What, these days, is a rapidly expanding local beauty care industry has done a great deal more than enable the insatiable appetites of Guyanese women of all ages for looking good. “There is something sexy about changing your appearance from time to time,” is how one young woman described her addiction to the beauty salon, during a conversation with the Stabroek Business earlier this week. Others to whom this newspaper has spoken have sworn that in a huge number of instances, women’s beauty care bills far exceed their expenditure on food.
But the beauty care industry has done more than indulge the looking-good addiction of Guyanese women. It has, as well, created skills-based entrepreneurial options, which, increasingly, bring out the best side of those practitioners who work tirelessly, not just to earn, but to continually enhance their creative reputations. These days, our local high-profile beauty salons have become meccas of gossip, centred around the theme of who’s the best in the business.
At 22, Tonisa Rebecca Lamazon has found self-fulfilment and is armed with the knowledge that she is on her way up; this is as motivating as her earnings from the pursuit.
Lamazon’s excursion into the beauty care industry began as a schoolgirl, her pursuits centred largely around her tireless efforts to conceal the acne that had caused her, over time, to develop a discomfiting self-consciousness. Her preoccupation with hiding what some regard as disfigurement, led her into the image-enhancing world of makeup. Back then it was purely a matter of self-image. That, however, has changed.
Inevitably, her makeup pursuits as a grade eight schoolgirl led to her being marched off to the Principal’s Office. By then, however, it was too late for reprimand. She was already seeking out her calling. By the time the Principal intervened, it had already become a matter of Lamazon making her way, fighting for her own identity.
Since then, she has dug deeper, using her own face as a testing ground to hone her skills as a makeup artist. She discovered that she could do much more with her skills than simply conceal the disfigurement of acne. Relatives and friends were also pressed into service to offer their faces to be made up.
Eventually, she arrived at the critical junction of establishing Glamourholic Look, a makeup service inside her father ‘Tony’ Lamazon’s Barber Shop at Ann’s Grove, East Coast Demerara.
What Glamourholic Look has done is to set Lamazon’s feet on a path to what she believes is her calling. She is, however, under no illusions about where she is at this time. She believes this is the beginning of a journey, the realisation of an unfolding ambition. She pointed out that her father’s painstaking approach to his own career as a barber makes an eminent statement about the origins of her own passion for creativity.
She is self-taught with considerable support from what, these days, is the wealth of information available online. Google, she said, has been “a godsend.” It has provided her with close up access to the work of some of the best in the world.
She recalled that in her schoolgirl days, word had gotten around that had led to requests from her girlfriends to do their brows etc for birthday parties and other occasions. Mashra-mani, Easter and other festive seasons were usually busy periods for her too.
Her mother, who resides abroad, has fed her habit by affording her a monthly subsidy. That makes it easier for her to acquire the pricey products which the trade requires.
After she had left secondary school she had persisted with her google-centred tutorials, on makeup, free of the attentions of school authority. One of her earliest real challenges arose from a request by a friend’s mother that she makeup her face for a function. After she passed that test, others began to pour in. Once the floodgates opened, it was time to contemplate compensation. The rest, she said, is a still unfolding history.
