I met Florence Adepoju in a London cafe a couple of years ago, when she was 24, and was struck by her poise and determination. She had recently got her MDMflow beauty brand into some Topshop stores, and it was starting to make waves. It's now available from online retailers like lookfantastic.com and Boots in the UK, and holds its own in an industry dominated by enormous companies with bottomless resources.
A cosmetic scientist from London, Adepoju started out making batches of her incredibly pigmented and vivid lipsticks – inspired by the aesthetic of hip hop and focused on catering to women of colour, whom she saw as underserved – in her parents’ shed, and graduated to factory production in 2016. She worked her way through university on beauty counters; she is an industry outlier in the modern era, having started on shop floors and worked her way up to creating her own independent brand. She is also a rarity in directing both the science and the creative aesthetic of MDMflow.
In an industry that spends a lot of time virtue signalling about inclusion, Adepoju is really doing something about it. As a student, a trip to one of the UK’s biggest beauty development labs stuck with her. Despite all its funding, and its access to the best research, the foundation formulations on offer ignored the palest and darkest skins. Now Adepoju has developed a serum foundation that really does offer a shade for everyone, starting at 16 tones, and with more to come. Perhaps even more importantly, she wants to offer it at a price that is affordable to most people: £10.
But as it's hard to persuade retailers to commit to order the volumes that enable smaller brands to make large quantities of a new product, MDMflow is crowdfunding its Flawless Base Foundation, a light but buildable make-up that contains hyaluronic acid, resveratrol, vitamin C and creatine. The finish is breathable, glowing, plumping and beautiful. The attention paid to undertone and pigment ensures that the deepest and lightest shades are perfect. Nothing is too yellow, too pink or too orange.
To get your hands on the foundation this summer instead of waiting for its release later in the year, you simply have to pledge the £10 product price. You can, however, pledge as much or as little as you like – £10 or more will result in some MDMflow beauty products arriving through your letter box.
The beauty industry is paying lip service to women. Florence Adepoju is a role model – and she’s coming for the industry anyway, so we might as well chip in and help her stir things up. I can’t wait to see her foundation do incredibly well while highly funded brands that ignore the real diversity of human skin tone watch and weep for their lost profits.
