Shameless Media

Shameless. It's not often we actually

bring back in conversation content team, but when Charlotte Tilbury came to Melbourne last month

with Mecca, we thought, how could we possibly pass up interviewing one of the most well-known

names in the world in beauty? Of course, Charlotte Tilbury is now known for her eponymous brand, home to products

that have cult-like followings, hello flawless filter. But before Charlotte Tilbury was Charlotte Tilbury

the founder of Billion Dollar Beauty Empire, Charlotte Tilbury was makeup artists to some of the most

famous women in the world. I was lucky enough to sit down with Charlotte in our Cremorne studio and

ask her about it all. How do you end up painting the faces of everyone from Kate Moss to Amal Clooney? What drove her to start one of the biggest brands in the world? And of course, how does she really feel about duping culture? And the way their best-selling products are often ripped off and reproduced. I cannot wait for you to hear her talk about that one. I think that's enough from me, though. Here's Charlotte Tilbury. Charlotte Tilbury, welcome to shameless. Darling, thank you so much. It's so exciting to be on your show. We love it. Well, you are so lovely. And it has been, I think we're getting you at the back end of a big trip in Australia. You've had a

big trip. It's a very busy time. You've energized me today. I'm excited to be so excited to be on your show. No, I'm so excited to talk to you about your career, your business. I mean, just get to know who you are as well. But the first question I wanted to ask you was something I learned in my research, which I didn't know was that you grew up in Ibiza. I did. I did. Can you

tell me a little bit about that? Because the stories I was hearing you say about, you know, how beautiful that childhood was seems quite captivating. Yeah, it was an amazing child, I have to say, because, you know, it really kind of just the free thinking, when you've been brought up on an island, it's very free. My father was an artist, so I learned a lot about colour theory from him. I learned a lot about artistry. I think partly why I am so good at my job is down to me playing around with his paintbrushes. You know, I stole some of his paint brushes and turned them into makeup brushes because I was like, we don't have these type of brushes. And he taught me so much about shade and light. Makeup is all about shade and light. So so much of where I've ended up kind of, you know, so much of the rules that he taught me of art, of course, end up in makeup. So my father being an artist, my mother, you know, being a producer, she was a producer. We worked on lots of fashion shoots together. They both kind of taught me that whole freedom idea of limitless thinking, not to kind of confine yourself, like to just be who you want to be and live your dreams. And I was brought up around a lot of, you know, it was an island. So lots of people were passed through, lots of inspiring people, you know, you mix with everyone

from the kind of, you know, gorgeous local kind of, you know, Mohemians to then kind of, you know, rock stars and, you know, business people from all different, you know, film stars, writers, painters, artists.

So it's a very eclectic kind of world, really, of creative, like a creative melting pot that was very inspiring for me as a

child. Did you have any sense when you were that young that it was a unique way to grow up

around all of these big creative thinkers? I think that I realized because I would go back to my

grandparents who were my grandparents in Jersey where my parents would kind of say, you know,

they'd go off and have a kind of fun, you know, sort of wild. And then we'd be sent out to my grandparents, which is quite different. You know, we'd sort of turn up in flares and shells and wild hair and kind of, actually now I look back at it really cool looks. But then we come back in these kind of like virgin socks and fluffy kind of dresses, you know, lace and sort of, you know, very kind of

pretty kind of pink dresses, you know. Anyway, that my grandparents obviously were not as wild and

not as bohemian as my parents, but it was wonderful and very inspiring actually to be around. I think

that whole kind of culture in Spain where it's not the English culture where maybe children

should be seen and not heard. So we were, as a child, you were kind of exposed all these brilliant brains and brilliant people, and you learn so much. So I've, in a way, feel like I've lived two different lives. And I've taken so much of that, you know, there was a very different time in those days. You know, we would kind of go to the nightclub. We'd all be kind of begging my parents, please take us, please take us. And there was like a swimming pool with a big dragon slide and we'd kind of be swimming around. It'd be like Grace Jones would be performing or James Brown or, you know, it was kind of amazing. It was kind of amazing. I've heard talk about the nightclubs in Ib and going there as a child. Did you at the time think this is an incredible thing to be able to see? Oh yeah. It was so fun and it was so amazing. I mean, it was amazing because also the way that, you know, people dressed up and the makeup and the kind of, you know, people were much more, much more self-expression in those days of kind of the way people would kind of, you know, dress, you know, it was much more creative in a sense, really. There was no norm call. There was no kind of

like athleisure then. It was all about creativity and wildness. And so I think a lot of, a lot of people, you know, that for me as a child was really like, wow, this is amazing. It was kind of, probably, you know, when I look at, I never went to Studio 54, but when I look at a lot of that crowd that we called kind of around was going, we were going to Studio 54. And I think it felt a bit like that, except it was an open air club with a swimming pool in the middle of it. So, yeah. You just fall in love with it at that age showing. Yeah, it was amazing. It was just very free and, and just blissful. It was a really magical childhood. I feel very honored and I feel very privileged to have had that. Sounds incredibly special. One thing I've heard you talk about is how an encounter with Princess Diana's makeup artist set your career in motion. Can you tell me about that? That was very good. So Mary Greenwald, she's amazing. She was a friend of my parents. And again, you know, in a bee, we were in Ibitha and sitting on a beach and she had, there was all the covers of Vogue. And really, it was kind of like the Jerry Hall beginning of the supermodel sort of, you know, era kind of ended that. And I was 11 years old. And I was like, I remember kind of, you know, just seeing all these amazing covers that she was doing and I was like, oh my God, it's fascinating and I was fascinated by the power of beauty

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