Where are you girls from?
Georgina Hofmann hails from Melbourne, Australia and Nicole Lee is from Los Angeles, California.
How did you guys meet and create your brand?
Georgina and Nicole met on a camping trip where they bonded over their hatred for camping and love for all things beauty! A few years later Georgina came to Nicole talking about creating a nail pen and thus LAQA & Co was born.
When it came to packaging, how did you come to the conclusion of introducing other artists as well? Are they friends and colleagues?
Ultimately our goal with the line was to inspire women to express themselves through colour and beauty. To push the limits and not settle for anything less than the best. We also wanted to tie everything back to the artistic community and give back to that community in a real way. We loved the idea that our packaging was a platform for artists to be seen around the world. Exposing people to actual young artists and, hopefully, offering some alternative role models in the beauty industry.
Do you profile and promote each artist you include on your packaging?
Absolutely! We do a rotating artist spotlight on our website and we fully push editors to pick up the artist as a story angle. Which, for some reason is more difficult than one would think!
Your products have such eye-catching names! When you’re creating the next nail polish or lip pencil, how do you go about coming up with the names?
We’ve got a long list of slightly outlandish polish and lip names we consistently expand on. To be honest, a lot of them are slang our mothers and mother’s mother used to use. ie greedy guts, bossy boots…We try to keep it fun and light!
It seems like you guys are a tight-knit, fun team. What is your studio like on a day-to-day?
Busy! We’ve got a lot going on all the time and there’s just three of us now so we are constantly overwhelmed with things to do!
If you could sit and talk with any artist (fashion designer, musician, writer, etc.), dead or alive, who would it be and why?
Christopher Bailey, Burberry CEO. He brings together design, trend, commerce, and tech in a way that’s not been done before and creating a blue print for, what we think, brands will need to be in the future. Also, Karl Lagerfeld for all the sassy quotes!
What’s next for the brand, any thoughts of branching out into other beauty products?
YES YES YES! We are bringing out some really cool stuff for 2014…and even venturing into eye which we are really excited about. We’ve got a glossy lip lube pencil and dual ended nail pen that will enable subtle and sophisticated nail art in loads of fun new colors.