The Charisse Report

This week’s guest is Lily Twelftree, a Junior Marketer and part-time graphic design student based in Sydney, Australia who has an amazing ability to analyse trends in beauty and then make them make sense to the rest of us. I can’t remember how I first found her account, Barefaced Media , but she was an instant follow, as her approach to analysis really appealed to my own inner nerd. Since we recor...

This week it’s a guest interview with New York-based makeup artist and all-round creative Ehlie Luna . For me Ehlie was the perfect guest for an episode that's all about evolving and finding your voice. She first came onto the show in May 2021 , and at the time she was adjusting to taking a break from working in makeup for the New York City Ballet, and had thrown herself into full-time content cre...

As promised on Instagram, in this episode I'm going to go through the stunning September issue of British Vogue , with THE supermodel, Linda Evangelista on the cover. For this shoot, the Canadian super reunited with equally iconic photographer Steven Meisel, to create some truly fantastical images. But, as a photographer and a Linda fan, I've been torn about this shoot. Because while Linda looks s...

This week I’m diving into three key beauty stories that have basically annoyed a lot of us, or, if not you, me! The three stories I’m focusing on are a shady aesthetician who Photoshopped an actress from Stranger Things to look 'prettier', the toxic beauty standards that Tyra Banks and her America’s Next Top Model team fed to us back in the 2000s and the Bali Body self-tanner that’s allowing white...

This week I’m sharing my favourite products that keep my skin glowing all over, all year round. I know for a lot of people, glowing limbs and collarbones are only really a thing when the summer months roll around but for me, as someone with brown skin, it’s always been about enhancing my skin tone. Just this week I started to see the Autumn press releases coming in - and I got my first Christmas b...

This week I really wanted to share three podcasts that influence me every single week; Jay Shetty's On Purpose , fashion designer Recho Omondi's The Cutting Room Floor and Maintenance Phase , an anti -wellness show hosted by Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes.  While Jay Shetty inspires me to grow and create the life I want, Maintenance Phase is the podcast that makes me question everything hea...

Something a bit different this week! All throughout the pandemic lockdowns I kept hearing more and more about various types of personality tests. Everyone seemed to be talking about INFJs and ENTJs or whether they were a number 4 with a Bear wing and I had NO clue what was going on! More recently, one of my favourite YouTubers, Hindz did a personality test on his channel and I started to think tha...

Few people have made as much of an impact on the beauty industry, at just 21 years old, as Hannah Harris. The Florida-born creative launched a ground-breaking Instagram account in the summer of 2020 and nothing was the same again when it came to diversity in the beauty industry. The account @browngirlhands showed brands what they hadn't been showing and since that moment, Hannah has become known a...

This week’s guest is someone I’ve wanted to have on for a while now and Ashley Nelson, AKA Restroom Rituals was worth the wait. Ashley has built up a 13k Instagram following since launching her irreverent and honest profile just two years ago; a fact that I find unbelievable as Ashley was so clearly destined to be very public-facing, but I've also learned that she likes to keep her social and pers...

This week’s guest is one of the UK’s original hair bloggers and award-winning wig maker, Gina Knight – you might know her as Gina The Wig Witch , and if you’ve been on the internet for a while , you might have known her as Naturalbelle. Based in Reading, UK, Gina has been blogging since 2008 and launched her wig design company in 2016 as a way to support her love for creating content built on comm...

Note: I know I shared on social that this week's episode was going to be with a guest but the audio came out really poor. So, I’ve been thinking about the concept of retouching lately and I’ve been wondering, as a photographer, beauty writer and consumer, do we really need it?  When Photoshop was first launched by Adobe in 1990, the founders thought it might sell a few hundred copies a month but t...

This week’s guest is New York-based Jennifer G. Sullivan , a beauty journalist with 20+ years experience and the co-host of one of the biggest beauty podcasts EVER, Fat Mascara . Alongside Jessica Matlin (Director of Beauty at luxury online retailer Moda Operandi ) Jenn started Fat Mascara back in 2016. More than 400 episodes later they have this really balanced approach to discussing the beauty i...

This week’s episode is all about SPF; in some ways it's kind of a follow-up to the two sunscreen episodes I did last year, which I'll share below. I'm talking about six sunscreens that are new (to me) and giving my honest, real reviews on each of them. Two of these were gifted and I bought the other four and I definitely found a couple of new favourites! So, I'm sharing my thoughts on Fenty's Hydr...

Back in January 2021 I invited TikTok creator Sonia Valencia onto the show . At that point Sonia was already known for creating no BS content that centred on her being over 40 and wanting to experiment with skincare and play with makeup. She became known for her very real and honest reviews on social media and occasionally, you’d hear her swear. In that episode, number 61, we spoke a lot about Son...

This week I’m talking about sleep hygiene and how it influences not only the quantity and quality of our sleep, but also the quality of our work, relationships and more. In this episode I'll explain what sleep hygiene is and share some advice from the experts while also acknowledging how there are some counter arguments when it comes to just how damaging lack of sleep might be. I also speak with D...

After two weeks of being ill I’ve had a lot of time to read, to listen to podcasts and watch documentaries I’ve always wanted to see and it got me thinking about the concept of lessons. I think, since the pandemic hit, we’ve leaned way more into self help - it used to be something that people might cringe at or feel like they couldn't take about. But after living under huge amounts of stress over...

This week it’s a new Meet the Founder episode, and if you don’t already know, Meet the Founder always takes place first on Instagram Live. As such you will discover that the editing is minimal, but my guest’s advice makes it all worth it. April 2021 wouldn't be the most obvious time to start a new beauty business, but for San Francisco born and bred Fiona Co Chan , it made total sense. With a back...

TW: Before I share details of this episode please be aware that we briefly mention suicide and abuse, so if that could be upsetting please feel free to listen to a different episode. This week’s guest is content creator and licensed therapist Funmi Monet . While the Dallas, Texas-based creator has become known as TikTok’s ‘fave fragrance Aunty’ - she has over 200 perfumes in her collection - we en...

This week’s episode is a Shop my Stash episode; I feel like it's so easy to constantly scroll and buy makeup on social media platforms, often without really thinking and definitely not needing that new lipstick or blush. So I decided to open up my makeup stash and pick up the things that I sometimes take for granted but ultimately always go back to. It's a complete coincidence that this goes out o...

This week’s guest is someone I’ve admired from afar for a very long time. While I can’t remember when or how I first discovered Navaz Batliwalla’s writing, I’ll always remember how much I love/d the name of her blog – Disneyrollergirl . London-based Navaz is a writer who’s serious about her research (thank goodness!) and she loves to dive into a subject and write about the culture behind specific...

This week’s episode has been a while in the making and it all started with a voice note. My friend, beauty editor Ava Welsing-Kitcher , who recently moved to the US, told me how popular the UK Black Girl makeup look was becoming on TikTok and that I needed to take a look. A few hours later and I was hooked; not just on the makeup style itself, which we'll go into in this episode, but I loved the s...

This week it’s the episode that almost didn’t happen! I’ve been working on an episode that I think is going to be amazing, but when the time came to record it I was in bed with the worst period-related exhaustion. However, I still really wanted to check in with you, so this episode is kind of a catch up with my week.  Leading on from that feeling of exhaustion, I start by discussing how women...

This week it’s another Deep Dive and it’s a super specific episode dedicated to Nanoblur . Nanoblur is an award-winning product from the brand Indeed Labs and although it’s been around since 2011, it’s definitely seen a huge resurgence since Donni Davy , the head makeup designer on the MASSIVE show Euphoria , said that Nanoblur was a must on set. In this episode, as well as looking at how Donni an...

This week my guest is Natasha Maldonado , Video Marketing Manager at beauty mecca Sephora and freelance makeup artist. Born and bred in Los Angeles, Natasha is someone I’ve been following for a while because I love the insights she shares into her cultural background as a Latina. A major theme that came through in this interview was family; it's clear that Natasha's parents have had a major influe...

This week’s episode is all about Glossier; how it started and how it's going! If you've kept up with the beauty headlines lately, you'll know that on January 26th Glossier laid off a third of its staff, almost completely from its tech department. Of course the beauty and finance worlds instantly started speculating; what could be next? The Business of Fashion even did a whole webinar discussing 't...