In 2017, Sharon Chuter came over and was in a Fashion Beauty breakfast. Within minutes, I felt like she was a beauty executive with years of experience in the industry, unlike anyone else in the room. Laser-centric, charming with a naughty glitter in her eyes, her beloved dog Leo sways on her arms or peeks out of Hermes’ bag. She spoke quickly – she could say a mile, but every word had weight. It seems like she is giving a (excellent) TED talk in real time: compelling, clear, and impossible not to listen. She told me that she was launching a beauty brand, which I often hear at work. But it feels different. This is Uoma Beauty, a brand with a radical, central left-wing technologically advanced approach. However, salon’s ambition is more than just having a beauty brand. She is an activist. A woman is on a mission to ensure that blacks are treated the same care and attention in beauty and everyone else, and that there is fairness in all. She won’t stop until she changes the beauty industry forever.
Not long after, when Uoma took shape, I started working closely with her. From late night calls on names and campaigns, to strategic meetings about positioning and storytelling, to connecting her with Selfridges and other retailers, I have had the honor of witnessing her vision. The salon is merciless. Nothing is superficial or performative. She asked every detail – every name, every texture, every shadow), a ruthless question: “Will this push us forward?”
Oh my god, she pushed it. When Uoma Beauty launched in 2019, it wasn’t just another debut on the bustling shelves of the oversaturated market. Uoma is destructive. Political. joy. It’s undoubtedly black.
While many brands touted “diversity” in smooth sports, the quietly released shade range starts with beige (or grey), the Salon delivered 51 foundations in six smartly calibrated recipes that cleverly calibrated the Fitzpatrick Scale, a digital classification, one that identifies six skin types for a deeper understanding of the skin. This is groundbreaking in itself. No one else has developed a foundation at this level of precision, innovation or ambition. She tested them everywhere and on everyone: during the meeting, drinks were made on the board at Soho House; she was always looking for perfection. For salons, foundations are more than just pigments. This is about accuracy, recognition, belongs to…
