Black women are taking the beauty industry by storm. Between vlogging, blogging, Instagram, and YouTubing, they can do it all. With women of color, we often face challenges when finding the perfect foundation, concealer, powders, and even lip shades that complement our skin tones.
Black beauty influencers have helped a lot of brands and individuals tremendously by contributing to brands like Too Faced, Nars, Colourpop, Maybelline and many many more. Not only do they give them what the consumers are looking for, but they also help brands receive more revenue and customers. There are many black influencers on social media, but we are going to shed light on three amazing females that are growing their brand every day. Alissa Ashley, Aaliyah Jay, and Jackie Aina are well known in the beauty community. They all have a passion for beauty, however, they are all different in their own way.
Alissa Ashley (@alissa.ashley) is a well-known YouTuber that started her channel in January 2014 and accumulated 1.8 million subscribers and over 75 million channel views over the past 5 years. People love her because of her soft voice and bubbly personality. She is well known for her short cut icy blonde hair and having an identical twin sister, Arnell, who also has a YouTube channel. Before living the YouTube life, she was a MAC Cosmetics makeup consultant from Oakland, California. Later she decided that that wasn’t the route she wanted, so she committed full time to YouTube and has been blowing up since then. She has teamed up with so many brands like Too Faced and even did a collaboration with NYX, where they released 45 shades of foundation. Alissa stated, “I am someone who has to constantly mix different shades to match my skin tone. When developing this new range we found that if we mixed two together or tweak it by adding a slight undertone, we could get those in-between shades,” Makeup users loved the foundation and it still on shelves for purchase at local drugstores and Ulta.
Aaliyah Jay (@aaliyahjay) is another YouTuber that I am sure a great amount of you all have heard of or even subscribe to. She started her channel in November of 2011 and has raised 1.2 million subscribers and over 85 million channel views. She is best known for her amazing lace fronts, sharp eyeliner, and saying the famous line, “she wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t me”. Before taking Youtube serious, she was born in Boston, MA then migrated to Brooklyn, NY where she would post fun videos of her friends singing and dancing, as well as vlogs. Who knew that later in life it would become her career. Fast forward to now, she gained a huge following, which led her to collaborate with many brands, travel to different places, and even granted her the honor of doing her favorite rap artist, Nicki Minaj’s makeup. Not only does she collab with amazing high-end brands, but she also loves working with drugstore brands. She uses them daily and promotes them to her audience, where not everyone can afford a small $40 foundation. In 2019, she has launched her very first merch line that consists of t-shirts, hoodies, sweats, and phone cases. This year she has many amazing things in store for her fans and we are all excited to see what more she has to offer.
Jackie Aina (@jackieaina) is a Nigerian-American YouTuber and is the face for African Americans in the beauty industry. She is best known for telling it like it is and being very honest. She is an OG when it comes to YouTube! She started her channel in March of 2006 and has almost 3 million subscribers and more than 237 million channel views. She changes the standard for beauty with every post and video she makes. Her personality lights up whatever room she walks in and people can really relate to her. Years ago she was in the army reserves in Hawaii and was only just playing around in makeup, but everyone around her kept suggesting she start a channel. Who knew where playing around could get you? Now she is an advocate for dark skin women and is making sure that they get the respect that they definitely deserve. In her videos, she would talk about things that other influencers wouldn’t want to speak about like colorism in the beauty industry and why was there no kind of diversity at all. Therefore, convincing brands to branch out and add more shades for darker individuals. It is safe to say that she is a huge inspiration for darker women and persuaded them to even start their own channels, to network online and get their voices heard.