Inside Diary of a Beauty Junkie
If you’re a nail polish fanatic, then you know that the one name that you can trace back to the nail color frenzy of the ’90s is Dineh Mohajer. The co-founder of Hard Candy brought color such as powder blue and dark almost-blacks to the mainstream, giving girls colors other than proper pinks and vampy reds. It’s hard to imagine a world without a rainbow of nail polish colors today, but without the work of Mohajer and her sister, who established Hard Candy together, we could still be stick in a sea of ballet pastels. Hard Candy is under new ownership now, but Mohajer is back in the world of color cosmetics with her latest line: Smith & Cult. And naturally, following in the footsteps of the revolutionary Hard Candy, it’s anything but ordinary.
Dineh Mohajer
“Smith & Cult differs from both Hard Candy and other beauty brands in that every aspect of the brand is derived from the Diary of our Beauty Junkie — basically me,” says Mohajer. “Women can’t help but relate to her – my – emotional connection to beauty and relate to the dualities we all inhabit throughout our lives, from triumph to tears, bliss to heartbreak, elegance to absurdity, and everything in between.”
Launched just last month, Smith & Cult draws from moments in Mohajer’s life. The collection, which will be in select salons and sold at New York’s C.O. Bigelow and online at Net-a-Porter.com, in addition to the polishes, the collection is accompanied by Diary of a Beauty Junkie, a photo diary that depicts the inspiration behind each shade.
“Because Smith & Cult is inspired by my life experiences and how my addiction to beauty is something that I will never recover from, I thought it was important to have a visual and narrative representation of this addiction,” adds Mohajer. “The images and stories in the diary allow me to share my experiences and hopefully create a more intimate connection with fellow beauty junkies.”
Selections from the Smith & Cult collection
The Smith & Cult range is housed in sculptural, round bottles with the brand’s signature script logo. And the colors inside? Because they’re inspired by various moments in Mohajer’s life, there’s everything from chunky glitters and even holographic shades right alongside traditional creams in deep, dark hues as well as light and airy shades. With each shade’s inspiration outlined in the Diary, fans of the line can choose a shade based on their mood or a connection they might feel with Mohajer’s own experiences.
“Diary of a Beauty Junkie captures my experiences and although I grew up in Michigan — I left when I was 18 years old — I have been an L.A. resident since then. It seems like forever,” says Mohajer. “This bizarre, beautiful city has deeply shaped my life. Each shade represents a different experience in my life – and many of those stories take place in L.A. It’s impossible for The City of Angels not to seep into every bottle.”
Smith & Cult Doe my Dear
And just like Hard Candy was known for boundary-pushing shades (though you won’t find those signature rubber rings adorning the bottles of Smith & Cult), the collection has something for even the most demure dames.
“Girls who are tip-toeing away from nudes and baby pinks will feel comfortable — no safe word required — experimenting with Doe my Dear, an opaque dove grey taupe,” suggest Mohajer. “The shade is both delicate and subversive while being universally flattering.”
Mohajer already has plans for the next phase of Smith & Cult: a line of lip glosses that’s set to launch next spring that she’s calling lip lacquer. And because she’s a self-describe beauty junkie, she won’t be sticking to just polish and pouts for long. The future of Smith & Cult is sure to be a colorful one, with the boundary-pushing products that Mohajer is known for (she is, after all, the inventor of such innovations as a pastel polish and glitter pencils).
“After we launch Smith & Cult’s lip lacquer line, I’m eager to get back into the lab and work on anything and everything makeup and beauty related,” said Mohajer. “I loved inventing the glitter eye pencil for Hard Candy and I am doomed to be passionate about working on the next generation of formulas, in every beauty category. I think aside from the formulation development, the art layouts, photography, story sharing and packaging design is paramount to me. I guess I just love all of it.”
For more information, visit www.smithandcult.com.
Images courtesy Smith & Cult
