Inside Isamaya Ffrench’s Manifesto for the Future of Beauty

Every era has a beauty visionary who forces the industry to look in the mirror and see something new. For this one, that person is Isamaya Ffrench. She’s the makeup artist creative directors whisper about when they want work that doesn’t look like makeup at all. Her images sit somewhere between sculpture and sin: cold chrome skin, vinyl lashes, flesh painted to look both fragile and fearless.

Born in Cambridge in 1989, Ffrench grew up in the English countryside, nowhere remotely near the beauty capitals that would later become her stomping ground. As a child, she found Kevyn Aucoin’s Making Faces (1997) in a local bookshop, which, in turn, helped her see makeup not as decoration but as a tool of transformation. “Even though his work was about glamour and perfection,” Ffrench recalls, “it felt like true empowerment—the kind that allowed women to become more of who they really are.”

Ffrench began her career far from the makeup counters and fashion schools that usually feed the industry. She studied 3D design at Chelsea College of Art in London, painted faces at children’s parties for pocket money, and joined a performance collective that treated the body as a moving canvas. The art world came first, beauty came later. That’s the difference. When she began working with i-D and Dazed, Ffrench was painting faces and bodies for editorials that treated makeup as sculpture, merging performance art with fashion imagery. What followed were collaborations with Burberry, Vivienne Westwood, Byredo, and Thom Browne—each one an experiment in what a face could express if freed from the obligation to please. “My approach has been to explore the vast, ever-changing world of beauty, understand its limitations and challenge them,” she says.

In 2022, Ffrench did something few artists have managed: she built her own universe. Isamaya Beauty didn’t enter the luxury space quietly. The debut collection, ‘Industrial,’ was a collision of latex, metal and subculture. The packaging cued artefacts from a future where beauty is armour. It made sense that she didn’t sell lipsticks; she sold objects, stories, and a point of view. Three years later, as beauty is undergoing a paradigm shift, her work feels less like rebellion and more like prophecy.

THE ARTIST AS ARCHITECT

Ffrench’s unique approach is defined by how she sees the role of makeup itself. “Makeup is what pigments are to a painter or a chisel to a sculptor,” she says. “If you use red as a block of colour, it’s just colour. But if you use it as a wash that mimics eyes that have cried, it becomes emotion. It’s no longer about the pigments; it’s about emotion and storytelling.”

That idea – beauty as storytelling rather than ornament – is what distinguishes her. Seldom going for a symmetrical finish, she paints to reveal what’s underneath. Her references come from product design, anatomy, and performance art rather than the beauty aisle. It’s why a single look can come across as both holy and alien.

Ffrench’s work rejects the idea of provocation as a gimmick. “I don’t choose to provoke,” she says emphatically. “But ‘pretty’ is one-dimensional. I want to explore deeper ideas.” What makes her dangerous is her calm. There’s no outrage in her defiance. She simply refuses to shrink something complex into something palatable.

INDUSTRIAL GLAMOUR

When Isamaya Beauty launched, latex tubes, Metal Balms, and packaging that felt heavy in the hand, became the language. The first collection – Industrial – gave luxury beauty an edge it rarely attempts. The latex mascara, the sculptural eyeshadow compacts, the anatomical lipsticks—each object carried her fingerprints in concept and in form.

But beneath the spectacle was precision. “I’m obsessed with performance; it just has to work,” she insists. Her formulas are serious. Ffrench spends months developing textures that move with skin, shades that sit exactly where they should. “Why can’t you have a high-quality product in equally high-quality packaging? I’m not into compromise.” That combination of function and storytelling is what makes Isamaya Beauty rare. Who wants art for art’s sake, when you can have art that performs?
When asked which product she still reaches for, her answer is immediate. “The Metal Balms,” she says. “They’re rich, hydrating, and add coolness to whatever else you’re wearing. The library could host endless variations.”

Ffrench’s creative philosophy has redefined what luxury can look like in beauty. That it doesn’t always have to be the quiet restraint of beige minimalism; it could also be the audacity of self-invention. Where most brands try to calm the consumer, hers challenges them to feel something visceral.

THE CULT SHE DIDN’T MEAN TO CREATE

The brand’s following is unlike any other in beauty. Accountants in Luxembourg slick on Metal Balm before meetings, German students go full alien glam for parties, and grandmothers in Norfolk collect Isamaya Beauty lipsticks like sculptures. “If that isn’t the coolest thing, I don’t know what is,” she laughs.

Ffrench chooses to ignore the demographics and designs by instinct. Her consumers share a love of contradiction; they want something that unnerves before it seduces. In that sense, she represents the new definition of luxury: niche yet accessible, challenging yet deeply personal.

What’s remarkable is that Ffrench built this community without pandering. No slogans, no filters, no relatable campaigns. Just a conviction that intelligence and sensuality can coexist in beauty.

INDIA AND ISAMAYA

Our country has one of the youngest beauty audiences in the world—curious, expressive, and perpetually online. Yet so much of our beauty still clings to the rules: the right contour, the right undertone, the right way to be seen. When I ask how she’d want an Indian woman to interact with an Isamaya Beauty product, her response is immediate. “Forget the rules,” she says. “Forget the ‘right’ way to apply a lip liner or contour a face. What works on others is not important; it’s about what’s powerful to her.”

That sentiment feels particularly relevant here. The future of beauty won’t be decided by algorithms or aesthetics; it will be built by those willing to disrupt them. In a country where beauty can feel governed by an external gaze, Ffrench’s message of autonomy lands like liberation.

THE LAST WORD

Ffrench’s closing thought lingers long after our conversation ends. “The power seems to have changed hands,” she says. “People are coding their own aesthetics. There’s space for contradiction, rebellion, and constant reinvention. That’s where I want to live.”

It’s fitting that she calls her brand Isamaya Beauty, owning the sense of authorship that comes with it. She’s saying ciao to the fantasy of perfection, and instead, offering a blueprint for freedom—one Metal Balm, one latex tube, one idea at a time.

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