The Brown Girl: Masaba Gupta Masaba and her eponymous beauty brand, LoveChild changed the beauty game over the last year by creating some of the absolute brown girl friendly beauty products.
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Masaba is one of the youngest fashion icons in the industry and the first Indian designer to have a series on her personal and fashion journey – Masaba Masaba on Netflix. Started her own eponymous women's wear label at the age of 19 –'House of Masaba'. The brand has forayed into beauty, fashion, jewellery, and many more segments, with a global presence.
Last year was great for Masaba Gupta as she not only launched her beauty brand LoveChild but also got married. When asked about the role of her husband in her business venture she says, "He's a Guinea pig for trying all my products. I remember when I launched the sunscreen and he's somebody who spends a lot of time outdoors. I asked him, what are the things that you would like in a sunscreen? For example, sweat resistance, and products that are generally not too heavy on your skin. They don't feel like you're wearing a layer on your skin as well. So all these things he's very helpful with."
The multi-hyphenate likes managing it all whether it's designing the beautiful prints, acting for her namesake or working on her beauty brand. Agreeing to it, she says, "I think I perform my best when I'm multitasking. I guess that's why I'm able to wear so many hats. But I think it's slowly changing. All of what I'm doing now is what I've been wanting to do for a long time. So now that most of it has happened, it's just about sustaining it and, sustenance is a very hard thing."
Patience is one thing that she has learnt over a period and sustains it for a long. As per her, "There's always going to be something that's not right. You may have done the best collection, but the market may not be good at that time. I think that you have to be ready for the fact that you have to prepare for failure a lot more than you like. You can be optimistic about the future, but you have to be very well prepared for what might go wrong."
Treading a new path has been her forte. When asked what she learnt from her mother and veteran actress Neena Gupta, she laughs saying, "Strangely, when I asked my mother the first time about acting, she said, don't ask me anything about acting. She said, learn on your own."
Interestingly her husband and a fellow actor had some words of wisdom for her, "Be yourself. If you are able to be yourself a hundred per cent, then be that. If not, keep all your guard up because nobody should enter your energy field. Somebody's gonna think you, you've got an opportunity ahead of your time or whatever. But you have to be very thick-skinned and very clear that you're here because of yourself."
Going forward, she aims to have some international presence offline by next year for LoveChild. Currently, the brand is retailing online across 75 countries.