Poppy King is an internationally renowned trend spotter, color expert, and innovative business leader. At the age of eighteen, Poppy started Poppy Industries, when she could not find the type of lipstick she wanted. After ten years at the helm of her own company, she went on to become vice president for creative marketing at Prescriptives. Today, Poppy lives in New York City and has recently launched a new line of lipsticks, Lipstick Queen, available at fine retailers such as Barneys, Holt Renfrew, and Space NK. For more information visit www.lipstickqueen.com.
Girl meets boy. Boy falls for girl’s best friend. Girl embraces her unique beauty and starts a world-renowned cosmetics company. It might not be the most conventional story in the bookc—or the makeup world, for that matterf—which makes it a particularly interesting one. In 1992 at the age of 18, after a futile search for the perfect matte lipstick, Australian Poppy King launched her own line: Poppy. The brand received nearly instant renown, having intuitively tapped into the up-and-coming international market for specialized beauty products with personality.
Ten years after its launch, following a roller coaster ride of high highs and dark lows, King closed Poppy and headed to New York to work for the Estée Lauder corporation as the Vice President of Creative Marketing for Prescriptives, a position she held for three years before sitting down to share her accrued business insight in Lessons of a Lipstick Queen, an impartial-as-possible, down-to-earth book that King describes as “a guide and a memoir at the same time: a how you can be unconventional in your career.” She peppers her story with unflinchingly honest examples and anecdotes—from the terror of picking up her first batch of lipstick to surviving a flogging in the nation’s tabloidsr—that characterize an increasingly savvy but still green business woman who had the courage, character and blessing to pursue her dreams before she was old enough to know better.
About a year ago, King took her own advice and launched Lipstick Queen, a “take two” of Poppy, featuring innovative lip products, including: Medieval, a sheer lipstick that recreates the rosy lips women in the Middle Ages achieved by plumping their pouts with lemon juice; Black Tie Optional, a black lipgloss that goes from noir in the jar to the most flattering shade of nude; and the new for F/W10 Jean Queen, a pink shade that perfectly offsets denim and suits any skin tone. And King promises there’s much more to come. Meeting with Dossier in her lower Manhattan office, she explained her past follies, present passions and future plans with the same witty wisdom and low-key charm that infuse each of her products.
