Huda Kattan On Feminism, Her New Foundation & How She Built A Beauty Empire | GLAMOUR UNFILTERED

Welcome to Glamour Unfiltered

with me Deborah Joseph Editor-in-Chief and Huda Kattan,

beauty boss extraordinaire, founder of Huda Beauty

and chairwoman.

Welcome and thank you for joining me.

Thank you my love.

So, happy to finally connect.

[upbeat music]

So you are the beauty boss extraordinaire

as far as I'm concerned.

I've been following you for quite a long time

and in fact you were my first cover star

when I became Editor-in-Chief of Glamour three years ago,

and there was a very personal reason for that.

I'm also of Middle Eastern heritage,

and I don't remember growing up seeing anybody

who reflected myself back at me on the cover of a magazine.

And yet it was so important to me

that you were my first cover.

How about you growing up from an Iraqi heritage?

Did you find people like yourself reflected back at you?

Definitely not.

To be honest, there wasn't somebody, you know, similar

to me, but even like remotely close, you know,

and I think that was a big problem growing up,

not having representation or feeling included

or feeling like I was a part of the beauty conversation.

That was something that was a struggle

because I also wanted it so badly.

You know I wanted to feel beautiful so badly

and just not being able to have anybody, you know, represent

or feel included was tough.

Can I talk a bit about growing up?

What were your perceptions of beauty growing up in America,

as you know, with the darker skin

and probably different cultural references

and at home different culture.

How was it for you?

I didn't remember happy childhood memories.

I don't have like the happiest.

I actually feel like it was a struggle,

especially my early teen years.

I wasn't happy, to be honest.

Like with myself or, you know,

I felt I was always inadequate.

And that was a hard thing because, you know,

you don't really realize why you feel this way.

You don't realize it may be the external things

that are maybe painting an incorrect picture

of the way that you're feeling.

But you actually internalize it as a child.

You feel like, oh, this is people are treating me this way,

or people are treating me like I'm an outsider.

And I am Arab American,

and I grew up in a household who like,

I have amazing parents.

But my extended family also made me feel like,

oh, you're too brown.

Why are you always in the sun?

You need to be lighter skinned.

And I love being brown.

So I was like, I had this internal conflict in my head.

I was like, wait, I don't agree with them.

I just don't.

And no matter what they say, I just won't agree with them.

But then I'm also going outside and I still feel this way.

And I internally didn't feel like that was right.

You started out in finance before makeup

and you've obviously created this incredible company.

Have you still experienced a lot of sexism on your way up?

Like way too much, to be honest.

You know, before, when I was in university a little bit.

When I graduated, tremendously and when I got into my career

it was overwhelming with the men

who would not take me seriously.

Like, it's a hobby.

Just, hand it over to the guys.

Let them do the real work.

And you know, it's funny because one of

my friends actually told me, I become a super alpha female.

I don't turn it on all the time,

but when I need to be very direct and tell people like,

you know, no, that's not gonna happen.

I've learned how to do that.

And I was talking to a good friend of mine

who is a male, and he's super feminist.

You know, he shared something with me.

He was like, you know, women in the similar positions

as men actually become far more alpha than the guys do.

And it's kind of something we're forced to become,

like as women we're kind of forced to be more firm.

And navigating that journey when you're like, well,

I don't always wanna be that person, is something

that I think is an interesting dynamic

that women are learning nowadays.

But yeah, sexism exists and it's oppression.

Honestly, that's what it is, it's oppression.

Do you have a response to it

when you have it in your everyday life?

When I need to put a man in place,

I try to do it nicely at first.

I try to find a way to do it nicely at first.

But when I have to be firm,

I can be quite direct without being mean.

I've learned how to do that.

I had to learn how to do that coz I would kind of feel like

a little bit upset.

Like, excuse me, I'm going to be the one making

the decision, look at me.

Like, why are you not making eye contact with me?

Now I've learned to just ignore people sometimes

and make them then come to me for the answer.

Did that kind of feed into your own views of wanting

to set up a business so that you could do it

how you wanted it to be?

I didn't really realize it at the time.

Now, yes.

At the time when we were starting the brand,

it was more so like, you know,

I just still felt like it was filling a void for me.

I definitely felt at the time it was like,

I wanted something different.

Whether that was products, maybe later on down the line

a movement, but at the time it was just more so, like,

I just wanted something different, you know.

Do you think life's changing?

I mean, I know certainly in my career

and my business things are changing for diversity,

for different skin colors, it's welcomed,

it's encouraged, having different points of view.

Do you feel the same for you?

Do you feel like you've got more of a voice now?

I want to say yes.

But I still feel like there's a lot of work

that needs to be done.

I feel right now when people are using things

like inclusivity and vulnerability, all these things,

it's a tool.

I don't actually feel like it's genuine.

And you know, I've seen ads for big beauty brands

where they will have, like, it kind of upsets me

if I'm honest with you.

Where they will have a dark skin girl trying on

the light foundation.

And I'm like, that's not inclusivity.

What are you doing?

You know, like, I don't even understand what the point

of that was, you know?

And so it's obvious, it's very obvious.

Sometimes it's more obvious, sometimes it's less obvious.

But sometimes it's just the tool.

I'm glad you mentioned foundation because foundation

for me with beauty has been a massive conversation

in my own head.

So, I don't wear foundation

and there is a good reason for it.

I've tried so many times in my late teens

and early twenties to find a foundation

and every time I bought one I'd leave the shop

and my skin would be gray.

And the color was right because I'm not so dark skinned,

the color was right,

but the tone was not a Middle-Eastern tone.

It wasn't yellow, it wasn't olive.

It wasn't right.

And to this day, it only occurred to me

about two years ago why this was,

because suddenly people like you are bringing out wide,

wide ranges of foundation colors that do reflect me

and darker skinned women, and I've spoken to them about it.

And this is a huge shift and change in our industry.

You know it, you wanna know something crazy,

is so many foundation brands, I am the darkest shade.

Yeah, me too.

Me too.

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.

It's ludicrous that we are the darkest shade

when I think we're on the medium,

we're probably medium you know.

I wouldn't say we're like on the light medium

but close to more like light medium.

It's kind of crazy.

I've found so many brands where I buy the darker shade

and it's like the shade for me, and it's still pink.

It still makes me look beigy and ashy.

And, you know, I realized why too.

Because after getting into the manufacturers,

like when I was developing colors with them

and I was like, I want it richer.

I want it deeper.

I wanted that color, that rich, you know, that sexy tone.

And they were like, okay, we'll add black pigment.

And I was like, wait, what are you doing?

Like, no wonder people are gray.

And they would literally think to add black pigment.

You know, obviously our skin tones are such a mix

of blues and reds and yellows and goldens,

and you know, so many different tones.

And so I think that it was just laziness to be honest.

And also it was first laziness

and then became like conditioning

and then people didn't really break the mold.

And it wasn't until that point

where you say, no, I wanna change it.

It does require a lot of work.

It does require a lot of work,

but I think, you know, companies will change it

and there's gonna be tones for us that will melt

into our skin and make us feel so beautiful

and we'll wear it and we'll be like,

we don't even feel like we're wearing anything.

I do wanna talk about foundation

because I'm a big fan of it for all the reasons

that we've just discussed

because it's so important in representation in beauty

in this way.

Talk me through launching it

and now bringing out a new version of it.

Talk me through your process mentally

and getting the shades right and the product right.

We've had some pretty hard projects, honestly.

We've had, you know, as a small beauty brand,

not having like access to any type of information

or anything other than like what's out there for public,

like for the public knowledge.

It was a bit tough.

And foundation for me was the toughest because I wanted

to personally shade-match every single person.

And I think I made it tough for my PD team

because they were like, we did all the work,

we tried it on so many skin tones.

Then we had the manufacturers, the biggest manufacturers

in the world making for so many skin tones shade-match.

And I was like, that's amazing.

I wanna see it on people's skin.

So, you know, we shade-matched every single tone

and we made sure that each person we found was represented

across the tones.

And you've reformulated it now,

can you talk me through that?

Oh, we reformulated over 40 times, way over 40 times.

I think it was like more around 50 or even more times.

We wanted to take out some of the ingredients in there.

We had D5, which you know, was the ingredient

that sometimes irritated people's skin,

but it was so amazing at making products really homogeneous.

And it looked beautiful on the skin,

but there was a lot of feedback.

We got so much feedback from the industry

and the crazy thing is, and I don't think I've ever shared

this with anyone, we were constantly tweaking it.

We weren't releasing the tweaked version.

And then we were like,

should we release the tweaked version

and just like release it in the market

because then we don't have to take back old stock.

People can just say like,

they'll be like, oh why is this so much better?

But then our retailers were like, this is so much better.

You guys took out the fragrance.

It's like a world of a difference.

You need to actually tell people why you made it different.

And it was because of everything everybody was telling us,

we listened to everything.

I wanted to talk about hair

because for me and I know your hair is not down,

but for me, my hair journey has been one of

the most significant beauty journeys of my life.

I have straightened my hair my whole life.

I've got naturally curly hair.

I've got a scar on my left hand.

I don't know if you can see it

from where my mom, she burnt my hand with

a hairdryer age about five, because she wanted

to match westernized beauty standards.

And again, as a Middle Eastern woman,

it wasn't okay to walk out with curly hair.

We all had to have straight Western hair.

Is that a journey you've been through?

Yeah. I mean, there's all these different forms

that we use to try to be included

or to try to be you know, acceptable to society.

So, hair is the one though when you mistreat it,

you can't reverse it.

So, you know, it's a shame and I try to post pictures too

with curly hair, people just don't love it.

So I usually wear my hair however or whatever my mood is.

Do you see yourself going into hair products?

Is that something that we can see from you in the future?

I want it from you, that's why I'm asking.

It's interesting that you asked that

because my team wants to do hair care,

but I don't wanna do it yet.

I really don't.

I feel like we haven't won in skincare yet.

I feel like we still have so much more to do in skincare.

And you know, it's only been a year for Wishful

and I wanna see like where we continue to grow.

I feel like there's so many areas in the company

that I would like to focus on.

So where would you like to go with skincare?

What have you not achieved yet?

When we launched skincare, everybody told us

that we just couldn't do it.

Even a lot of our partners were like, you have to accept

the fact that nobody's been successful

in makeup and skincare.

From the big brands to the small brands,

nobody's ever been successful.

So, that was a challenge that we knew we had to face.

And so I still feel like, you know, we had great numbers,

amazing numbers, you know, really successful launches.

But I don't think it's enough just yet.

Like I wanna see the life-changing testimonials,

which we're getting into, but I wanna feel that connection

with a community that is so deep and so rich

that we have with Huda Beauty.

And then I'll feel like, you know, I understand it

when I feel like we understand skincare.

I'll feel like then we can go into haircare.

I know myself, I'll get overwhelmed.

Do what you're good at, make it great, then move on.

Yeah, obsess, that's what I like to do.

I like to obsess with it and then move on.

You've talked a lot about your own skin journey

and you mentioned that you wanna get those testimonials.

What do you hope to achieve

from your skincare range with Wishful?

You know, I obviously want people's skin to become

a version that they feel really proud of

and that they feel comfortable in,

but I also just want like more skin-like acceptance.

When we did the campaign, I was adamant

about not wearing makeup, about not photo shopping.

And it was a really vulnerable moment for me.

And I felt extremely exposed, extremely sensitive.

I felt super un-confident, and I had to go deeper into that.

I was like, I need to own this.

Like I deserve love.

I really want to talk to you about women in the pandemic.

It has affected women more than anybody,

or certainly more than men, but it's encouraged women

to leave the industry, to stop working.

We've been sent back to 1950s with the housework

and the childcare.

I know you work with many women in your business.

How have you found it?

And how have you been protecting and supporting them?

Cause I know it's been really important to you.

Honestly, the pandemic, you know, it has been one of

the most challenging things that we've all gone through

because nobody was expecting it.

You know, there is so many things that, you know,

like the economy crashing, that's happened before.

We're kind of, we know how to navigate through

the situations now.

You know, even like crazy outbursts within the government,

we've had some crazy leaders sometimes.

You're used to it, you know, you kind of block it out.

Sometimes you can't, but things that are so overwhelming,

like a pandemic and seeing situations

where businesses are closing and it's just like,

people are dying.

People are losing their family members

and it's very, very scary.

And for me, the most important thing that I wanted to do

at that point was to protect my team.

And how have you found it?

I mean, you're a mother,

you're a multimillion pound business owner.

How have you found it?

How have you found the juggle?

Are you homeschooling?

Yeah, she's homeschooling.

It's never easy, I now have lunch with her

and I try to make sure I have the mornings with her.

And then I have to kind of end my day on time.

Hudah Kattan, thank you so much.

It's been an absolute pleasure and a joy.

I'm a huge admirer of everything you do,

and I can't wait to see what you do next.

Thank you my love.

You're so sweet, and I'm so glad we got to connect.