Isamaya Ffrench: Gender, Naked man Gods & mushrooms.
Isamaya Ffrench. The world’s most in-demand makeup artist. Ex i-D beauty editor. Dazed magazine’s first creative director. Beauty business mogul. British-born artist defying beauty standards with her face-creations and wearable art… and an online community of 350k+ followers on Instagram.
She’s worked on fashion editorials for the world’s most watched and listened-to fashion publications, including Vogue, Dazed, W magazine and Love. She’s painted the faces of ultra-mega superstars, like Björk and Rihanna, who she regularly works with, and models Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid.
Her principal focus is on facial art and decoration that challenges beauty norms.
And, she’s just 33 years old.
Is there anything she can’t do?
It would seem not. For a woman in her early 30s, who shot to beauty-hall fame around the tender age of 25, after she’d been painting the children’s faces of London’s high society, her resume is impressive.
Let’s take a little stroll through the remarkable timeline that is Isamaya’s growth as an artist and business woman over the last 12 years…
2011: She first worked on the spring/summer menswear show for fellow Central Saint Martins alum Christopher Shannon.
After doing an all-body tiger body painting for a friend, a fellow dancer in her company suggested her to i-D magazine, which resulted in Ffrench's first fashion photography shoot in mid-2011 doing body painting and clay sculpture for Matthew Stone and Alek Wek.
2012: Her first fashion shoot was with artist Matthew Stone for i-D, where she body-painted naked men to transform them into gods.
She worked alongside a professional make-up artist during the shoot, which led her to purchase her own kit and move towards “face decoration” – still not really ever calling herself a makeup artist.
“I just segued into make-up through fashion-industry friends needing me to do body painting jobs” – Ffrench, Glossary Magazine
She made it clear in a bold statement through her work that she absolutely was not interested in joining the crowd when it came to beauty standards and more interested in wearable art as a form of identity construction, a statement and an exploration of human nature.
2013: She broadened into window dressing with a display for Liberty's for London Fashion Week. She continued to work for I-D and became the magazine's beauty editor in April
2014: She starts exploring with nature scenes on faces for her makeup, such as landscapes and forests.
2015: Ffrench left I-D and became ambassador for YSL Beauté, Yves Saint Laurent's cosmetics range that same year.
2016: She was appointed Creative Artist Consultant for Tom Ford Beauty where she created the Extrême line including metallic coloured lip lacquers and eye shadow.
2018: Ffrench became creative director for the newly launched Dazed Beauty section of Dazed magazine.
2019: she expressed an interest in the intersection of beauty and genetics, particularly the impact of racial diversity and gender diversity upon beauty norms, and physical health as a status symbol.
2020: she was a featured vocalist on two songs, "Control" by God Colony and the "Feel" cover by Sega Bodega from his album titled Reestablishing Connection.
2020: she was named Creative director of Byredo Makeup where she created and developed the line for the brand.
2021: She was made Global beauty director of Burberry.
2021: She formed the experimental music project Alto Arc alongside George Clarke of Deafheaven, Danny L Harle, and Trayer Tryon.
2022: Released her own boundary-breaking make-up line Isamaya Beauty in June, under the mission statement that make-up should be used to feel more confident in your unique identity rather than just conforming to generic beauty conventions and is gender nonconforming. The first collection featured kink-inspired imagery, with Isamaya as the starring model for the campaign.
“There are people out there who not only want to be ‘glamorous and beautiful,’ but also want something more engaging and exciting. I want my brand to speak to those people” – Isamaya Ffrench, to The Trend 2022.
2022: Launches a new album with Sam Thomas renowned for his imaginative world-building and atmospheric composition across music, theatre, and film. The first released track, Mantle, is a sensory creation that proves Isamaya to be the kind of creative that isn’t shy about pushing societal boundaries – from the dark music video (directed by Ffrench) to the production of the music itself (Thomas) the music and video are an experience all in and of themselves.
Whew. Kinda feel like you need a nap even after reading that?
It seems like “success” isn’t something Isamaya has ever really even considered, instead following her own path, making decisions based on whatever creative outlet she needed for her work next and blowing the rule book out of the water every single time.
Her path into make-up artistry isn’t the classic story of a love of make-up or fashion editorials. She cites Kevyn Aucoin’s seminal book Making Faces, which she bought with her pocket money as a child, as key to teaching her about the powers of transformation.
Nothing about Isamaya is a classic story, though. She once joked with i-D magazine that if she wasn’t doing make-up, she’d be doing mushrooms – having studied and has a fascination with mycology. Depth, darkness, boundary-pushing and nonconformist defiance lace everything she puts her hands on.
Isamaya Ffrench + Bella Hadid
She’s not the girl who everything she touches turns to gold. She’s the girl who everything she touches transforms into everything it was ever meant to be and more.
Merely watching her meteoric rise is inspirational.
“In beauty, people have stopped taking risks … I think it’s so important to inspire people and show there are other ways of doing beauty.” – Ffrench to Glossary Magazine.
WHATS UP NEXT…
