Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

The suc­cess now be­ing en­joyed by self-taught beau­ty prac­ti­tion­er and pro­fes­sion­al make-up artist Chin­nelle Ja­groop is not some­thing that was hand­ed to her on a plat­ter—it has tak­en 12 years of com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion to reach this lev­el.

As a child, Ja­groop was very cre­ative, with most of her skills ex­pressed and honed through do­ing make-up. “How I would dress, and present a project for school, it would al­ways be dif­fer­ent. And cre­ative than very ba­sic and nor­mal. I was al­ways a very ex­tra child,” Ja­groop laughed.

“Make-up chose me be­cause I would do it on my­self, friends, and fam­i­ly, and it grew from there. Oth­ers would see my work and want me to do the same thing for them. It spread like that than me want­i­ng to be­come an ac­tu­al make-up artist. It hap­pened nat­u­ral­ly,” Ja­groop said.

Cast­ing self-doubt aside and de­ter­mined to take her skills to the next lev­el, Ja­groop, in­spired by her sis­ter’s IG han­dle and a cer­tain Amer­i­can brand of make-up ten years ago, de­vel­oped her beau­ty brand, ‘Kissand­make­up’.

“My sis­ter’s name is Can­dace, aka Can­dy. Her name on In­sta­gram was kiss­me­can­dy, and I thought that was very cool. Every­one who would see my sis­ter would say, ‘Kiss me, Can­dy!’” Ja­groop said. To­day, the 32 year old is con­tent that her busi­ness has grown, cit­ing the size of her cur­rent team of as­sis­tants, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son, as an in­di­ca­tor of Kissand­make­up’s growth.

Her ser­vices have al­so been re­quest­ed in oth­er Caribbean coun­tries like Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, and Ja­maica, and she has al­so been com­mis­sioned to work for Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val. “I nev­er would’ve thought or imag­ined my­self do­ing make-up in such a large ca­pac­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly ven­tur­ing out in oth­er coun­tries. I al­ways thought it would just be in Trinidad, or south Trinidad, so that re­al­ly, for me, is an up­grade,” Ja­groop said.

But like any busi­ness, start­ing from scratch of­ten en­tails many ob­sta­cles, in­clud­ing the fear of fail­ure, which was linked to her fear of “not be­ing like oth­er peo­ple.” How­ev­er, as time passed, Ja­groop re­alised that be­ing your­self is the key to both peace and pos­i­tive busi­ness out­comes. “What I re­alised is that peo­ple grav­i­tate to­wards au­then­tic­i­ty, it’s not all about be­ing just like the oth­er per­son, you know? When you think about it, peo­ple re­al­ly love au­then­tic­i­ty. You see it on so­cial me­dia, Tik­Tok per­son­al­i­ties be­ing their au­then­tic selves, they are the peo­ple who are reach­ing far. That mo­ti­vates me to con­tin­ue,” Ja­groop said.

Even while the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic did not sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect Ja­groop’s busi­ness, it did lead her to ful­ly ex­plore her cre­ative side, which guar­an­teed her con­tin­ued flow of clien­tele and rev­enue. “For some busi­ness­es, COVID re­al­ly af­fect­ed them in a big way, for my busi­ness not so much. A lot of peo­ple used COVID to make small-scale wed­dings, birth­days, in a big way. In the end, I still had a bride to do. It was ba­si­cal­ly meet­ing me more than halfway in terms of in­come be­cause peo­ple had to learn how to be cre­ative. I al­so made my­self rel­e­vant on so­cial me­dia by do­ing make-up chal­lenges, the trends, so peo­ple wouldn’t for­get me,” Ja­groop said. She al­so trains peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in es­tab­lish­ing them­selves in the trade.

Be­sides get­ting op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­hance the out­er beau­ty of her clients, she loves meet­ing new peo­ple at her stu­dio in Co­coyea, San Fer­nan­do, where she hears them talk about their lives, es­pe­cial­ly the chal­lenges they’ve faced and how they over­come them. “I think I am a peo­ple per­son even if it is just to meet a per­son for an hour—which I gen­er­al­ly take to do one face—and in that time I would have con­ver­sa­tions; I get to in­spire fe­males, and they in­spire me as well,” Ja­groop said. “They would men­tion to me things like a di­vorce, los­ing their job, ba­si­cal­ly telling me how they over­came those sit­u­a­tions.”

Ja­groop is proud that for the past sev­en to eight years she has on­ly used high-end make-up brands for her clients. And while say­ing that there is noth­ing wrong with the make-up sold in drug­stores, the choice to give on­ly the best to oth­ers makes her glad. “Per­son­al­ly, I de­cid­ed that I want­ed to use high-end make-up for my clients. I use prod­ucts such as Es­tée Laud­er, Lancôme, NARS Cos­met­ics, etc,” Ja­groop said.

Re­gard­ing those lucky to sit down on her chair and get their face done, Ja­groop was adamant that al­most one hun­dred per cent of those who re­quest her ser­vices are kin­dred spir­its.

“I am a gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive per­son and God has blessed me with sim­i­lar clien­tele. You wouldn’t find a client com­ing to me and talk­ing bac­cha­nal. It’s al­ways pos­i­tiv­i­ty and to be hon­est, with the type of mu­sic I play when they come, it’s al­ways up­lift­ing, like Be­y­on­cé or Ri­han­na. I set the mood and the tone for the kind of clien­tele I want,” Ja­groop said.

When she first be­gan do­ing make-up, be­fore es­tab­lish­ing her brand, she ad­mit­ted there were some who ques­tioned the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the beau­ty in­dus­try, and her place in it. “When I start­ed, peo­ple did not give me re­spect. There would al­ways be some­one in your ear say­ing, ‘Well, you know Chin, you could find a nor­mal job, you know? And do this on the side ...’” Ja­groop said. Pay­ing no at­ten­tion to the naysay­ers, Ja­groop is grate­ful that she did it her own way and can claim suc­cess to­day as “the beau­ty in­dus­try has blown up.”

“Now, there’s not just some­thing like a hair­dress­er, you can make mon­ey just braid­ing hair, in­stalling wigs, you don’t have to be a full-time hair­dress­er. The beau­ty in­dus­try is so wide now that I think so many peo­ple have so much re­spect for it, with­in on­ly the past six years! Now, I think, peo­ple are even en­cour­ag­ing their chil­dren to be­come hair­styl­ists and make-up artists,” Ja­groop said.

“I def­i­nite­ly try to in­flu­ence my nieces and nephew.”

Out­side of her work, Ja­groop loves to cook. “I’m not the per­son who will make a typ­i­cal Trinida­di­an lunch. I’d make chow mein, dumplings, wan­tons, those kinds of Chi­nese del­i­ca­cies,” Ja­groop said.

Be vig­i­lant as crime ris­es

Com­ment­ing on the crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T, Ja­groop said that al­though she has not been di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, it was ear­li­er this year that her aunt’s home was bro­ken in­to. “This year my aunt was not in the coun­try for a mo­ment, and thieves went in­to her house and took every­thing, right in Co­coyea; it hit very close to home. When they left, they burned down her house, they put gaso­line all over and lit the fire. It was even worse than just be­ing robbed be­cause now you have nowhere to go. That was very trau­mat­ic,” Ja­groop said.

She al­so went on to say there was lit­tle to no help from the po­lice in find­ing the crim­i­nals. “Ba­si­cal­ly, our fam­i­ly had to pool to­geth­er and help in what­ev­er large or small way we could to make sure we tried to get her back on her feet,” Ja­groop said.

Mov­ing for­ward, she ad­vis­es peo­ple to be more vig­i­lant and to in­stall se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras and fire alarms for their homes. “I was telling my mom the oth­er day I make sure no­body is fol­low­ing me be­fore I pull in­to the yard be­cause these days you don’t know who’s watch­ing you. You must be ex­tra care­ful. And mes­sage your loved ones to say where you are,” Ja­groop said.