Alumni
Beauty Grad Launches Lady St. Lucia
Beauty Industry Merchandising & Marketing Graduate Angela Cho has launched Lady St. Lucia, an affordable line of cruelty-free luxury mink eyelashes. There are currently two collections of lashes, BAROQUE (more dramatic) and ROCOCO (more subtle), as well as an adhesive. We recently caught up with Angela to learn more about her Riverside, California-based e-commerce business.
What led you to start Lady St. Lucia? I started the company because of my realization of my obsession for eyelashes. Because I was not gifted with the luxury of natural eyelashes, they had become my best friend for many years. But mostly, it was overall my passion for cosmetics and the industry; having my own brand of anything that had to do with make up was a dream of mine since I was 13 or 14 years old.
How did FIDM help prepare you for your career as a beauty entrepreneur? I was preparing to go to cosmetology school after high school graduation because I was interested in cinematic makeup, but when the FIDM rep came to our school, I knew right away that I would be attending FIDM instead of cosmetology school. I've always known that I wanted to be my own boss, so I knew attending FIDM was going to help me reassure that pursuing a career in cosmetics was something I was meant for. FIDM has educated me and helped me gain some in-depth knowledge about my industry and literally schooled me on everything I needed to know.
Tell us about your history working in the beauty world. When I was a student at FIDM, my first job was for a company called Pure Beauty. After I graduated in 2003, I developed a raw material ingredient called "Mother of Pearl" (calcium carbonate) that was generally used in spa products (it was the first of its kind to have been registered with INCI from what I've been told). I've also worked for Too Faced Cosmetics HQ as the assistant to the VP. One of the most awesome jobs I had until a few years ago was working in a lab and compounding skin and hair products for clients (under a former FIDM instructor). When we partnered up with a nail polish factory, I then became head of the "color department" where I formulated nail polish for the factory. I had the opportunity to work on projects such as Sephora + Pantone Collection. I formulated their colors for 2013 and 2014 and I've also had the opportunity to create polishes and bid on projects for companies like Disney, Marc Jacobs, and Sephora's exclusives.
We heard you hired a FIDM Student Intern at Lady St. Lucia. Her name is Alexis Alcala, and I found her via the Career Center. Working with her actually led us to another student, Beauty major Victoria Hoang, who is serving as a brand ambassador/influencer for us.
Where do you see the future of Lady St. Lucia headed? I see us expanding into the full range of color cosmetics, cosmetics accessories, and getting into department stores or retailers like Sephora and possibly even our own retail stores someday. We may develop sub-brands or sister companies that can expand into anything that directly caters to or serves the needs of anything we can consider a "lifestyle," eventually.
Categories: Beauty Marketing & Product Development Alumni Careers
