Brooklyn's Theo Kogan, an established musician, model and actress, can now add one more notch to her career belt – makeup entrepreneur.
The Theo of the Brooklyn-based band Theo and the Skyscrapers and graduate of the all-female rock band Lunachicks, Kogan, a former Queen at Coney Island's Mermaid Parade, has also made a name for herself as a print model for such designers as Calvin Klein, Burberry and Kenneth Cole. Now, the Flatbush native, who currently resides in Park Slope, is further venturing into fashion with her own lip gloss line, Armour Beauty, a joint project with business partner Allison Burns, a makeup artist-turned-handbag designer.
“I always have been passionate about makeup,” says Kogan, who approached Burns, a former celebrity makeup artist who's created makeup for other lines, about a year and a half ago about starting her own. “We took our passion and made it happen.”
Called Armour Beauty, with the clever tag line “Because beauty is your armour” (“It's like finding a band name,” says the musician on choosing a name for her line), the lip glosses carry a rock and roll attitude, with intense hot pinks and reds, but also more muted, daytime colors. Fittingly, the glosses come in two lines – one opaque, the other shimmer.
“You have a different flavor for day and then night,” said Kogan, who creates her own rock and roll style shopping at such local stores as her neighborhood vintage spot Beacon's Closet or going to her favorite salon, Medusa, also in Park Slope.
The glosses are made from natural ingredients, including avocado, mango seed, grape see oil and shea and olive butters.
“These are all things that make it more like a lip treatment in addition to being a gloss and nice color,” said Kogan, who had her hands in the look of the line while Burns was savvy in creating the product, such as the packaging. “Both of us had a strong sense of wanting it to be very natural and intense no matter what they were, and wanted it to stay on.”
With names like “Barracuda” and “Nirvana,” the lip glosses draws from several musical inspirations, including Heart (a red gloss) and Kurt Cobain's grunge band (a sheer gloss), as well as Led Zeppelin with the baby pink “Kashmir,” Blondie (“Dreaming”) and Donna Summers (“Last Dance”). The names for the glosses are also pulled from various pop culture icons such as Edie Sedgwick (“Edie”), Princess Di (“Diana”) and Betty Davis (“Baby Jane”). Kogan's favorite as of late has been the hot pink opaque lip gloss “Cat Club,” named after an old New York night club, as well as the dark shimmer gloss “Dreaming.”
In addition to being sold online, Armour Beauty can currently be found locally at Medusa, Williamsburg's Sleep and in Manhattan at Patricia Field. Kogan and Burns sought those boutiques out as personal favorites. Sleep, which previously didn't have cosmetics, Kogan found to be a perfect fit.
It was especially important to Kogan to have the line available in Brooklyn; a native through and through, as she tours with her band or goes, acts in films or flies off to shoots, she always comes back to the borough.
“I've never lived out of Brooklyn,” she said. “It's so rare that people are from Brooklyn these days.”
Kogan also looks to expand the line to other stores in Brooklyn, and after a write up in fashion e-newsletter DailyCandy, she's received requests from all over the world to carry the line.
Looking beyond lip gloss, Kogan and Burns also look to do lip sticks, lip liners and lip balms, as well as eye shadow and nail polish, eventually forming a complete set of beauty “armour.”
You can find Armour Beauty online at http://armourbeauty.com/buy.html, on sale for $19 each, or at Park Slope's Medusa (117 Seventh Avenue), Williamsburg's Sleep (110 N. 6th Street) and in Manhattan at Patricia Field (302 Bowery).
