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LA is such a melting pot that it was a little bit of a culture shock when I started traveling for my job. Being surrounded by people from all backgrounds has always just been my norm, but I’ve been to some states where there aren’t people who look like me. It made me realize how fortunate I was to grow up in a place that’s so diverse and so welcoming. I’ve always known that beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, and forms.
The way I got into makeup is something that would only happen in Los Angeles. While I was getting my degree, I got a part-time job at the MAC counter. One day, Hailee Steinfeld came in. She gave me an opportunity to do her makeup while she was on tour, and that’s how I got my foot in the door. Had it not been for that job and for her, who knows where I’d be now.
I’ve seen so many people showing up for one another in the beauty community this week. The makeup artist Grishan Roof—who goes by Depot Chopra on Instagram because she depots products to make them easier to use—is building out kits for artists that have lost theirs. It takes years and years to build these kits—to find brushes and eye shadows and products you love. I know so many people that have been donating items to her.
In a time where the world feels super divided, it is so beautiful to see the outpouring of love that’s going on right now. Every time I go online, I’m crying—either from such incredible sadness or from happiness that someone is getting the help they need. As devastating as it all is, it’s also so beautiful to see everyone come together.”
Andrew Fitzsimons, hairstylist and founder of Andrew Fitzsimons Hair
“I moved to Los Angeles in 2017 after living in New York for five or six years. In New York, there’s a lot of pride in how hard everything is. There’s a friendly but begrudging attitude towards Los Angeles dwellers that’s like, ‘Why are their lives so sunshine-y and easy?!’ I kind of adopted that attitude automatically without ever having visited. And then once I came here, it was like that Sex and the City episode set in LA. You want to hate them, but you also want to be them.
As I started going to Los Angeles more for work, I realized how much it has to offer. You can go to downtown LA and feel like you’re in a major city, and then moments later you can be at the beach. I love that I can really curate my life here, that I can be around nature but still do my job. I’ve found community here. I’m an immigrant—I was born in Ireland—and immigrants usually find each other because we have a lot in common. My friend Mariana Marroquin immigrated from Guatemala and is the director of the Trans Wellness Center in LA, where we have an ongoing donation program for unused beauty and self-care items.
The backbone of California really is the immigrant population, specifically the Latinx community. There are millions of undocumented people who are frontline workers in the United States. In California, it’s the undocumented population that is growing food, picking food, packaging it… They’ve done the hardest thing in the world, which is to leave everything and go to a strange land to make sure they can help their families survive.
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