Makeup guru who makes millions telling women they need less

Of all the ways the Kardashian clan has influenced the female psyche and persuaded us to part with our money, the concept of “contouring” has perhaps had the most impact.

It was Kim who introduced us to the technique of slimming or sculpting the face using layers of artfully painted and blended colors around 2008 – and since then, beauty salons have collapsed under the weight of the countless products that have resulted.

Beauty entrepreneur Aimee Connolly was just 16 at the time and started an after-school job at one of those make-up counters: Urban Decay in a Dublin department store.

“I thought it was the coolest job ever,” she says. ‘But it was also a real eye-opener.

‘Women came up to me and I asked them what they were looking for, and they said, “I have no idea!” They were overwhelmed by all this choice: sponges, foundations, brushes, concealers, blushers, colors. It all seemed so complicated.’

And it was. Many were left with caked-on faces as a result of the Kardashian regime, which was really designed for the smartphone camera and could look clownish in real life. Not to mention the time it took to put it on.

The only child of a single mother, Aimee took this first-hand knowledge from the bewildered woman on the street and became a professional make-up artist after university, eventually winning a high-profile spot on the Irish equivalent of This Morning and a brand new mainstream audience.

In 2017, she was finally ready to launch her solution to the Kardashian levels of complexity with her cosmetics and skincare brand Sculpted By Aimee, a simple range of easy-to-use products designed to give women the ‘five minute face’. .

Today she is in 500 stores, including Boots, and this month she opened her first store in London, just off Carnaby Street, in the heart of the capital.

“Women can’t spend an hour in front of the mirror every morning,” she says. ‘And if you have the right brush and the right product, that’s not necessary.

‘There is a lot of social pressure to look perfect, but our approach has always been: less is more.’

A finalist in next month’s Everywoman Entrepreneur Awards, Aimee is increasingly drawing comparisons to make-up giant Charlotte Tilbury, and has a similarly steely focus under the (lightly applied) base.

Six years later, she employs 65 people, expects a turnover of £17.5m by 2023 and talks of ‘becoming a global brand’, with products that ‘deserve to be in every woman’s make-up bag ‘.

Refreshingly, she didn’t start her own business to gain flexibility in balancing work and school, as so many female entrepreneurs do. At 30, Aimee is newly married to John, 36, who runs a restaurant franchise in Ireland, but it is from her mother, Clare, that she gets her ambition.

“I have high expectations of myself – and that’s mom’s influence,” she says. ‘She has never been afraid to take risks, a trait she has certainly passed on to me. She is also obsessed with makeup: she only uses the same five products, but she doesn’t leave the house without them.

‘I was always the little girl who played with makeup, and the more glitter the better. Later, I was the one who took care of my teenage friends’ faces, and I loved making them look and feel good.”

It is not a trivial point. While Aimee acknowledges that “none of us in the beauty industry are solving the world’s problems,” she also knows that “we have one of the most powerful tools for building self-confidence and making women feel good.”

Some elements of the beauty industry go too far, she thinks.

‘Filler scares me. I’ve made up thousands of women’s faces, and the most important thing I’ve discovered is that women think they need more and more. It’s ‘doing’ your face for the camera.’

But adjustments that look good on screen can often be a shock in real life, she warns. ‘I’m all for people doing what they feel good about, but sometimes we need a reality check when it comes to overdoing things like filler.’

Sculpted does not use Photoshop or filter models’ faces. “What’s the point?” Aimee says. ‘You can’t see the make-up! We show filler-free faces with real skin, including pores, blemishes and blemishes.’

Before the Instagram selfie became the primary measure of a woman’s self-worth, the only occasion where we needed makeup to look good both on camera and in real life was at our wedding.

Before launching her brand, Aimee took many hundreds of brides and learned how to make a face ‘work’ for the wedding photos without scaring the pastor.

“I’ve known that fine balance for years,” she says. “In retrospect, I learned valuable lessons for the company long before I ever thought I would have one.”

One of her top tips for women starting a business is to demand that others take you as seriously as you do.

‘I’ve been lucky enough not to encounter a lot of prejudice, but women shouldn’t assume that everyone has your back. When I started I used a factory in the UK, but I felt the attention did not match my expectations.

‘I went to a meeting and there was definitely an element of them that thought, ‘This 22-year-old blonde has no idea’. I told them I would walk away if they couldn’t provide what I wanted and they rolled their eyes. So I did.’

She traveled to South Korea, “where frankly they are much better at making skincare and beauty products” than Britain or Ireland, and found a “fantastic” factory there. “It was one of the best things that happened to the company,” she says.

Aimee doesn’t believe in rules for people over 50 when it comes to makeup. “Throw away the rule book,” she says.

‘I happen to believe that softer makeup looks good at all ages – and I would do the same on my mother’s face as I would on a 21-year-old. If you want a kitten movie at 80, go for it.”

• Aimee is a finalist in the Scale Up category of the Everywoman Awards, the winners of which will be announced on December 6 (everywoman.com). See sculptedbyaimee.com.