Khadija Fazal almost had the perfect wedding day. Her dress was beautiful. She and her husband made their grand entrance in a helicopter. Contrary to the weather forecast, there wasn’t a speck of rain. But all of this is shrouded by the memory of how much she hated her make-up. “I never look at the pictures,” the 30-year-old says. “They remind me of how sad I was.”
Last month, a TikTok video went viral declaring the south Asian make-up industry “a scam”. The video responded to a prompt on the platform, one that asked people to highlight a scam “so normalised [that] we don’t realise it’s a scam any more”. “Bridal make-up,” came the reply in question. “Why are all these make-up artists charging £900 minimum?”
