I think I definitely manifested it because at the start of the year, I told my friend ‘I want to do something with a car.’ It’s something I’ve never done before. So when we got the call, we were like ‘oh my god it worked!’” recalls Narin Ammara about teaming up with Maserati to shoot this month’s cover. The match feels fitting for the Youthquake issue as Ammara is clearly pushing the pedal to the metal in terms of her career. Having recently launched her own beauty line – Narins Beauty, named after her massively successful personal brand. And already her direct to consumer business model has become quite the disrupter in the beauty space.
Outfit: Loulou de Saison jacket available at Bloomingdale’s Middle East and Gucci Eyewear sunglasses
With more than 50 million devoted followers across the spectrum of social media platforms, the Swedish-Syrian entrepreneur has diligently been building a global community since she began, at the tender age of 15, uploading makeup and hair tutorials to YouTube. A move that started as something of a lark in 2014. Spurred on by her younger sister Sherin, who recognised Ammara’s innate gifts and a skill set already well formed, thanks to the many other supportive women in her family.
Outfit: Courrèges jacket and skirt available at Bloomingdale’s Middle East
“My mom’s family is huge and when I was growing up I would spend maybe six months a year with my aunties in Syria. [They] had a hair salon so I would convince my mom to take me there and I would beg her to let me style someone’s hair. I would spend hours there doing hair and makeup. It was actually my dream growing up to one day open my own hair salon,” recounts Ammara about how she first was drawn to the beauty space.
Outfit: Aleksandre Akhalkatsishvili available at Fabric of Society, Magda Butrym pumps, and Kismet by Milka earring
But initially when she launched Narins Beauty on YouTube, Ammara was really looking for a way to feel less isolated. She had just moved from Syria to Sweden, because of the war in her home country, and she was feeling isolated in an unfamiliar land – looking for a way to connect with people. “I didn’t really speak the language. It was just something completely new,” shares the budding beauty mogul. “And we were basically five kids with my mom but we were just feeling super lonely because we had no friends or family and the only thing we had was our iPad and Internet. That’s what helped us connect with the world.” It is perhaps this reason that Ammara feels so personally invested in supporting her community. She is often sending DMs, responding in the comments section on posts and generally continues to try and be as hands on as she can, while she is simultaneously building her beauty empire. She admits that when she was starting out she didn’t fully realise the impact she was having on her growing community. She just interacted with them from a place of authenticity and transparency – becoming a confidante to millions.
Ammara remembers turning to her mom when girls would reach out to her asking for advice about how to deal with hate comments, or bullying, in between requests for specific make-up tutorials. “It was definitely scary for me to put myself out there in the beginning because I was like, it’s just weird to post a video teaching girls how to do her makeup or hair,” she says about those early days as a content creator. “But if it could help one girl, then it’s worth it.” Truth be told, Ammara feels she has learnt just as much from her community as she has mentoring them over the years. “They taught me a lot of things,” she says softly. “How to accept people for who they are.
They taught me how to love people.” And they also help hone the direction of, first her content, and now her business. Communicating directly with her about the things they loved most, what they wanted to see more of, and also more simply, what they felt they were missing when it came to the beauty products they were using. Ammara sees her brand as one that caters specifically to the needs of her generation. After all, this is a woman who, even though she is just 25, has already spent a decade trying and promoting the products of hundreds of beauty brands. Having collaborated with everyone from L’Oréal Paris and NYX to Maybelline and The Balm during her career. And all that time she was absorbing what she liked and didn’t like about each new product she was trying. Learning about formulas, the importance of textures and the different properties each ingredient added to any mix.
Loulou de Saison jacket available at Bloomingdale’s Middle East and Gucci Eyewear sunglasses
“I kept saying ‘if only I could create something that was super practical and at the same time nourishing for the skin, that would still look good on your face,” remembers Ammara of those early years of product ideation. She wanted to build a brand that reflected the unique beauty priorities of her peers. Those looking for uncomplicated beauty products that could have multiple uses and were fundamentally skincare based formulas – but that had cute packaging to boot. “Because we care about packaging,” Ammara admits with a laugh. “We want everything that’s in our hands to look cute and be photogenic, because we care about content a lot too.” It’s telling that when Ammara is asked about when she feels most beautiful, her answer is disarmingly simple: “When I’m healthy, when I’m confident,” she says. “For me that’s beauty… sometimes you can wear a full glam and not feel beautiful. Beauty is about confidence and it’s about energy.”
Outfit: Rotate top available at Harvey Nichols Dubai and Charlotte Chesnais jewellery available at Comptoir 102
Energy. The word comes up again and again in our conversation. It informs how she creates, how she leads, and how she is building her namesake brand. For Gen Z, she believes beauty should be intuitive. “I wanted to create products that are just easy to use. Not complicated, because I believe beauty is not complicated,” she asserts.
Ammara’s voice lights up about already bumping into people in public – less than a year after the launch of her brand – who will just pull her aside and show her one of the Bun Bun lip jelly tints they always have in their bag. She admits that more than once she has asked her husband, the investment banker Rami Elias Samo, to pinch her because it’s hard for her to fathom that her dream of starting a beauty company is finally a reality, and people are embracing it. “I can’t believe a human being is holding a product that has my name on it and they actually like it,” she says. “I was honestly really afraid to put something out there, because I had a lot of self-doubt…a lot of ‘what ifs,’”she confesses.
Staud dress available at Bloomingdale’s Middle East, Magda Butrym pumps, and Kismet by Milka earring
So how did she overcome that fear – that lurking imposter syndrome?
“I didn’t,” admits Ammara. “ But I made a promise to myself to not let my fear get the better of me and keep me from evolving. So I decided that no matter how scared I was about something I was not going to let my fear get in the way of me trying new things, and growing as a person,” she adds. Noting that having the right people by her side has also made a huge difference when it comes to battling her fear. That always being supported by her husband, her family, and her team gives her the sense that, even when something might not turn out as planned, that everything will be ok in the end.
Fear, for example, didn’t stop her, in 2019, from leaving her family in Sweden to put down roots in Dubai. She was among the first creators to move from Europe to the UAE at a pivotal moment for the region’s influencer economy. “The road wasn’t easy,” she remembers. “ But I felt like Dubai was the right place for me, because the opportunities here are so big.” Still, she admits that it took time for her to be taken seriously by the beauty industry.
Outfit: Rotate top available at Harvey Nichols Dubai and Charlotte Chesnais jewellery available at Comptoir 102
That legitimacy was earned through dedicated effort, consistency and time. “Just because something looks easy doesn’t mean it’s easy,” she says about the misconceptions some still have about the work that she has done as a content creator and now as a brand founder. “But you should never compare your journey with someone else’s, and never let fear stop you from doing what you’re passionate about.”
Interestingly when it comes to the careers of people Ammara admires the name that comes first to her lips isn’t another leader in the beauty space, or even another woman. Its…drum roll please… Tom Cruise. “I just love how brave he is,” confesses Ammara. “I love how, when he puts his mind to something, he just gets it done. He doesn’t let anyone do anything he wouldn’t do. He is just fearless.”
Staud dress available at Bloomingdale’s Middle East, Magda Butrym pumps, and Kismet by Milka earring
After talking about her admiration of Cruise on her channels, the actor’s team reached out to Ammara directly and invited her to meet him at the premiere of his latest Mission Impossible movie. “It was a dream come true,” she says wistfully.
That “Tom Cruise” fearlessness could definitely be felt on the set of this issue’s cover shoot. Ammara found herself experimenting with all sorts of new posing positions as she explored every angel of the bright blue Maserati. She was in a bit of uncharted territory and couldn’t rely on all of the classic beauty poses that she knows like the back of her hand – except, perhaps, when she used the rearview mirror of the Maserati to apply a bit of her Aura lip gloss.
But she was game to try anything. She stared into the bright white headlines to get the perfect shot, laid across the bonnet at just the right angle so her profile lined up with the logo, and she endlessly opened and shut the trunk, for a bit of clever behind-thescenes footage. A consummate professional, even when she was outside her comfort zone.
Ammara, who launched her beauty brand and got married at the end of last year, is clearly at the starting line of a major new chapter in her life. But for this pint-sized power house it all comes down to one simple thing. “As long as you do something you love, no matter what it is, you will end up in a good place.”
Photographer: Vaughan Treyvellan
Senior Editor: Jessica Michault
Fashion Editor: Camille Macawili
Makeup: Jean Kairouz
Hair: Kalina Kocemba
Videographer: Katerina Shirshova
Talent: Narin Ammara
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Images: Supplied
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: emirateswoman.com
