Poppy France, Eco Make-up Artist

0:02Welcome to the Business of Modeling, the podcast where we explore the fascinating world of the modeling industry. I'm Tessa Dewing, Managing Director of Sandra Reynolds, a commercial model agency celebrating its 50th year of business. Today I'm in a beautiful little boat in Little Venice in London called The Boat Pod with Poppy France. Now Poppy is a London-based makeup artist with over 18 years experience. Known for her clean, eco-conscious approach, she has built a career championing sustainable and cruelty-free beauty, working with global brands, high-profile clients and some of the world's leading magazines.

0:46Poppy, it's a pleasure to have you with us today. It's a pleasure to be here. Can you start by telling us a bit about where you grew up and what your childhood was like? I grew up in London, in between London and the countryside. So I lived a lot in nature and then in inner city London as well I went to um secondary school in the countryside so that's why so I was a weekly boarder a tiny little Quaker boarding school which was very um it was so tiny there were about 14 people in my year it's very creative a lot of nature and I just I got to kind of follow my art so I grew up with my mum kind of in the music industry very like 90s rave all of that kind of thing like fully immersed in the music industry quite chaotic lots of fun and then my dad complete hippie um and you know he went through his like punk stage and everything but definitely like when I was about five years old he would he took me out of primary school and him and all his friends took me and their kids in the camper vans and went to Glastonbury and there was like no wall or anything like that we're just free um and so I had a very free childhood in that way my parents were really young and so I guess they were kind of just still enjoying being young and then having like a young kid and going on all the I went on a lot of adventures with my dad yeah when I was about six I guess I learned or maybe five about vegetarianism and I decided once I'd learned I was like that's it I'm vegetarian I'm not I will not eat meat from school I then went to art school in Brighton right all the different kinds of art and art foundation degree so I did photography fashion design everything fine art um and at that point did you have in your mind that you were going to be a makeup artist I was going to be a photographer and I actually went came back to London and I assisted fashion photographers.

2:58That's so interesting because I think so many people in fashion seem to come from an art background and so many people I've spoken to before they've sort of found their lane have started out in photography. Oh really? Yeah so it's really interesting that you say that. Yeah so talk me through that so you went. Yeah for one year yeah one year I was assisting photographers and we were working with film at that point so we'd kind of you know work with polaroids and then shoot on film and i'd be the one shipping off and getting it developed and all that kind of thing and carrying metro studios all the bags and yeah basically and being their therapist and all that comes with that um and then but i found myself on every shoot kind of gravitating towards the makeup room okay that's interesting yeah that must have given you really good grounding on set yeah and on stunning lighting exactly yeah so it gave me a different perspective and then actually met Charlotte Tilbury when I was quite young through meeting her I thought oh I think I'd obviously wanted to I had all these kind of childhood experiences to do with makeup and beauty and my auntie was a costume designer and I'd kind of been in that industry of music videos I was brought up in that world so my mum was actually a director and a producer of a lot of music videos I was in some it was very much my world and then I feel like with the kind of art and creativity makeup just made sense I'm definitely a people person and I also love helping other people feel really good about themselves so I think that it kind of just it kind of clicked through basically beauty that was my way of helping other people.

4:42I'd obviously studied art. So I then went to the London College of Fashion and I did another course in makeup. And after that, I got some business cards made and told everyone of the makeup artist and turned up on massive TV commercial and basically said to the makeup artist, can I assist you? And she was like, wow, yeah, sure. Here's a red lipstick. Here's a brush. Like, let's just go have fun. And then I kind of just went from there. what's the difference between if you're working sort of on a glossy editorial say to a commercial campaign the difference between a glossy editorial i would say is that a glossy editorial is it's more about the the makeup and the beauty and it's much more detailed and it's more focused on that so it's aesthetically like pleasing to do that it it's creatively pleasing to do a glossy editorial and then on an advert it's there's a lot more going on there's a lot more people it's less it's more focused on kind of organizing and logistics and it'll be less beauty just it'll be quite different you know you'll be getting someone sometimes to look like a character or just look really naturally beautiful and yes it's very different yeah and do the briefs tend to be a bit more strict if you're if you're on a commercial shoot I feel like you have yeah I feel like on a commercial shoot obviously you're you're creating for the brand so it has to be on brand so you're within a kind of limit whereas um I do feel like there's there is also a limit in a glossy editorial as well but you definitely can kind of design and be creative within that yeah much more creative yeah

6:30you've worked across sort of everything really you've done fashion advertising tv celebrity yeah what have been some of your most memorable projects funnily enough kind of recently do a massive global campaign advertising campaign which i loved because it was all the women were over 60 and it was just really embracing them and their beauty and that was the kind of thing that really fills me so yeah i really liked that um and also i love a challenge and i had like three or four sets running at the same time and loads of massive team and it was just really fun designing and organizing that and I quite like the chaos sometimes like organizing the chaos I love Pat McGrath and so I was really excited to see her sort of you know when she's now heading Louis Vuitton and she's kind of blurring those lines between beauty and fashion what have you had moments where this sort of beauty direction shaped the whole shoot sort of almost as much as the fashion doing a shoot with um high key salon and which i don't even know if they're still going and that was very high fashion and the clothing was quite industrial almost like kind of whitewashed denim very brutal and i just we had this model and i just like bleached her eyebrows and her and her lashes and just got her like so pale and so ethereal that she was almost like ghostly and it just looked amazing and then they kind of with that they changed the way they shot the whole shoot and it was all like kind of almost smoky slightly transparent shoot and it looked it looked really really beautiful yeah that sounds really beautiful yeah definitely so then what changed in your life to make you go away for yeah so actually so I well I kind of just got to this point in my late 20s where I just wasn't I just wasn't very fulfilled I was definitely going down this straight path to fashion and I was doing really really well and I think um I just felt like I needed more meaning in what I was doing and I didn't really feel like I had it and so I just needed to go and like find myself and do that classic thing interesting but I guess you'd come straight out of college straight into straight into work yeah you'd never had that time I'd be honest I was even working when I was at school I was working since I was 16 every weekend so I think I just suddenly was like had this reflection of like I need a minute to like just gather myself and know who I am and what I'm doing because I'm just going with this flow and I haven't had a moment to stop since I was like a teenager basically.

9:20And what did that look like then did you do that on your own? So obviously I'd done because as I said I had done quite well in my career so I basically just used my money on my own to just go off to Australia and then I went off to Australia I got really into yoga I changed all my health you might die I stopped drinking I it was quite extreme I had a friend follow me and he came for a bit as well and he he also did the same thing and then I went and lived in India and I trained as a yoga teacher and then I lived I was in California for a bit and then back in Australia teaching yoga and then I came back to England I was away for about three years when I went to Australia I got an agent pretty quickly and then I would fly to Sydney for photo shoots and I would do shoots and then I would live in like different places sure so you were still the whole time I was always I actually never I feel like I tried to leave but I never did okay like to be honest it's obviously my calling because I I continued.

10:22Were you able to perhaps feel like you weren't on such a fast moving train? Totally. And you were working in different places. So it almost gave you a different perspective. And I was experiencing life as well as because before that, it was nothing but my career. I didn't have a life. I just all I did. My life was my work. I would miss any social event. Work was my priority. Well, of course, you're the one that's up at four in the morning. and it was finally time for me to like have my time for myself and like look after my health what do you feel you've got from that three years I got really into health and mental health just basically grounding myself and changing a lot of patterns that weren't really working for me and then I came back with a completely fresh perspective and I feel like it changed the way I worked even what brands what products I was using um with who I was working with and it was slow but I basically became much more conscious of what I was actually doing and how it was affecting the environment you're known now for championing sustainable and cruelty-free beauty I guess that three years you had away was part of the inspiration for you to take that direction yeah I feel like About three years away was like connecting also to like me, myself as when I was a child and all the things I was into as a child.

11:50And it was kind of like animal rights. And that's very much what I was like as a child. So I became vegetarian when I was really little. At 16, I started eating meat for the first time. And by my mid-20s, I was very unwell. I was diagnosed with colitis. I thought I had stomach cancer and that's when I was traveling the world and I was like you know what I'm probably like gonna die so I'm just gonna enjoy my life and I had loads of cameras and went was in and out of hospital cameras inside me and checking everything and they said you're going to be on medication for the rest of your life and I then went okay well I'm just going to go and do my yoga training in the northern India and wasn't really thinking about it and when I where I trained I was so lucky.

12:37It was, they had their own chefs. It was like home cooked food, vegan. So I had this like complete immersive three months and it changed. I healed myself totally accidentally. I healed my gut through the food, through this no stress and through the meditation. And I came back and they studied me again. Cause they were like, Whoa, what is this? This is when they were learning about the gut and brain yeah they basically had said I would it was incurable and I cured myself and I now actually as part of the yoga stuff I do that for other people so I feel like it when I came back connected to that like childlike kind of love naivety love of caring for animals and all of these more into the planet and the environment and looking after other people's health and then I became really interested in how what I was putting onto people's skin was also affecting their skin and their hormones and everything I basically just got really into like how things work with people rather than just the beauty it was also the kind of the depth of what the products were doing and how they were affecting the environment if they were tested on animals and so I started looking and searching for brands that were more in that realm but they weren't at that time very good on photo shoots so it was a long time about eight years of trying different brands on shoots and doing test shoots and seeing if they worked and then a lot of brands started getting better as well I felt like it was a wave at the same time for everyone almost and so they became they just became really really good for like the longevity and the pigments and everything suddenly like worked that weren't using toxic things and and harming women or men that you were putting them on are you seeing sort of more demand from brands and clients for yeah i feel like there was a huge wave a few years ago for that demand to use closed loop working practices closed loop means that everyone's kind of doing their own part to make sure that they're not using like single-use plastics or um carbon their foot carbon footprint is minimal or you know anything that's sustainable or you as me I would be cruelty free I wouldn't be using much waste I'd be using non-toxic natural products that kind of thing so yeah I feel like that became a massive massive wave not always really doing do you think people saying it's called greenwashing sometimes yeah yeah I got asked to do a lot which I liked because I realized that they're really trying you know companies huge companies are really really trying to like do better um I got asked to do a lot of like big commercials and sometimes I would be featured in them to show to kind of they would prove that they're fully eco so yeah I did notice that it's less obvious now but I feel like it's also at the same time more mainstream to just be more economical so I feel like it blew up and then it's kind of slightly died down but in a nice way where it's just become the new normal.

16:01If you've got a fast-paced shoot yeah it is just much easier to use disposable wipes and products and things like that how do you control that? I just don't use disposable plastics at all there's other ways of using things but I guess you can control what you do how do I control it as I myself will use certain brushes that you can just keep using and you clean and you use rather than throwing things away like even mascara ones you can use a fan brush and put mascara on it it's a very traditional way of doing mascara and put mascara on like that clean it off and then redo it so you don't have to throw the spoolies away or with your when you're using wipes you can yeah okay wipes is not great but you can kind of use a bit of the wipe when you need it and then I will use biodegradable water wipes so then that will be thrown and hopefully biodegrade it's just about being really super conscious and then it just becomes the way you work exactly and then it becomes normal and I think because it I've been doing it for so long now it is now you're asking me I'm remembering like oh yeah you know these are the things that I do but they're just so normal they're so ingrained in me and the only time I really notice is when I have like maybe a new assistant who isn't on that page and then I'll have to just talk to them before a job and kind of tell them what they need to bring or how they need to be.

17:26Now you've developed your own organic facial oils and sculpting facial massage technique tell us how that came about because I feel like skin prep now has almost become more important with the facial oils I was just learning how to do facial sculpts and facial massages on quite a deep level because I was working with high profile clients and I wanted to do this incredible like facial massage before putting their makeup on as I was learning I didn't want to put toxic stuff on people's faces so I developed two facial oils to use on people whenever I was doing a massage so while I was training and I would use those and then they just kept people kept wanting to buy them someone asked to stock them in a shop I then realized I had to get them approved at a lab so I went and did that and so it's been quite organic then someone from Vogue wanted to interview me about them for slow beauty so they were in a September Vogue issue which was quite exciting they're made to order and I do aesthetics I do I've studied to level three um which is higher than I need to do it's electrics but I do all the kind of facial massages and the yoga and I make the facial oils for people as well amazing so how do you go about making a facial oil so I obviously I studied aromatherapy as well so when I was making them I wanted them to also affect your mood so I basically learned which combinations of scent would help with your mind and your mood so the two scents I developed treat anxiety and depression as well so the wearer will apply the oil and obviously smell the oil and then they'll feel that lovely mood boost as they're applying obviously I've dealt with so many different skin types and I love it when I'm working with products that help people girls skin like a lot of younger girls on sheets will have like hormonal acne or breakouts and so one of the oils is very lightweight they're both they both go under makeup um so they're like a primer they're like a primer yeah because they're so lightweight that I think it's called like a dry oil so they're non-greasy once they're on being yeah exactly yeah yeah so they go in and they just I mean I'm I'm wearing the oil today and I don't I'm not wearing makeup so they just literally sit on your skin yeah like in your in the epidermis what benefit does a massage if you if you're massaging the face what benefit does that give before you're applying the makeup um well it relieves any stress obviously puffiness um any kind of sagging of the skin it will lift you can lift and sculpt the skin before applying the makeup and it will just plump out the skin and it will just make it a kind of beautiful base to apply makeup onto how do practices like yoga meditation and acupressure find their way into your work as a makeup artist i've actually had to calm people down on set and use i i'm trained in a meditation called yoga nidra which i do teach in when i'm teaching the yoga classes and i've had to use yoga nidra on set with people who are having emotional kind of breakdowns because of nerves or you know I've done commercials with girls crying about something that's happened and then I've taken them off and done a little mini meditation and then they've kind of been calm and ready to go on.

20:57People I think have the impression that a makeup artist is just there to put makeup on the face and that's so not the case yeah you know there's so much else yeah I feel like you hear everybody's life story or what's going on with them at the moment while you're doing the makeup you really get to know someone very very quickly there's a lot of trust um in being a makeup artist yeah you know you're managing skin you're managing their mood yeah timing yeah you know even a bit of kind of PR I guess yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why it's so lovely, actually. It's such a lovely job. I think that's why I needed the change, because I think when I was younger, it was just being really creative and it was like super fun.

21:40But yeah, I quite like the depth of getting to know people. Do you think that there's a shift happening that is sort of towards beauty that's not just about how we look, but how we feel? yeah 100 % I think um I mean how you feel shows on your face your life does show on your face which is beautiful as well and I am a fan of aging and you know at the same time I'm not anti-aging even though my oils and my mass facial massages may say so with the sculpting and the collagen but you know it's a it's a helping hand but but it's about naturally making the best of I just think when you feel calm and centered and grounded, you know, your energy comes through.

22:23Like you can see it in your face. You can see it through your eyes. And what are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about the role of a makeup artist on set? I think they think it's like really glamorous and like super important. And maybe you are important, but I kind of don't feel like, I feel like you like, you like get up at four in the morning and you have to get there like super early and it's just not glamorous you're not really looking like super chic or anything you're just trying to be comfortable and it's not really about it's nothing about you it's your it's about who you're making up and it's about what you're working on and I feel like it's just much more humble than people think it is and actually yeah and going back to your your massage that you do yeah I guess that's even more important if you're working on models that might have had four hours sleep and it's four o 'clock in the morning because you're the one you've got to get them all ready to shoot yeah or like you know the other day I had a model you know whose skin she had a really really bad breakout and then actually I now luckily because I've studied to do aesthetics and facials I can now use the right products to help treat that before doing the shoot and then do a nice lymphatic massage and then over a few days you notice if you're doing that with someone and you're shooting maybe for like five days their skin gets better through the shoot so that's also really helpful but yeah definitely you know puffy eyes there are tricks to kind of reduce them very quickly okay what are those tricks please um well I mean ice cubes and cucumbers do work so they do work yeah and then lymphatic with a cucumber on each eye yeah I mean ice cubes definitely rubbing towards your lymph nodes in your temples yeah so if you're rubbing everything towards your temples gently just getting the blood to flow there you're helping the lymphatic the toxins to flush out do you do lymphatic facial massage that's an amazing one to do in the morning you're basically just working from the middle of your face up towards your lymph nodes and out and i would say if there's only one that you work towards it's the temples right so you're just kind of using your fingers and brushing like your skin out and massaging it out towards your temples and the kind of outside of your jaw and it also is very calming and you can then flush it up down your neck towards your armpits lymphatic facial massage is really really good to do before putting makeup on and just to do in the morning because it just reduces the puffiness super quickly

25:01from your perspective what has changed the most in the beauty industry since you started definitely a consciousness towards you know cruelty free products we're so much more knowledgeable now than when i first started yeah i feel like social media that's probably just because i'm much older than you you probably were brought up with it anyway but i remember when it was literally magazines that would dictate looks yeah whereas now obviously social media has made everything instant it's so image focused and i feel like it's it's getting more and more image focused isn't it and affecting younger generations i guess we've always had it haven't we where we yeah we've always been we've had the magazines and absolutely and wanted to wonder yeah exactly exactly there's more exceptions as well at the same time though that's what i've noticed of different beauty types and different beauty aesthetics and I think that definitely wasn't when I was growing up it was like you have to be really underweight smoke 20 cigarettes a day and like that was like stunning like that's what the aesthetic we were like all wanted to look like Kate Moss yeah and I just feel like now it's so much healthier I think the Olympics really changed the beauty standards because it was about fitness and health and I think after we had the Olympics in our country I noticed a huge shift yeah I think the Dove beauty campaign the real beauty campaign as well was was a really great thing they started that really didn't they with with using yeah um using kind of real real people and starting conversations around diversity yeah and I think diversity definitely has has I mean become more acceptable in beauty which is amazing so yeah I do think there's been loads of positive changes I've definitely seen in my lifetime if I take you back to your when you were first working as a makeup artist and you were on that grind of the high fashion shoots do you feel like the industry has changed in the way it treats its kind of crew between yes now and and yeah then and today yeah when I first started there was an extreme hierarchy I wouldn't even be able to sit on the same table as certain people um um and um yeah you couldn't you kind of couldn't talk to people that it was a massive wedge a massive divide and now I think people are sitting at the same table it's still obviously there is a there's still a slight divide but it's much more it's much more equal in a way like you have more respect I feel like people respect and understand other people more and their job roles definitely and have you ever had a situation where you've kind of been shocked that the way someone's been treated or a photographer having a hissy fit or I mean when I first started when I was assisting photographers I was quite shocked at um the photographers who you know they were very unfortunately is the kind of really entitled white man dating the model and then I'm like the therapist for that and I'm like I'm like 18 and I why am I helping this man you know he's you know just like all that weird kind of stuff like blur boundary just not cool wouldn't be accepted nowadays no way no there was a lot of yeah I feel like it's there's a lot of like blurred boundaries that just wouldn't now wouldn't be accepted which is great that happened that I definitely noticed when I was first starting out to now yeah

28:51you're you're working with some b corp companies yeah do you see real difference when you're working yes so I really really do yeah so I feel like B Corp was invented after I noticed that difference so I work with Finistere for which is like a eco um surf activewear brand and we kind of um we went on these like documentary style photo shoots it's the most authentic brand I've ever worked for as in in terms of being just really true to what they're saying they're doing even to the point where the photographer had a go at me because my set bag was made of plastic and I was like what am I meant to do I've already bought this like 20 years ago or whatever if I throw it away that's bad too absolutely you know but he was like I almost felt like they were the pioneers they those kind of brands were leading the b corp kind of the code of what is ethical and you know I feel like those kind of brands were and by Sarah and other kind of beauty brands were already ahead and then b corp came in and then they became b corp because they got the certificate yeah but i definitely noted the brands that i've worked with who are really authentic like in that way and who haven't like stumbled and haven't kind of like sold out are b corp yeah and i think it's probably harder to be because it's easy isn't it to be really like unethical in a way yeah it's much easier to to unconsciously do yeah and also to keep doing that consistently yeah and and all the time it's very easy to go oh we'll be yeah because it's but then actually oh we can't quite be bothered to do it for a bit and then you know so yeah absolutely and I think I think I've noticed a lot more fashion companies are sort of chasing b corp we've only just started sort of looking into it because it's something that we've had on the list for a long time yeah but I think the issue with us is is obviously we have a lot of all our models are freelance so we can control what we're doing yeah but not quite easily but it's about how what we can do to kind of influence try and yeah and that's things like I said you know we have a search on our website so clients can look at models who are local to where they're shooting yeah okay that's really good you know using maybe rented wardrobe and things yeah but it's nice how rented wardrobes is now normal yes you know that's what I'm saying it's like there's so much change towards that and it's kind of normal now to that there are rented yes places to get clothes yeah and and websites where you're buying clothes like vintage and I think it's so much more so I remember when I was young people used to look down on you if you were wearing secondhand clothes and things yeah and I kind of grew up with going to charity shops yeah no me too my mum was literally it was weird to get taken to jumble sales and all sorts of copies I was in the odd in the odd clothes yeah but now it's just really cool and it's lovely yeah which is great they're almost like little boutique shops now aren't they like people are styling them beautifully and everything's yeah they really care and that yeah you know I my local charity shop the woman who volunteers there she puts things aside for me now because she knows me so well oh perfect so it's really nice you talked about finisterre there um are there any other particular campaigns or collaborations that stand out as highlights for you one shoot that really surprised me that i was asked to do and this was very much a closed loop shoot where they used a um clothing brand called her which is a higher higher clothing brand and they used a paralympic athlete lauren stedman and then they used me who was obviously an eco makeup artist and hair stylist and um on the shoot everything really was i think that's the first time i've worked with a huge brand like that and everything actually being fully kind of eco even to the point of like how people got their carbon footprint I don't know if they've become B Corp because it's a massive car brand and I don't think they can but I think in terms of just being really amazed at how a company actually really was authentically doing that on a photo shoot like I'm not advocating their brand because I don't really know enough to be able to do it but on that shoot I definitely was amazed at how it had been thought out because these companies I don't normally see doing that kind anything so i was impressed by that recently we had a massive heat wave we were on a shoot and it was a jewelry brand and um there were no the the studio that we had hired or the producer had hired the day before had gone bust so she then had to literally the night before hire a studio and then so we all quickly had to change you know we got this really late call sheet change and we turned up and it was an amazing it's in a really good studios but they didn't have any air conditioning oh and then it was like close up beauty oh no and i'm not joking and then they have fans which were like pumping out pumping out like hot air and then i was there luckily i had these like fans i bought i'm charged i was like holding all these fans getting people to hold these fans on this model because as soon as you break a sweat you're done yeah so we had all these fans on this one girl while everyone else was melting yeah and i hope it looks good but she didn't break a sweat and that was all i was worried about the shot turned out beautifully i'm waiting to see them i spoke to the model yesterday actually because she has got one of my face oils and she was talking about it and then I was like oh my god I can't wait to see that because I'm just really I really hope you don't look shiny but I've never worked so hard in my life to like for someone not to swear it was it was very funny so what from a makeup artist perspective what makes a model really easy to work with on set god just like easy to talk to they look after themselves they are on time and they're kind of respectful of everyone around them and that they're just themselves and yeah yeah yeah I think that's everyone wants to work with nice people yeah yeah exactly a friendly bunch of people yeah you just want everyone to be nice yeah absolutely and other things that models can do before a shoot um like skincare prep or communication that make your job smoother yeah so actually um before a job i always actually ask um for an up-to-date photo of a model so i can really see what's going on for them skin and hair wise if i'm doing the hair on the sheet and then just looking after their nails making sure that they're clean that's important because they could have a hand in shot yeah and then the same with the hair and then if there's things that they know that they love product wise i'm always happy for them to actually bring it even though i know what will work with every skin and hair type i think lymphatic drainage massage if people can learn how to give themselves a face massage and do that it's gonna really help their skin before a shoot yeah definitely and i think a lot of models do know how to do that now and they're using like the gua sha and all that so i feel like what's the gua sha you know the tool to kind of help with the lymphatic it's not the roller it's like a kind of flat tool that you use to push toxins the lymph nodes and then flush out but you can do it with your you can do a lymphatic with your fingertips

36:51are there any common mistakes you see models making i guess you don't want a model to turn out with a full face of makeup yeah i think like if someone comes with full makeup it's then adding time we don't have loads of time on a shoot so you're just then having to remove generally obviously a model hopefully would just feel comfortable coming bare face but if they do want to come with a bit of something that's okay you know if they need to if they feel more comfortable whatever works for them but yeah not a full face of makeup or not like gel nails mascara is kind of annoying to remove yeah or yeah basically just not coming as they were in the picture so if like hair wise is quite a big if they come with completely different hair it's tricky yeah for everyone yeah and I guess it depends where you are you know well we actually had a shoot where someone had cut all her hair off that wasn't I wasn't doing the hair on that I was doing the makeup but the hair stylist you could see was panicking having a bit of a meltdown yeah yeah and that's changed the whole look for the shoot yeah they've been pre-designed sure based on their look yeah yeah it's an agency that's our worst nightmare you know yeah somebody turning up yeah not letting us know that yeah I think it's just not like saying because unfortunately you know that is the job isn't it of course it is absolutely yeah

38:16I want you to build your own your kind of dream eco-friendly set so if you had full creative control what would that look like everyone's bringing their own water um and their own water bottles that's a massive thing yeah and we're all getting there by you know we're all cycling to work this is my dream one i can just see where's your shoot gonna be if everyone's outside and it's a beautiful day i'm allowed to like create a fantasy right people live up the road your amazing crew your first choice crew we all live in cornwall it's really good weather we're shooting outside um yeah there's no single use plastic um there's no kind of things that we're throwing away everyone's i mean in my dream situation i would actually cycle to a shoot if we could all kind of do that that would be great so wardrobe for instance you would be hiring the wardrobe or you'd be getting secondhand clothes um you know it's just about organization as well i think you know these things are more about planning forward planning and then you know what you need so then you can go and buy what you need and it can be second hand or it can be borrowed and everyone's calm on set because we've already pre-organized everything and yes it's about prep it's prep a lot of it is prep so with makeup you'd be looking at things like refillable palettes you would bring exactly and you would bring a really small kit you don't really need that much because if you know what you're doing um you know who the models are you know what they look like and then the model also will be looking after their skin and getting themselves ready that's what they you know keeping their nails clean everything we talked about before the producer will obviously be super organized what about our set design i'm thinking i'm thinking we have yeah We have Annie Leibowitz.

40:08Well, if Annie could... So it's going to be all, what's our set going to be like? Oh, wow. I mean, what are we going to do? Like a super creative set? Yeah. Like Shona Heath. I think it's going to be built from recycled. Yeah, well, it will have to be recycled and hired and... And reused afterwards. Yeah, definitely. We can work with the natural environment. Yeah. And then we are going to have to have some lighting and power. Yeah. because i think annie's gonna have to have you're gonna have to ask the sparks about that then i don't know how they do that yeah i guess led lights um and renewable energy renewable yeah yeah um catering obviously catering vegan obviously um local home cooked you know hand delivered that kind of thing again biodegradable plates no plastic cutlery glassware yeah cups things that you can just bring and reuse would be better than even biodegradable things that you could maybe wash up um and travel because with the best will in the world your crew isn't going to live within cycling distance of your of your location we don't have people arriving at different times yeah that would organize it so everyone gets picked up and comes down together what so you would get one bus that goes to each person's house oh you could yeah good like yeah we could yeah okay we could do that or you could i mean taxis are electric if you want to do that or people just get the train or the tube yeah public transport of course yeah but everyone gets to the station um kit then you get an electric car and then waste obviously we're gonna have minimal recycling on set yeah everything compostable food compostable food recycling paper if there is plastic recyclable only um no black bin bag no imagine if you could do no black bin bag that would be yeah fully eco yeah that would be amazing i think this is working yeah i think should we do the shoot yeah like creator yeah

42:17where do you see the future of beauty heading i feel like it's heading in the right direction in that way beauty brands are much more pressurized to be eco i've definitely noticed a huge vast change even in the last few years it's endlessly kind of growing and changing and i think the consumer is a lot more aware and the consumer demand is yeah as you say the consumer demand is the most it's going to make the most change because once people know if they don't want this what they're putting on the skin to change it disrupt their hormones or be tested on animals then the brands the transparency that we're asking for now through social media and through everything else that we have with the internet is making people being held accountable what they're doing and i feel like i mean body shop were really the first ones weren't they they were but now they are owned by the loria um but yeah they were anita roddick yeah made it started to body shop in her like kitchen didn't she absolutely she was a trailblazer wasn't exactly so I feel like I think we ebb and flow as humans that's how it goes you know it's a spiral of evolution and it kind of comes back slightly more evolved every time to different things you're right you're right because I think we've seen that with models with sort of different shapes and sizes and more curved models on the catwalk and there was a big big wave of everyone doing that and now it's gone backwards again yeah but then the beauty standards if you look back in other times were were much the models are much more curvy like the 50s they were all kind of yeah very true size 14 and up and you know so i think it's just kind of slow change yeah but we'll always push forward more than it goes back if that makes sense yeah yeah

44:11for younger makeup artists starting out what's one sustainable habit or product swap that you'd recommend first just don't buy single-use plastics no spoolies cotton buds that are recyclable are fine but apart from that you don't need it's just learning how to uh in fact you're making me feel like i should go and like teach well like teach people to do like do they teach makeup like to teach them how to be like eco in their makeup kit like what brushes to use to do the mascara so you don't have to use a single use plastic or like lip brushes so you don't and you don't have to have endless brushes as well you're you know there are ways to do things where you're not constantly throwing things away who've been your the people that inspire you tell me about the makeup artists that have really inspired you and why honestly the makeup the makeup artists that inspire me the most are the ones who are extremely creative so that's you know I studied art and I have to say the more eco I've become the less in a way sometimes creative weirdly I have I am when I left the fashion industry I'm like I haven't left it sorry but like high fashion it's less creative in that way where you're painting and you're free and I feel like the makeup artists who do that who push the boundaries like Pat McGrath or Alex Box or you know artists like that for me are so inspiring just because they it's very freeing and liberating and for me that's real art that's you know that's a different kind of beauty that I love

45:54So if you have a young model and inevitably they're going to have hormonal skin, they might have some bumps and some spots coming through, what would your advice be? I think a lot of advice is basically just kind of capitalism. And a lot of people who are advising are affiliated with brands. Generally, I have to say I've helped quite a lot of people, obviously, because I've studied aesthetics. But even before that, just understanding skin. and really it's just hard do hardly anything it depends on your skin type yeah um obviously but generally i would advise you to only clean your skin at night use something hydrating especially if you're oily and spotty actually if you're stripping the oils you're gonna start your skin is gonna try to produce more oil and then it's gonna become more problematic I would advise most people to to use Lizal at night with a muslin cloth because it generally exfoliates without disrupting your barrier.

46:59That's that face wash. It's of cream. Right. And you can give yourself a massage with it and really get into your skin and get all around your eyes. You can take your eye makeup off. It's gentle. It's cruelty free. And then the cloth that comes with it, you can do a kind of nice deep steam, draw out all the impurities. if you want you can do a whole facial routine you can go really far with it you can steam and do cold cloth you know cold cloth close the pores or you can just wipe your face with it but it will give you that exfoliation take off the dead skin cells and just be so gentle that even if you have spots or even if you have good skin it's not going to disrupt your microbiome and it's not going to disrupt your skin barrier basically and then don't wash your face in the morning just splash it with cold water i think your skin needs to breathe and it needs its natural oils to do their thing that's what they're there for and a light moisturizer or night i i only use oil yeah i have done that for many years i would use just a natural face oil like a hundred percent natural face oil yeah so going then to the other end of the scale so older skin um we're bombarded as well with what we should be using anti-aging serums moisturizers it depends so again with the oils so as i as i was saying i always use oil so yeah my oil obviously i'm i'm not even just specifically promoting my oil but one of my oils would be for younger skin who where they do have hormonal issue maybe have hormonal issues or are more sensitive or even just a someone in the summertime for a day oil the light oil is perfect and then the rich oil is for again it can be younger but 45 plus I would say too because it's so rich in the collagen producing rose hip and I would really recommend that I've noticed that rich oil on women who have gone through menopause and I have to say like people women buy that in bulk they buy in bulk a lot from me and they go a bit like crazy for us really lovely yeah and then they'll go and try something else and then they'll come back and be like i've got to get your oil again i'm like oh my god it's so funny so you would use that just under makeup not not as an evening yeah use it as an evening so you could give yourself the whole point of it is yeah so basically the thing about oil is it goes deeper into your obviously you have many layers of skin and the oil is finer than a moisturizer so it will go into the layers of the skin and as your skin renews itself that will come to the surface so you'll have a longer softer result if you use a moisturizer it sits on the surface of your skin so you see it instantly but it's not really doing that much right that's the difference yeah I absolutely love Waleda and the only thing I use if I need a moisturizer in the winter instead well on top of an oil I will use an oil and then I'll use Waleja skin food and I think it's it's one of the best moisturizers I've ever used I've been to their farm biodynamic farming everything they do it's incredible

50:14you still love your job I do love my job it's definitely changed like obviously it started I started as an artist and it was creative a creative outlet and then it became caring and more holistic and environmental and then I think my inspiration changes all the time I used to lock myself into my auntie's bathroom pretending to use the loo and then basically go through all of her like makeup and cosmetics and try everything on take it off and then go back down now I'm inspired by nature and meditation and healing so that's really inspiring me at the moment and then it might I might have a creative burst for me I need a lot of space and time and to slow down to feel actually really inspired and creative and I think I've learned as an adult to give that to myself and not get distracted and I feel as soon as I have space and time like if I go to um one of my step-grandmothers has a house in Scotland if I go to her house and I spend time there after a while I suddenly start drawing again you know it's about giving yourself that time and then that's when you get the inspiration and then I also get inspired talking to other people I get inspired by world kind of politics and like you know all sorts of things that are going on I find that quite inspiring and interesting and yeah analytical and then can create something I think a lot of creativity also comes from can come from something negative that's going on like maybe politically that you've done lots of that at the moment yeah so and you can then it's like an outlet to like be creative and like almost rebel in that way if there's one message you'd like people to take away about beauty and sustainability what would it be I try not to be cringe the most sustainable thing you can do is just not buy stuff and just be yourself because you're already beautiful like everyone is beautiful already and I'm sorry if it sounds really cringy but I feel like I always see the beauty and like I'll always look for the beauty when I meet people like I see it straight away either through talking to them or looking at them and it's generally with a lot of people will probably be what they don't realize it is and just remember that you already are beautiful so you don't need to buy loads of crap to make yourself look more beautiful

52:49Poppy thank you so much that was such a lovely chat thank you thank you so much for asking me thank you to Poppy for joining us and sharing with us insights into her philosophy and the ways beauty and sustainability can go hand in hand. From her editorial and campaign work to her ambassadorship for ethical brands, Poppy continues to influence the industry and it's inspiring to see how she balances artistry with responsibility and how her values translate into real impact on set. Thank you for listening.

53:34you