MICHELE WILSON

The former lawyer ditched corporate life to cater to women excluded by traditional beauty brands.

Catering to excluded women.

In an era of the beauty industry looking to promote diversity and inclusion, Kiwi entrepreneur Michele Wilson admits feeling uneasy about the reducing of such important concepts into trends and buzzwords. “Let’s first take a moment to appreciate how racist a world we must have lived in when it wasn’t cool to be represented, included or diverse,” says the 36-year-old founder of period-proof underwear company, AWWA, and skincare company Frankie Apothecary. For brands, she says, the key to meaningful progress is not thinking about diversity as a “buzzword”, and instead prioritising it at every single business juncture, with clear, actionable steps. “There is still nowhere near enough representation in beauty,” she says. “I want to see 50 per cent women of colour at least, and other queer people so that I personally feel heard and valid as a consumer.”

As a queer Māori, a lifelong feeling of being left out of the beauty conversation fuels Wilson’s apprehension about the token gestures held up by brands as proof of their investment in diversity. “As someone whose voice has been excluded countless times, I am cynical,” she says. “I can’t help but think many of these brands don’t really care, they’re just appointing someone to try to make it look like they care,” she says.

Not fitting the narrow mould of Western beauty standards has given Wilson an unapologetic approach to beauty, which comes down to the way she feels on any given day, rather than how others will perceive her.

“Sometimes I feel the most beautiful in my trackies and a ponytail. I feel just as empowered running a board room meeting in this attire knowing I’m the boss and don’t need to try to look the part based on traditional ‘accepted’ standards of what a CEO should look like.”

Wilson never set out to become involved in the beauty industry herself, but after nine years working in corporate law, she felt “like something was missing”. “After having two daughters, I suffered from postnatal depression and felt extremely disconnected to my true self.” She gave up law and found a path towards healing through rongoā Māori – the art of ancient medicine and healing – which led to her establishing Frankie Apothecary and its best-selling kawakawa-infused skincare. “After many vivid dreams of walking through the ngahere (forest) with my tipuna (ancestors), I began to take these walks in real life and fell in love with how connecting with the bush made me feel.”

In 2019, Wilson sold Frankie Apothecary to focus on AWWA, where she is continuing to reclaim the knowledge and practices of her ancestors that were lost to colonisation, looking at beauty, health and wellbeing as something deeply connected to the land. “Ultimately, the knowledge that we all come from Papatūānuku (the earth) and will all again one day return to her brings a new kind of awareness about how we care for ourselves and the earth,” she says.

“I CANT HELP BUT THINK MANY OF THESE BRANDS DON’T CARE.”