"The most important advice I can give you is to look in the mirror and try to appreciate what you see. Self-confidence is what makes a woman look truly attractive (and what guarantees that no one else notices your so-called flaws like a blemish or an extra five pounds).”

SM: At what moment did you feel you had made it as a makeup artist?
Brown: When I landed my first Vogue cover with Naomi Campbell [seven years after I moved to New York].

SM: How and why did you start Bobbi Brown Cosmetics?
Brown: I started with a simple idea: to create a lipstick that looked like my lips, only better. I met a chemist during a magazine photo shoot and told him my idea. He made the lipstick (Brown #4) based on my description and from there, we created nine other lipstick shades. We launched Bobbi Brown Cosmetics in 1991 [at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City]. We projected we’d sell 100 lipsticks the first month and sold 100 the first day!