Drop models, slow beauty and inclusivity: How Melbourne brand Fluff is leading industry change

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FLUFF

WORDS BY MAGGIE ZHOU

“No modelling agencies. No script. No studios. No significant edits.”

Melbourne brand Fluff has been in this world for half a decade. In this time, withstanding various address changes, lockdowns and competitor launches, Fluff hasn’t changed all too much. Sure, the branding has evolved and there’s been experimentation with new products, but Fluff is still Fluff.

Back in 2018, Fluff said beauty is more than just makeup. And even though in April, Fluff’s refillable, natural Bronzing Powder and Lip Oil Cloud Compacts went viral on TikTok and sold out in five days, the brand is still driving home its message: “It’s okay to feel more with makeup, so long as you don’t feel less without it.”

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Being a values-driven brand, especially in beauty, can be a lucrative bandwagon to jump on – that is until the next trend rears its head. (It was only this year Vogue Business found just 0.6 per cent of 9,137 Autumn/Winter 2023 looks in the ‘Big Four’ fashion weeks were plus-size.)

And so, when I say Fluff’s dedication to its cause is rare, I mean it. The beauty industry is built off speed – fast trends, fast content and fast product turnarounds. But Fluff repels this. Instead of quick fixes like sales, influencers and frequent product releases (all methods Fluff admits to previously dabbling in), in 2022, the brand pivoted to a quarterly drop model, meaning that its website is only open for a week, four times a year. This allows its team to manage supply and demand, and determine the pace at which they do business, allowing them to focus on non-sales, purpose-driven outlets, including its Issues Page and podcast Pretty Hard.

Just this past week, to mark the opening of its website and fifth Makeup Drop, Fluff released a short film titled Before The Mirror. Directed by Kaius Potter and shot in Melbourne, with voice recordings and visual stories featuring Fluff’s community, it’s a 75-second exploration of what beauty means and looks like – of what beauty actually is to people, rather than what brands are saying. To pull this off, Fluff handed all creative control to Kaius.

The catalyst for the film was unexpected. Fluff’s Head of Brand, Ellen Jenkinson, recalls a time working in Fluff’s original store on Gertrude Street in Fitzroy. “A guy skated up to the door, picked up his board, bought a clear Lip Oil refill and skated away down the street. I asked him if it was for himself, or a partner and he told me it was for him, simply because it was the best lip balm,” she tells me.

“It made me think about how we had always said that Fluff is for everyone, but so often, as with other beauty brands, our content, eComm[erce] photography and conversations were aimed at female-identifying people. Everyone has their own story about their relationship to beauty, and we knew we needed to explore and expand on our brand’s narrative.”

This interaction caused a chain reaction of realisation. Ellen points to the monotony of many other beauty brands and their visuals. “We still see the same story… pretty girl smiling at her lip gloss or mascara or moisturiser, laughing. Pastel backdrop, nude or pastel underwear. Sorry (not sorry), it’s so boring.”

Instead of hitting up “the same production agency,” Ellen reached out to some of her favourite creatives for suggestions of interesting people in the film world, and one of her friends recommended Kaius. That was a few years ago, and three years later, they got chatting again.

“We wanted to let Kaius, our director, do his thing. No modelling agencies. No script. No studios. No significant edits. It was our job to let go of the creative reins and simply play the role of facilitator [and] connector. This was about curiosity, play, trust and enjoying the process,” Ellen says.

“We wanted to tell the story that beauty is so much more than makeup. We wanted to show what we’ve been talking to our customers about for the last few years: their evolving, complex relationships to beauty.” Here, Ellen tells us more about the process and reasons behind creating Before The Mirror.

Can you share more about the process of creating this film?

We wanted to see what someone else’s interpretation of our brand could be, someone who wasn’t particularly engaged in the beauty industry. I brought the initial, very vague concept to Kaius of exploring relationships to beauty through following individual people’s stories, and he came back with gold.

Fluff played the role of facilitator, organising the people from our community who are featured in the film – both their audio submissions and visual stories – and we let Kaius have creative control. There was a lot of trust involved: we believed he would create magic if we gave him the space to do so.

Compiling content from our community was beautiful, inspiring and surprisingly easy. We did a callout on our Instagram page, asking for people to submit audio responses to four questions surrounding their relationships [with] beauty. We had submissions from all over the world and crafted them into a single narrative: a collective consciousness. The hardest part was not being able to use it all in this one film.

What’s Before The Mirror about?

The central story in the film is that of Phoenix – they have been in Fluff’s world for almost a year. We met them at our local cafe and started chatting and asked if they wanted to be a part of one of our previous campaigns. As we got to know them more, and they shared their story so openly and vulnerably, we felt compelled to share their experience further. We’re so grateful for their contribution to this film with their partner Max. The human connection is so beautiful, we couldn’t make this up if we tried.

Gender, masculinity and femininity are major themes here. What made you want to explore this in regard to beauty?

There is a lot of dialogue around masculinity and femininity in the beauty space (or online in general right now), and we wanted to explore the intersection, versus the binary definition. We asked our audience how their masculine and feminine sides have influenced their experiences and idea of themselves, in the hope they would reflect on both, outside of traditional gender constructs. The responses were insightful and inspiring.

What message are you trying to communicate with the film?

Our community and their individual stories are everything to this brand. Our mission has always been to mirror our audience, to reflect not just how they look, but how they think and feel… The central theme is to question and explore our relationships to beauty and to communicate the complex, ever-changing landscape of identity, and the liminal space between. Finally, that true beauty is about how much [of] yourself you can be [at] any moment.