When celebrity makeup artist Fara Homidi launched her namesake beauty brand in 2023, she did it with the real makeup lovers in mind. “I wanted to make a brand that people can nerd out on,” she says. Homidi’s customers gravitate to her brand to recreate the makeup looks she’s done for Sabrina Carpenter and Kendall Jenner, or for brands like Loewe and Miu Miu: bronzed skin with a bold red lip, or sky blue eyeliner with matching eyeshadow.
It’s fitting, then, that Fara Homidi Beauty specializes in color cosmetics, carrying just six products for face, lip, and eyes. Prices reflect the brand’s luxury positioning, ranging from $78 for a bronzer to $46 for a plumping lip oil and $98 for an eyeshadow compact. It’s a “slow beauty” approach to the fast-paced, often trend-driven category, and in line with her aspirations to offer a luxury brand that fosters the same following as fashion fans might flock to a favorite designer. “Fashion houses all have a luxury standard for the ready-to-wear collectsions — every detail has been refined and they’re working with the best suppliers and artisans to create such products, but when it comes to the cosmetics, it feels commercialized,” says Homidi. “If you’re a person who loves Phoebe Philo, and follows every single thing that she puts out, I wanted [my brand] to feel like that.”
The brand won’t disclose exact figures, but says since June 2025, net sales have grown by 500%. “These numbers are the blueprint for our entry into Australia and New Zealand,” says Homidi. The brand is stocked at Sephora, Selfridges, Goop, Violet Grey, Moda Operandi, and Dover Street Parfums Market in Paris. Now, the brand is expanding its outreach to Australia and New Zealand with Mecca, Australia’s biggest beauty retailer.
The brand’s launch in Australia comes after a second round of an undisclosed sum of investment from private equity firm Sandbridge Capital, which first got involved with the brand in February 2025 to help it build up its team and develop its marketing and expansion plans into the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. This fresh investment will build on that, supporting research and development as the brand enters a category outside color cosmetics.
“It has been quite an ambitious year of growth for us. We went back to [Sandbridge] with amazing numbers and an expansion plan in terms of regions we’d like to grow in and products that we want to launch,” says Homidi, who is also CEO of her brand. “I’ve stayed away from saying we want to hit ‘X’ numbers by this time and this time. Being a global brand is of the most importance to me. Secondly, I just want forward growth and momentum in the way that we can continue to keep our standards as high as they are.”
The beauty market in Australia and New Zealand is heating up, with brands big and small traveling to tap new growth opportunities. In February, Hailey Bieber’s Rhode launched at Mecca, while last month, Amazon Australia announced it would be stocking more than 60 K-beauty brands including Cosrx, Mediheal, and Dr.Melaxin. Beauty brands founded by makeup artists have seen mixed success. Pat McGrath Labs filed for bankruptcy earlier this year (McGrath is now the creative director of La Beauté Louis Vuitton), while Charlotte Tilbury is a standout for parent company Puig, reaching €845 million in sales in 2025.
“Fara Homidi sits within a more selective cohort of artist-led brands that are building with discipline from the outset. What stands out is the combination of a tightly edited product universe, a strong creative identity, and early institutional backing that enables more considered scaling,” says Anna Sweeting, founder of The Equity Studio. “Artist-led brands do start with a genuine advantage, rooted in product, truth, and community.”
There’s a clear shift away from broad, rapid assortment expansion toward precision — fewer SKUs, higher intention, stronger margins. As New York-based Homidi plans to enter a new region backed by fresh capital, her plan to differentiate is to speak to consumers through a product assortment that puts luxury and sustainability first. In a crowded market, can she pull it off?
Beauty brands are exploring growth opportunities beyond the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Australia’s beauty and personal care market is forecasted to reach $10.25 billion by 2028, with color cosmetics on track to grow 19.08% to $1.81 billion at the same time, per Euromonitor. Mecca is the region’s go-to beauty retailer with over 100 stores across Australia and New Zealand stocking international brands from Charlotte Tilbury and Morphe to Tom Ford and Victoria Beckham Beauty.
Homidi has been waiting for the right time to enter Australia and New Zealand — it’s a region with a combined population of over 33.7 million, and requires special attention such as understanding its reversed seasons and the influence of the US.
The founder has been in talks with Mecca for a few years now, and her launch with other retailers has prepared her for this moment. “I didn’t want to take on more than I can chew. What’s worked in our favor is to be slow and steady,” says Homidi. “I don’t want to oversaturate any one market, and it’s important to have a presence in a market that’s very strategic about who’s representing you and telling your story. Mecca also felt like a partner that wasn’t in it just for the trend.” Mecca is Fara Homidi’s largest bricks-and-mortar rollout to date, and the retailer has invested a lot of time into the brand launch with two weeks worth of events, from workshops and talks to tutorials involving the founder.
The appetite for Fara Homidi in Australia and New Zealand came early, partly because the makeup artist has built up a portfolio working with the likes of Loewe, Miu Miu, Paloma Elsesser and Bella Hadid. The other reason is that her brand’s visual identity clicks with many Australians and New Zealanders that have grown around warm climates — her brand packaging is an eggshell blue resembling the sea, and many of her campaigns are centered around beaches and the ocean.
“They consume beauty differently over there, they want breathable and no-fuss products because of the climate they live in — and my products are finger-friendly, easy to apply and understand,” says Homidi. In February, the brand ventured into the eye category, which has since become its most successful launch, performing 30% above the Bronzer Collection that came to market last June.
In pursuit of luxury, Homidi has not compromised on the details, from the pigmentation of the makeup to the weight of the product itself. Her refillable compacts, starting from £74, weigh a little under a small paperweight and are made from recyclable metal with bioplastic created from 42% responsibly sourced tree material, according to the brand. In designing the products, Homidi thought a lot about the streamlined curves of a Porsche and its lacquered metal — at the same time, she didn’t want the compacts to feel so ornate or precious that customers wouldn’t want to take them out.
The inside of the products matter just as much to Homidi. She started her research by cold calling manufacturers and labs to explore costs and knowledge of how to kickstart a beauty brand. She also called on many of her industry contacts for advice. “A lot of it was working with labs that had a great reputation, but that were also willing to take a chance on me based on my name in the artistry world and them seeing a future with the brand because of that,” Homidi says. The products are all vegan, made between Italy and Japan without the use of silicones or talc.
Bringing out a clean beauty brand that was easy to use, but still had her makeup artistry touch was on top of Homidi’s to-do list — she’s often asked by beauty enthusiasts how they can achieve the makeup looks from her editorial work. “I try to use both brains — as an artist and consumer — every time I create something. I ask myself, does this speak to an everyday consumer? Does this speak to an artist? How do I make it user-friendly?” she says.
Fara Homidi’s largest market across wholesale and direct-to-consumer (DTC) is the US, with the UK currently the brand’s second largest market followed by the EU and the rest of the world. At Mecca, the brand will be in 50 stores across Australia and New Zealand. The brand anticipates that the region will become one of its highest-performing markets.
The brand’s customer is a mature one with millennials and baby boomers taking the big piece of the pie. “That makes sense to me. They see our products as an investment and we do have young customers, but it’s the older crowd who understand us a bit more,” says Homidi.
Looking ahead, Homidi wants to stay steady by catering to the brand’s current markets, but still dreams of further expansion. The Middle East is on the top of her wishlist, having gained attention from tourists shopping abroad. “They’ve heard of us, and they’re excited that they can purchase it when on their vacations or when stopping by our space, specifically because the name is stopping them in their tracks,” says Homidi, who was born in Afghanistan and moved to California at the age one.
As the business scales, Homidi is making sure that her attention is divided between building the brand and her artistry work within the fashion industry. “[Working as a makeup artist] is my home base and I always want to keep that strong,” she says. “Secondly, any instrument can get rusty if you don’t continue to hone that skill and you’re not in front of these fresh ideas that are happening behind the scenes, which eventually become mainstream almost two years down the road.”
