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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Fashion Fair Cosmetics Makes a Bold Return With

Illuminating Doc, The Beauty of Blackness
Sephora, Digitas and Vox Creative tell the history of Black makeup at
Tribeca
By Natalie Venegas | June 17, 2022

The documentary follows the cosmetics line Fashion Fair into its 2021
relaunch under the direction of its current owners.
Credit: Digitas, Vox Creative, Sephora

In the late 1970s, long before today’s crowded beauty landscape, Johnson Publishing launched Fashion Fair
Cosmetics, successfully developing the first makeup line exclusively for Black and brown women. Now, the
beauty brand is back and with a new documentary that traces the history of Black beauty.

To call attention to the historical and still-persistent lack of fashion and beauty products made for and by people
of color, the brand partnered with Sephora, Digitas, Vox Creative, Ventureland and Epic Stories for The Beauty of
Blackness, a documentary film that premiered during Tribeca’s Film Festival on June 12. The collaboration
highlights the way brands are delivering personal connected experiences beyond digital campaigns while helping
to lift up Black founders and creators.

Directed by Tiffany Johnson and first-time director Kiana Moore, head of Vox Media’s Epic Digital, The Beauty of
Blackness explores the many obstacles Fashion Fair had to overcome during its journey, including combatting
the Eurocentric beauty standards within the beauty industry. The documentary continues to follow the
cosmetics line into its 2021 relaunch under the direction of its current owners, Desirée Rogers and Cheryl
Mayberry McKissack.

The film also features interviews with history experts, models, makeup artists, performers and other prominent
figures—including the legendary model Pat Cleveland—who have witnessed the evolution of the Black beauty
space and are continuing to redefine beauty standards for people of color.

“We are telling a story of a brand made for Black women, bought by two Black women and you cannot tell that
story through a white man’s lens—it had to be told by Black women, too, so that was important,” Abigail Jacobs,
senior vice president, integrated marketing and brand at Sephora, said at Tribeca.

“Stories are everything and for us the most interesting stories are not about us, they are about our customers,
our brands and brand founders. We have this incredible platform and we feel like we need to utilize our platform
to elevate the stories of underrepresented groups particularly in the beauty community. This was an entirely
new way to tell a story and this was a story that needed to be told in this way.”

Revolutionizing beauty

As part of its collaboration with Sephora and Vox Creative, creative agency Digitas has spent the last two years
shaping this film in order to deliver a personal experience for both brands and their consumers. For Mark Book,
head of content at Digitas North America, the idea to get into the documentary content space initially came from
the longevity needed to not only tell this story in this specific way, but to be able to reach more Gen Z
consumers.

“For us it was three frames of thinking, first on having that initial idea of a longer form of editorial content that
lives within a streaming platform,” Book told Adweek. “Then it was thinking about how we can translate that to
other places that have an impact past platforms like airplane programming that can show our documentary in a
way that other brands and their content may not be able to. Next was creating assets for press and PR that can
go into places that Gen Z consumers are in because even if they don’t see the film they understand that there is
a cultural impact to what Sephora is doing.”

The Beauty of Blackness has won the Tribeca X award in the feature film category and is available to view on
HBO Max’s streaming platform.

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