Anastasia Soare recalls leaving her native Romania for the United States of America back in 1989, when her country was still behind the Iron Curtain.
“I wasn’t allowed to take anything with me,” she says. “I asked whether they would allow me to save just a dollar, to make a phone call if I needed help, but the authorities were relentless and I knew that if I persisted too much, I could end up in prison. That’s how I arrived in America — an immigrant without a cent to her name who couldn’t even speak the language.”
That was the start of an extraordinary journey that saw Anastasia become known as the ‘Eyebrow Queen’ and find fame for founding her beloved eponymous brand, Anastasia Beverly Hills. More than 30 years have passed since her arrival in Los Angeles, and she has revolutionised the way we view eyebrows, building a billion-dollar brow empire along the way. How did she do it?
“By the age of 18, I knew I wanted to go to America. Romania was a communist country, and with [Nicolae] CeauÈ™escu in power, life was very difficult. However, we did have one great thing: free education, with excellent teachers. My art teacher introduced me to the concept of the golden ratio, from antiquity to Da Vinci and through the present day. We would study highlight and shadow, balance and proportion. When learning portraiture, he instructed us that if we wanted to change the emotion of our subject, to start by changing the eyebrows.
This story is from the February 2022 edition of Hello! India.
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This story is from the February 2022 edition of Hello! India.
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