I don’t have a cool anecdote about finding my love for beauty – I basically stumbled around during my fine art diploma until I found something that sparked excitement. Then, after getting paint all over my carpet (sorry mum), not to mention numerous failed attempts at sculpture, I decided to pick up an eyeshadow brush as opposed to a paint brush. It wasn’t until one of my lecturers mentioned I had a natural talent for painting faces that I even started thinking of a career in beauty and, having gained an unconditional offer to London College of Fashion, I enrolled and discovered how little experience I had compared to a lot of my peers; they had been to make up school, or were freelancing waaay before university, and here I was still learning how to ‘contour’ properly. It wasn’t until I met one of my favourite artists, Bea Sweet, that I realised I was doing exactly what I needed to – creating, exploring, experimenting (albeit sometimes a little too much) – and that my passion for make up and beauty was valid, even if it wasn’t necessarily commercially friendly or refined. I’ve since spent hours at my local library, broadening my beauty knowledge with the help of Helmut Newton, Nan Goldin, Val Garland and Kevyn Aucoin.