Victoria Curtis was born into beauty.
Having a long line of hairdressers and make-up artists in her family you could say that make-up was in Victoria’s blood and her future was already written. After high school following her father’s advice, Victoria went to university and completed a business degree majoring in accounting and marketing. During her time at university she was offered, and accepted, a scholarship to study in California where she met several make-up manufacturers.
Throughout these formative years Victoria never lost sight of her ultimate dream by retaining her passion for all forms of make-up. She accepted a position at L’Oreal Australia in their marketing department, creating marketing material for their professional product section. This position saw her constantly on the road visiting salons, helping her to build up a wealth of knowledge. These experiences led her to see a gap in the market for salon quality, high end, luxurious make-up.
From this Victoria slowly began developing her own brand and in 2010 her namesake make-up range – Curtis Collection by Victoria – was born. She started out formulating products for her own skin issues which she then started using on her local clients in Brisbane. Now, four years on, Curtis Collection by Victoria has blossomed to over 100 stockists in Australia and New Zealand alone. Victoria stated that, ironically, she is now working in the same industry, giving support to the same types of businesses and carrying that big brand mentality.
Victoria had envisioned creating beautiful products that a salon would be proud to display. But her brand is more than just make-up. It offers a wider range of beauty solutions, which cater for the concerns of the everyday woman and making their life effortless by prescribing make-up for their skin needs, issues or problems. This strategy is essential to setting her brand and products apart from competitors. Her products are designed with natural ingredients which benefit your skin requirements giving your skin the hydration and attention it needs. Her mineral products support skin health and results will be seen a whole lot quicker, even working hand in hand with other beauty therapies or treatments.
The Curtis Collection is known in the industry for its signature glow. The particles in the mineral base foundation are activated by light, hiding those imperfections and flaws and giving your skin that glowing, flawless look that we all wish to achieve. Creating this look Victoria suggests using the pour perfection primer, colour corrector making your skin nice and smooth then mixing the radiant glow illuminator with foundation and finishing with an illuminator pen, using it under your cheek bones and eyes to minimize those dark circles and highlighting the areas to give a elevated youthful look. The top three products she cannot live without are – the pour perfecting face primer, which can be warn alone; the Radiant glow Illuminator; and the Brown definer that with one coat across your brows gives you sixteen hours of wear and can even be warn in water.
Curtis Collection will continue to explore new opportunities and plan to expand globally into new, emerging markets. Victoria’s advice for future entrepreneurs is to work hard. Nothing ever comes easy. Make sure you really love what you’re doing, maintain the passion, do plenty of research and be well informed of the market you are going to enter and know your products. This ultimately makes your journey a whole lot easier by building relationships with people that can relate to your story and your experience, making it easy to generate back to your brand. Her last piece of advice is to have a lot of patience. Those little decisions that you make along the way will help you to achieve your bigger picture.
This summer’s make-up look that will be gracing the runways, It fashion sites and faces of red carpet celebrities it’s firstly all about the fresh face, natural glow giving that effortless just rolled out of bed look that we all wish to achieve in 2 items or less. Secondly, for a bold bright lip, think fuchia’s, blood orange and bright red. Lastly, it’s all about the defined eyebrows that are seen on the likes of Lilly Collins and Cara Delevingne. They are here to stay ladies.