Ep. 30 Part One: MAC Cosmetics Co-Founder Frank Toskan
Breaking Beauty Podcast
Dear Media, Jill Dunn and Carlene Higgins
4.7 • 996 Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2018
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In honour of Canada Day, we went straight to the icon of all beauty brands, M.A.C Cosmetics! We sat down with legendary co-founder Frank Toskan, to hear every detail about how the mother of all beauty companies came to be. It was his first interview in four years and in fact, we chatted for so long, we couldn't squeeze it into one episode!
In Part 1, hear all the deets dedicated to the trailblazing brand that paved the way to so many modern, inclusive beauty lines today. With its unforgettable, original tagline: "All Ages, All Races, All Sexes," M.A.C was waaay ahead of its time, tapping into a culture completely foreign to the stalwart beauty brands lining store shelves when it launched in 1984.
In Part 1 of this two-part special, Jill and Carlene recall the M.A.C beauty products that helped form their youths (hands up if you wore Twig Lipstick!). Plus, we remind you of the brand's ultimate best-sellers like Ruby Woo Lipstick (2,900 of their made-in-Canada lipsticks are sold everyday around the world) and their epic Studio Fix Foundations (still #1 in prestige in Canada), which offered nearly 40 shades decades before Fenty Beauty came along. Then, Frank takes us way back, on coming to North America as a young immigrant, with little more than a children's suitcase and a few small trinkets inside. Beauty history buffs will want to hear the story of "Frank & Frank" as the two founders would become known, partners in life and business until Frank Angelo's passing in the 1990's. And finally, the origin story on how Frank Toskan came to compose early M.A.C prototypes using nothing more than craft store supplies in his Toronto kitchen.
Watch for Part 2 dropping in your feeds tomorrow!
Hosts: Carlene Higgins and Jill Dunn
Audio production: Olivia Nashmi
Theme song: Cherry Bomb by Saya
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I couldn't understand why there wasn't a lot of makeup for women of color. |
| 0:04.2 | I never understood that because I had lots of friends of color. |
| 0:07.0 | There was so much diversity, especially in New York. |
| 0:10.0 | And so we developed colors that really, you know, worked on all people. |
| 0:16.2 | We had like 35 foundation colors from blue-black skins to very, the pale list of porcelain skins and we sort of covered everybody. |
| 0:26.2 | Hey guys welcome to Breaking Beauty, the, all about the best selling beauty products |
| 0:34.8 | and the damn good stories behind them. |
| 0:36.4 | Were your host, Carleen Higgins, and Jill Dunn. |
| 0:39.9 | Hello everybody, welcome back to Breaking Beauty. |
| 0:42.1 | This is Jill here this is |
| 0:43.7 | carlene so Canada Day is just upon us and you know we've talked a lot on this |
| 0:50.0 | show carlene about some hot Canadian Beauty brands. Yeah we've talked about |
| 0:54.5 | Noodsticks, Desi M, Sage, the Seven Virtues. Yeah these have all been guests |
| 1:00.0 | these people these brands have all been guests on our show but I think we can both |
| 1:05.0 | agree there's only one Canadian household name in the beauty biz yeah that even like |
| 1:11.5 | my grandmother if she were still here would know the name of and |
| 1:16.1 | that is Matt Cosmetics. |
| 1:17.5 | Yeah. |
| 1:18.5 | Yeah. So this was like a career-making moment for Jill and I. |
| 1:22.6 | Yes. |
| 1:23.4 | To be able to sit down with Frank Toskin, |
| 1:25.8 | co-founder of the original Mac Cosmetics, |
... |
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