LONDON — Makeup artist Fara Homidi’s work has been on the runways of all the capital fashion cities, but it’s only now that she’s taking considerable steps in growing her eponymous beauty brand that she launched in 2023. 

This week she’s entering the U.K. market, a place that she’s familiar with through her travels for her editorial work.

“The U.K. has always been on my wishlist. We’ve had a lot of demand and it’s people who are like-minded to the beauty that I’m creating,” she said in an interview.

Fara Homidi will be coming into the U.K. through its direct-to-consumer channel before partnering up with a luxury retailer in October.

“I wanted to do it the right way. I wanted to make sure that I was set up and bringing our full collection to the U.K.,” said Homidi, who has just brought out an Essential Bronzer Compact that will be available in the U.K. from June 11.

“We’re getting our legs so to speak and going into the U.K. is important for me so we can identify what’s working and what isn’t before easing straight into retail. This is an intro of who we are as a brand,” she added.

Fara Homidi’s biggest market to date is the U.S., but hopes that the U.K. will have just as much impact. The brand has also been witnessing demand from Australia. 

The brand received an undisclosed investment from Sandbridge Capital in February, the same private equity firm that has worked with Thom Browne, Ilia Beauty and Youth to the People.

Homidi has been using the investment in building out her team, as well as her U.K. launch.

“We’re bringing on a field director to help with retail and we have a few more sales hires that we’re doing. We do then have plans to expand into France,” she said.

The brand went online with Sephora in the U.S. last year and will be going into the retailer’s U.S. stores in August. Fara Homidi’s other retail partners include Violet Grey, Dover Street Parfums Market, The Beautyaholic’s Shop and Olivine.

Homidi also wants to get into brick-and-mortar eventually.

“It’s in our plans and projections. I could visualize it [already] and it’s small, but perfect. I can see how the products would be all displayed. I have so many things that I’m trying to tackle at the moment before we get there,” she said.

Beauty has always played a big role in Homidi’s life growing up.

The makeup artist was born in Afghanistan and at the age of one moved to Fremont, Calif., with her family, where her mother went to beauty school and then set up her own beauty supply and salon that she started working at the age of 11.

“I was literally wearing my mom’s high heels from a young age and I’d be falling down the stairs. I was always enamored with dressing up and I would be glued to the mirror when my mom was applying her makeup. At the salon, I would study all the images in the fashion magazines,” she recalls.

Homidi’s professional entry into the beauty world was through MAC Cosmetics, where she was the operations manager at the MAC Pro store on Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills which led to opportunities as a working makeup artist and assistant. 

A year into freelancing as a makeup artist, she moved to New York City to build her makeup portfolio.

Homidi’s beauty brand is part of the same thread that runs through her editorial work — beauty looks that are texture-based and focus on the essentials rather than excess.

The brand’s bestsellers are the Essential Face Compact, the Lip Compact and the lip pencils, but the gap isn’t a huge one between her other products. “Essentially it’s hard to say what is a bestseller because everything is an essential. We do really well with refills, too — traditionally, refills haven’t been really sexy or exciting,” she added.

Homidi describes her brand as “slow beauty.”

She’s currently in the process of developing a new category that will sit in the “makeup skin care category, but leans more toward skin care.”