“Los Angeles runs through our brands. It’s the heartbeat of the company,” said Carina Chaz, founder and chief executive officer of fragrance brand DedCool.
In a room full of fellow Angelenos at the annual Los Angeles Beauty Forum, Chaz took the stage alongside Tower 28 founder Amy Liu and Rizos Curls founder Julissa Prado to discuss how they’ve leveraged their influence and empowered each other to address major crises such as the devastating wildfires and ongoing ICE raids that’ve plagued the city in the last year.
The panel, hosted by WWD senior reporter Ryma Chikhoune, kicked off with each founder sharing a brief description of their brand mission and how it feels to be a Los Angeles-based business now. “I was born and raised there, and it’s the city that even inspired my entrepreneurial spirit,” Prado said. Liu then chimed in: “It’s emblematic of our mission, which is to create a safe space for sensitive skin. Being part of L.A. and the community has been such a natural part of the brand.”
Julissa Prado and Amy Liu
When ravaging wildfires swept across neighborhoods throughout the city in January, leaving hundreds of thousands of people displaced, Chaz, who was living in Malibu at the time, took it upon herself to aid fire fighting and relief efforts, while Liu, who left her house in the Palisades after discovering asbestos and lead, mobilized more than 150 brands to donate 70,000 items for 1,500 families, all while managing their own business teams. Prado has subsequently helped raise $250,000 for immigrant families in the wake of the ICE raids.
Asked to pinpoint the moment when they knew they had to take action, Liu said the response was always either going to be “fight or flight,” and she chose to fight and didn’t concern herself with the logistics, financial or otherwise.
“I think we all have the ability to give back during the journey, especially if you have some influence to do that,” she continued. “I think there’s a really big loss of agency sometimes, especially right now in the world, when there’s so much that’s happening. I don’t feel like I can control or I can help. But then I try to think about the things that I can control and influence, whether that’s within my team, my community and my brand.”
Prado piggybacked off that sentiment, emphasizing the responsibility of leaders within the beauty industry to set the standard and show up for their communities. Indeed, the plight of being a leader during crises isn’t easy, Liu pointed out, but having a supportive team makes it easier.
That said, Chaz remembered feeling “survivor’s guilt” amid the fires, having had multiple people on her team lose their homes. “The city is burning and emotions are wild, and it’s showing up for those people and having these hard and uncomfortable conversations of like, ‘Hey, X, Y and Z are dealing with this. How can we be a team? How can we look at this with empathy and figure out the next best way to help rebuild,” she said. “That’s ultimately all you can do.”
Carina Chaz and Amy Liu
Tower 28, DedCool and Rizos Curls are just three entrants in a growing network of Los-Angeles based beauty brands, founders and organizations. The tone of the city, Prado noted, was and continues to be set by the immigrant communities within it. “What you see in common in a lot of these immigrant communities are these network hubs that people create not only for survival, but also to preserve culture, to connect with each other,” she continued. “Growing up in L.A., it was normal for me, even in such a big city, to see activists or community leaders or whatever it may be. I saw how these networks supported each other.”
“L.A. is this place where everybody comes to dream,” Liu added. “It still is, to me, emblematic of the American Dream, which I think we’ve lost a little bit, especially when you think about ICE and all these things.”
On what she’s learned since facing such disaster, Chaz said it’s how to stay dynamic and flexible, while being empathetic and empowering those around her. “The beauty world is very small. We all know each other. We’re all here to empower each other. A lot of DedCool’s efforts were rooted in Tower 28’s efforts to support the firefighters and the community that had lost everything,” Chaz went on to say. “Without that collaboration, there wouldn’t be much of anything.”
Partnership and the power of united community are concepts not lost on Prado, who’s worked to do just that through a series of in-person activations at local coffee shops across the U.S. in honor of Latino Heritage Month. Liu followed Prado’s mention of Rizos’ café tour by saying initiatives like such drive her as a founder. “The money at some point is not the thing that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to do what you do,” Liu said.
Looking forward, the three founders reflected on their brands’ roles in supporting long-term community resilience. Chaz said DedCool will continue to focus on “creating product that has meaning and a bigger purpose that touches people.” Liu followed up with Tower 28’s renewed plans to invest in the greater community, as well as her team and sub-communities. Finally, Prado said Rizos Curls will work to bring joy and celebration to the city.