Changing the face of beauty: meet the brains behind MDMflow, a new lipstick brand designed for black skin

A new lipstick brand designed especially for black skin is part of a diverse hair and make-up revolution
Rachael Sigee15 February 2016

Florence Adepoju (“Flow” to her friends) is sick of the beauty industry treating women of colour as a special interest.

Giorgio Armani used to make a foundation that she loved - she wore it every day for six months but when she went back to buy it again, the brand no longer produced it.

“It was limited edition. But when you’re a dark-skinned woman, your skin tone is not limited edition. You have that for life.”

Her frustration at not being able to find colours that suited her was compounded by a feeling that beauty brands were not being effectively marketed to young women.

She remembers a Chanel campaign featuring Marilyn Monroe: “I thought it was cute but it’s not me and it’s not new.”

Shade - Vamp

Now, three years after she launched her own hip hop-inspired beauty brand MDMflow, making lipsticks in her parents’ garden shed in Rainham, Essex, she is stocked in Topshop and Lena Dunham used Instagram to spread the word about MDMflow last year.

Adepoju, 24, is striking in person. She towers over me (although that’s not difficult) and her waist-length braids have more than a touch of Beyoncé leaning out of her car in the Formation video. “I had them first - she copied me. It’s the best thing!”

It’s not surprising that making a good first impression has been key to her success.

While in college she was walking past a Benefit make-up counter and got stopped by the sales assistant. She ended up being offered her first Saturday job after pointing out that she couldn’t afford any of the products.

Shade - Sweet Escape

When she interviewed for the Cosmetic Science degree at the London College of Fashion, she was offered a place on the spot.

Her path to becoming a beauty mogul is unusual when compared to other founder stories which, she says, are usually about “playing with their mum’s make-up as kids”.

Instead, Adepoju came to beauty via science (having realised that her plan to be a doctor might not work out because she hates the sight of blood).

At school she studied A-levels in chemistry, biology and art. She was a science nerd who also dreamt of being a fashion designer.

Her undergraduate dissertation began after working in Space NK and receiving “loads” of requests for blue lipstick but once she produced her first test samples, they all went missing and she realised that if people were stealing them, she could probably sell them.

Shade - Supreme

On graduating she launched MDMflow, a lipstick line of bold, bright, highly pigmented colours designed to suit black women.

She’s careful with her words here: “I would never say that a white woman couldn’t wear my lipstick - of course they can. But when I’m working, I think ‘I am formulating a product so that a black woman can wear it’, so that the colour shows up. With my lipsticks, the darker your skin, the better it looks.”

She thinks the industry is missing a trick by not recognising black women as consumers.

“Black women spend so much money on beauty. But even when there is development with the big brands, it’s never done consistently. There’s never really any budget or promotion or PR about it. I think a lot of people who are doing the development are not the demographic so they don’t know how to tackle it. In some areas it’s a product problem and in some it’s a marketing problem.”

Shade - Bossy

Tackling the marketing problem, Adepoju, pictured above, took note of her first employers, Benefit, in establishing the personality of her brand. It is hip hop that inspires her most and she namechecks Lil’ Kim and Kelis. The aesthetic of their early music videos is clear in the bolder colours she mixes - blue, green and yellow - but she has found fans in places she never expected.

“As much as my personal inspirations are hip-hop and a street aesthetic, other groups have identified it. I’ve had a lot of people who do cosplay, which I know nothing about, reach out to me and say they loved my blue or black lipstick.

“My customers in New York just get the product straight away, and in LA there’s a group of girls called Suicide Girls. They dress up like kind of modern, punky, pin-up girls and lots of them follow me on Instagram.

“Because I’ve used my personal inspirations and made it modern, I think other people who subscribe to other subcultures can tap into it as well.”

Shade - Von Dutch

Adepoju is also working on EDF Energy’s Pretty Curious campaign to encourage girls to pursue careers in STEM subjects, and she’s not the only woman of colour using science skills to solve a gap in the beauty market.

Janette Nzekwe worked for pharmaceutical companies for more than a decade before she began making products for black women with natural hair.

Returning to Britain after living in Los Angeles where she “went natural”, she found that black women and their specific needs were not well represented in the industry. She launched Modie, a moisturising cream for black women with natural hair, and says she wants to “be part of an international discourse that challenges the definition of beauty.”

Beyoncé and her Black Panther backing dancers proudly declaring their natural hair at the Super Bowl (“I like my baby heir with baby hair and afros”) sent the internet into meltdown but it was a reflection of a wider movement of black women choosing to, as Nzekwe says, “go natural”. Adepoju says: “With MDMflow I’m doing what I want and I’m being me.”

MDMflow - in pictures

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Being her has paid off pretty well so far. Since she used her first loan, from a government scheme called Start Up Loans, to build that lab in her parents’ shed, the operation is finally expanding as Adepoju has found a manufacturer and she has a new line of matte lip colours launching in April.

She will, however, still be literally hands-on: “I’ve got pigment from a session this morning on my fingers.”

The high point so far was learning that Mario Dedivanovic, make-up artist to the Kardashians, had used her black lipstick on a shoot, and the day after we meet she is heading to New York for interviews. I ask Adepoju what is her favourite shade from the collection and she says Vamp, a burgundy.

“It’s really empowering. I was doing a job before I started the business and the day I quit that job I was wearing Vamp. Loads of my friends wear it when they want to be confident.

“It’s like ‘look at my lips as I’m talking to you’.”

And it’s hard to imagine anyone not listening to her.

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