To me, the word movement brings to mind Martin Luther King Jr., not makeup. Marching throngs, impassioned voices, waves of righteous feelings that make us stand up taller, straighter, prouder. But the eight million dedicated viewers of Lauren Luke’s charming, quirky how-to beauty videos on YouTube may beg to differ.
There is something infectious about Luke, a 28-year-old single mom who lives with her son and her own mother in England. She’s a former taxi-cab dispatcher whose idea — to demonstrate makeup techniques on the internet using herself as a model — has turned her into a celebrity. Luke posted her first video on YouTube in 2007 under the user name Panacea81, and she now has her own makeup line, sold at Sephora, and more than 50 million page views to her name.
Surprised? Not if you’re Ben Barry, whose eponymous Toronto modelling agency specializes in “real people” and who is known for challenging the fashion and beauty industries’ status quo. “We’re at a total saturation point in our society,” he says. “Brands consistently over-promise, consumers are sick of it and they’re craving authenticity.” Luke is the real deal, adds Barry: “accessible and honest.” Her success is being hailed as a signal that a real-people movement in fashion and beauty marketing is taking hold.
Luke, with her enthusiasm, her zeal, her direct and utterly unaffected manner — all delivered in a fantastically thick, mucky northern-English accent — instantly reminds us of all that she’s not: professional marketer, snotty beauty queen, intimidating cosmetics clerk. You have to see her in action as she babbles excitedly to the camera about a particular colour palette, apologizes for the occasional glitch — “Sorry about that, me camera cut off” — and shoos her 11-year-old son, Jordan, out of her untidy, girlish bedroom. It’s a world away from glossy makeup ads, and that’s exactly the point.
