Make-Up Mogul Huda Kattan Admits Her Obsession Over the Duchess of Sussex

"She's naturally beautiful"

Posted on

29 January 2019

All credits: PA

The blogger and founder of her eponymous brand talks candidly...

Snuggled under a silky silver blanket on a curved couch in an extremely posh London hotel suite, dark eyes sparkling and glossy waves bouncing as she talks, Huda Kattan is every bit as glamorous and gregarious in person as she appears to her 30 million (and rising) Instagram followers.

On a visit to the capital to promote her latest creation, Kayali perfume, the Dubai-based beauty blogger turned brand founder is loving the festive feeling in the city.

“I honestly want to move here. I love it so much,” she says, rainbow-hued nails glinting as she gestures enthusiastically.

And with the Huda Beauty company she founded in 2013 – after training as a make-up artist and starting a blog three years earlier – bringing in an estimated £158 million a year (according to Forbes), a UK move isn’t just a pipe dream for its CEO.

“We opened our office in LA, and we opened our office in the UK, and then our main office is in Dubai, so I really think I’m going to have homes in all those locations.”

From the outside, the 35-year-old leads an incredibly luxurious and exciting lifestyle, but Kattan insists that isn’t the case. “Are you going to be disappointed if I tell you I’m a boring person? I’m a boring person, I swear!” she says, before listing her activities for the next week, which include a day-long board meeting in Dubai (“Not fun”), a circus-themed staff Christmas party, a team building trip to the desert and Eva Longoria’s Global Gift Gala.

“I guess I’m not that boring!” she admits, “but in the evening, I really chill out. I like to spend time with my daughter (six-year-old Nour Giselle), and we’re usually just in bed, watching TV or snuggling.”

Today she’s on work duty, however, so we took the opportunity to grill the jet-set CEO on all things Huda Beauty…

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A post shared by Huda Kattan (@hudabeauty) on Oct 24, 2018 at 10:19am PDT

Your new fragrance collection, Kayali, is the first sub-brand for Huda Beauty, why did you decide to position it that way?

“It’s so funny, because everybody was just like, ‘What are you doing? It should just be a Huda Beauty fragrance!’.

“But if it’s a Huda Beauty fragrance it’s going to be limited in the packaging, it’s going to be limited in the bottle shape, and all those things.

“Kayali is a completely new entity, has a completely different DNA, it has a completely different story.”

Eva Longoria was one of your first clients as a make-up artist, do you ever do her make-up nowadays?

“Sometimes. You know, it’s so funny, I saw her the day before she gave birth. She was like, ‘You know, I’m going into labour tomorrow, do you want to come over?’

“And I went over to her house and was like, ‘Let me do your make-up, before you go into labour’. And she was like, ‘I don’t want to’. And I was like, ‘Let’s just do it!’

“And she asked me to do her make-up on one of the days we had a Christmas party. I just like to mess around with her. She’s so much fun.”

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A post shared by Huda Kattan (@hudabeauty) on Jun 17, 2018 at 11:42pm PDT

Kim Kardashian is often credited with helping promote the first ever Huda Beauty product, lashes. Are you guys friends now?

“Yeah, we know each other. She reached out to me when she first started her make-up line and we had lunch and she was lovely.

“But, you know, we’re very different people. I think people used to compare us in the beginning, because she wore a little bit of a Middle Eastern style of make-up.

“It was funny, because people were like, ‘Oh my gosh, you kind of look like Kim’, and I didn’t like being compared to somebody else. But I guess if it was going to be her, I couldn’t be that mad, you know? She was a beauty icon. She’s just as beautiful in person. And very sweet.”

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A post shared by Hairstylist + Brand Founder (@jenatkinhair) on Aug 13, 2017 at 7:32am PDT

You’re a beauty icon yourself for your millions of followers – who are your beauty icons and have they changed over the years?

“I always loved Sophia Loren as a kid. I’m a big fan of the Sixties and Brigitte Bardot. I don’t feel like my icons have changed over the years, I always just love the Sixties.

“I definitely am inspired now more by the Nineties than I was before. I’ve been super into, like Mean Girls and Clueless, and before it was actually trendy!”

What do you think of the Duchess of Sussex’s make-up style?

“I love her! I just think she’s naturally beautiful, I’m obsessed with her. I love just in general her hair, her face, her make-up. She’s really light with her make-up. I like that she just looks flushed, and her skin looks healthy.”

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A post shared by Huda Kattan (@hudabeauty) on Nov 17, 2018 at 9:05am PST

Are there any beauty trends from 2018 that you think have gone too far?

“Yeah, definitely the crazy brows. There’s a lot on Instagram that people do just for the sake of doing them.

“People are getting very artistic now, with the trends, and they’re drawing full canvasses on their face. It’s beautiful, but I would never wear it out.”