“This is the first time I’m gonna say this in an interview, but in 2016, I want to make my personal life a priority for the very first time,” says reality TV star and beauty entrepreneur Lilly Ghalichi.
For our interview, Ghalichi is tucked away from her adoring fans in the privacy of a ‘beauty room’ located at the back of Galeries Lafayette, a high-end department store in The Dubai Mall. She’s in the UAE for the annual Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF), a monthlong retail event that shines a light on fashion and beauty. DSF runs until February 1, but Monday was Ghalichi’s last night in town, and she’s using it to meet-and-greet her fans and talk beauty. She wasn’t always in this industry, getting her first taste of popularity in 2012 after being on the series Shahs of Sunset, which followed a group of Persian friends around Los Angeles. At 32, she’s now the owner of Ghalichi Glam, and has become known primarily for her fake eyelash line, Lilly Lashes.
“I’ve always been very career driven. School was 110 per cent. And now that I’m an entrepreneur, my businesses are a 110 per cent. But you have to have balance. You have to have the family life, the friend life, and work. So for 2016, I’m going to take, maybe, a step back from being so career-driven, and a step towards taking trips for enjoyment and spending more time with my family and friends,” she adds.
But will that break include her social media activity? Ghalichi is an avid Instagrammer, sharing carefully-curated snaps of her make-up, outfits and social life to 1.9 million followers who depend on it.
“I don’t think I’ll ever take a break from social media,” she quickly clarifies. “But just a break from working 20 hours a day.”
Ghalichi has been in Dubai for a couple of weeks now, and spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve in the city. She recently posted a holiday greeting across all her social media platforms, warning people of the dangers of buying into the faux perfect lives projected by bloggers.
“Social media is ruining our sense of reality — for men, women and children,” she explains in our interview. “As a woman, we go on social media, we’re looking at perfect bodies, perfect girls, perfect hair, perfect make-up, but that’s not real. So much of it is taken in proper lighting, with a proper camera, and an hour-and-a-half of face-tuning to get that body.”
“Same goes for relationships. You know, you see these posts about, ‘Oh, we’re so happy, having dinner. Look at this present I just got from my husband or my boyfriend.’ And no couple is perfectly happy. That’s a fantasy. That’s not real. Social media is not real, These girls don’t look exactly like this in real life. That couple has fights, just like everybody else.”
Some of Ghalichi’s haters — every fashion blogger has them — were quick to point out the irony of her posting a message about focusing on reality, just before promoting her false lashes. But for Ghalichi, make-up is about the feel-good moments and self-love, not ‘seeking perfection’.
“For me, when I put on lashes or lipstick, I feel prettier to myself. I don’t care what you think of it or what that person thinks of it. I feel more beautiful, and I think that’s where true beauty comes from, it comes from within. And if you feel beautiful, you’re going to walk out that door and be beautiful,” she says.
Ghalichi looked perfectly styled that evening in a little black dress, thigh-high boots and a bright red coat courtesy of Angelo Mirano. But surely she’s seen worse days?
“I had so many cringeworthy phases,” she laughs. “Let’s name a few. Blonde. I’m not a good blonde — I have these giant black caterpillar eyebrows, jet black hair naturally. That was a disaster.”
Another disaster was ‘the Sharpie eyebrows.’ “I decided big, thick Middle Eastern eyebrows, that I’m so thankful for now, were not what I wanted, and so I used to tweeze them so thin that if one hair was out of place, there was a gap.”
Her final ‘I can’t believe I ever did that’ moment? “ Outlining the lip in basically black, with ChapStick in the middle.”
Ghalichi has certainly come a long way. As someone with a finger on the pulse of the beauty world — her businesses depend on it, after all — Ghalichi already has a feel for 2016’s biggest trends, and the 2015 fads that are going to be so yesterday.
“Don’t hate me for saying this, but I think contouring is not going to be so popular anymore. The heavy days of all the lines and heavy contouring is going to go away, and strobing, or more highlighting, is going to be the trend,” she says.
Contouring, the art of giving a shape to your face by creating shadows and highlights with make-up, was popularised by the Kardashians and beauty bloggers around the world; their followers have spent just about a gazillion years trying to master it.
“Right when you learn how to do something, and if you watched 18,000 YouTube tutorials and you got it right — it’s time for a new trend,” says Ghalichi. “I think strobing, or just a more natural contour with a lot of highlights.”
And when it comes to 2016 fashion, it’s all about the clean lines, simple colours, and a pop of bold. You heard it here first.
