As I walk into Harvey Nichols in Manchester it isn't hard to spot LA based make up exec Sharon Chuter, who is paying a VIP visit to the store following on from the launch of her make up brand. Sure, she is surrounded by a gaggle of laughing women, there is a champagne bucket and a fluffy little white dog called Leo, but I'm pretty sure I could have vibrated towards her from her infectious energy alone.
Then there is her magnetic physical presence - glowing skin, hair a mass of goddess like tumbling braids and a dazzling, mega watt smile. Dressed in ripped jeans and a blazer over a slogan T-shirt, and sporting designer shades, she has effortless star quality and oozes confidence from every perfectly closed pore.
But Sharon wasn't always called Sharon, in her birth place of Nigeria she was actually christened Ufuoma - which means "beautiful thing."
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Glossy and glamorous Sharon might be, but she is also fiercely intelligent. An academic who was considering a career as an aeronautical engineer, and a woman who has faced a myriad of challenges on account of her skin colour.
"When you are born in my skin, regardless of where you are born, you know that you are different but not in a good way - you are different bad." For Sharon, beauty was 'therapy'.
"How do you confront all the ugliness that you are not allowed to confront?" she asks me rhetorically. She says doing so can turn you into a person seen as having an agenda. "My life is not an agenda," she says. "This is a culture that has been metabolised by society.
"When you are born in Nigeria, you are a person. When you move overseas you are a black person. And you find out what that means." For Sharon, who moved to the States, that meant struggling to get a job and needing to change her name. "I became Sharon Chuter and I became successful overnight, " she says. "But I could not be successful as Ufuoma."
Sharon says altering herself to be more palatable to Western beauty ideals only made her miserable. "I was miserable because I was not me," she says. "There is such a thing as culpability through complacency." She quotes Maya Angelou to me: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
And Sharon really has done better - creating Uoma Beauty in 2019, to advocate for self-love, representation and make up with meaning. The beauty executive has drawn inspiration from her heritage to create a makeup range for all skin colours that she says is 'forward thinking, radical and uncompromising.' The range launched at the Manchester branch of Harvey Nichols in December 2021 and her visit to the store and the city coincided with a relaunch of the counter.
In June 2020, After the murder of George Floyd, Sharon took her mission to be a champion of equality and equity further by starting the viral grass root movement #pulluporshutup - 'A call for accountability and transparency from corporations around Black employment with the aim of enhancing the economic wellbeing of Black communities all over the world.'
Her cosmetic brand has attracted A-list celebrities such as singer Kelis, who attended an UOMA Beauty Launch Event at NeueHouse Hollywood in Los Angeles in 2019 and has given recognition to women struggling to find themselves represented in society.
Sharon explains that her make up brand is so much more than make up for her customers. "It isn't just make-up," she says "It has a much bigger impact, affecting their lives and their psyche. It is psychological and emotional. That is the mission that I have been on," she says. "It was a very purpose driven mission.
" I can't change the world but I can say 'no' if I see evil, I can call it out. All I know is how to make lipsticks but it is something beyond that. If I make one six-year-old happy and able to say 'I am beautiful' then I am proud."
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