Hero Husband Creates Skin Care Brand for His Beauty Vlogger Wife
When some women complain to their partners about their beauty struggles, they’re often met with side-eyes, confused stares, or helpless shrugs. But when beauty vlogger Farah Dhukai shared her frustrations with having combination skin and acne flare-ups, her husband responded by developing a skin care brand.
“I created Farsali as a gift for my wife,” Ali tells Yahoo Beauty. “We are more than just husband and wife — we’re best friends, so we talk to each other about everything.”
Ali, who worked in the digital and e-commerce space, says his natural curiosity and fascination with Dhukai’s regimen made him ask questions that someone who isn’t as fluent in the beauty world would ponder. “This led me to noticing a very clear gap between skin care and makeup. There was no product that worked both as skin care and with makeup, and I wanted to give her that,” he says. “That’s what Farsali is really about: It’s the place where makeup and skin care meet and fall in love.”
As with many South Asians, coconut oil is a staple in Ali’s life. “My mom always forced me to use it on my hair (which I hated, but now use by choice), and as a body moisturizing oil,” he says. Suffering with eczema himself, Ali could fully grasp his wife’s yearning for dewy skin. “[She] wanted to live a thing that she called ‘the glow life.’ It took me a while to understand the difference between greasy and glowy! But with time, I learned that the ‘glow life’ is about having radiant and luminous skin,” he explains.
Thus, Farsali’s debut skin care product, Rose Gold Elixir, was born in 2016. The lightweight oil (which sells for $54 for 30 ml) is infused with skin-repairing and regenerating rosehip seed oil and 24-karat gold flakes that impart a healthy-looking radiance to your complexion.
Ali admits that he went through approximately a dozen trial-and-error samples before mastering the final product. “I mixed the first iteration of the Rose Gold Elixir right in my kitchen — my wife thought I was crazy! But my chemists were actually very impressed with my concoction,” he says. “It’s still the same formula to this day. The way I knew I had struck [rose] gold was when I gave it to my wife to try and she wouldn’t give it back!”
Search the hashtag #rosegoldelixir on Instagram, and over 6,000 posts will surface. Makeup novices and mavens prove its versatility by demonstrating how the elixir can be used as an everyday moisturizer, foundation primer, lipstick base, and more. YouTubers Jackie Aina, Huda Kattan, and Shayla Mitchell have all glammed up with the widely popular product in their tutorials and give it a thumbs-up.
“I think what sets Farsali serums apart from others is the fact that the products are so multifunctional, yet effective,” says Dhukai. “Besides that, I feel so special, kind of like a queen, knowing that I’m putting 24-karat gold on my face, or dripping a twinkling pink magical serum down my cheeks as I get ready for my beauty routine.”
Farsali has since expanded its collection to include a Volcanic Elixir (a nighttime treatment for acne-prone skin that’s formulated with tamanu oil) and Unicorn Essence (loaded with antioxidants and superfruit extracts that work to improve your skin’s health and condition underneath makeup). The latter sold out within a day of making its debut on sephora.com. No surprise, as Lisa Frank-obsessed beauty lovers go gaga for anything related to unicorns. Yet, Ali notes that in creating Unicorn Essence they “weren’t consciously tapping into the trend, but instead, were listening to our audience.” Clearly, listening to the consumer has paid off.
So what’s coming next from the Instagram-famous brand? Look out for miniature versions of its Rose Gold Elixir and Unicorn Essence, as well as international distribution. But you’ll definitely want to have your eyes glued to social media when Farsali launches its next big product this fall.
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