sets and shows I’m constantly mixing things to get to a texture that I want or to get to a shade that I need for the model. I thought I can simplify this using colour theory and the knowledge that I have on undertones, and then I could create products that are multitasking and innovative and textured in formulas that could be like a one-and-done, instead of mixing all these things. It was quite an ambitious vision and it took a long time, and it still takes a long time every time I make products.
The products have become not just something that people love to use, but that they love to show off. Were you thinking about the role that packaging plays when you were creating them?
Fara Homidi: Yeah, I think design is a huge part of the brand mission, it’s one of the pillars. I find luxury is all in the details. I knew I wanted the packaging to be very detail-oriented and that I didn’t want it to be precious, I like things that are utilitarian. I wanted you to feel like you can take it with you. It’s not ornate. You don’t have to leave it on your vanity. Desirability was a part of it, and the utilitarian aspect of it – those two things for me will always go hand in hand with any products that I produce.
Hopefully it will give you that feeling of joy every time you use it, and you will feel like you want it with you. People are taking their bronzer in their handbag. I love that. A lip compact makes sense to me, but I didn’t know that they would do that also with a bronzer. It really makes me happy. You don’t usually carry your bronzer around, and feel proud to put it on in public.
You also have brushes in the collection. Considering it’s still quite a small curated range, why did you think that was so important?
Fara Homidi: As a make-up artist, your product is almost only as good as your tool that you’re applying with it. They go so hand-in-hand. Because I’m creating these innovative textures – they have a tactileness, they’re buildable – I thought in order to really service this formula, I’m going to need to create a brush to go along specifically with that and then educate how these two things are used together and why you’re going to get your best application and finish with them.
You’ve just launched in the UK – why was that the first place that you wanted to expand into?
Fara Homidi: I’ve always had this philosophy, I don’t even know if it makes any sense, but I’ve always said I think all good things come from London. The UK is so rich in music, fashion, film and pushing things forward, and I’ve just always been attracted to things that are coming up from London, like the punk movement.
I work there from time to time, doing shows, and it has always felt really special. Being someone who gets to go and work there, when I know that there’’s already so many talented people working there, has always been like a treat. We also just had so much demand from the UK. Questions like ‘when can we get it? How do I shop for it in person?’ And at a certain point that noise was getting so loud that I was just like, we need to make this happen.
I was one of the people who was saying, ‘when are we gonna get it here!’ You have another new, exciting launch coming up, the lip oil. What can you tell us about that?
Fara Homidi: Lip oils look so pretty, the translucency, the glossy sheen. And they’re meant to give you two things: you get this glossy sheen and also hydration and fortification. I’ve always found that when I get the high shine, however, I’m still getting the tackiness. Either that or you’re getting more of the oil and it’s very slippy. Then it disappears in two seconds and all of a sudden it dries your lips out.
I wanted to take that high shine and meld it with something that felt really comforting, that had plumping properties. The ingredients are bonkers, the active ingredients are at such high percentages in this formula, and then it looks really juicy and gorgeous. On top of it, it’s sort of a treatment. I slather it on before I go to bed, wake up in the morning and my lips are already softened. That’s why I created it, because I wanted to really nail that dream that I feel like we all have, because you really want that shine without the tackiness.
Fara Homidi is available in the UK on the website and now at Sephora in the US.
