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TooD is the brainchild of Shari Siadat, a beauty entrepreneur and inclusivity activist. Shari is a first generation Iranian American and through the process of accepting her unique unibrow, rejected a standard of beauty that didn’t serve her. Shari is deeply soulful and took us through her fierce brow and eye makeup routine as well as showing us her eclectic, meaningful space. We loved speaking to her and felt a kindred connection—Shari is a mother to three girls and wants them to live in a world that celebrates the beauty of being, without the pressure to conceal or contour. Amen to that!
MELISSA: Tell us about TooD. I love the name, the tagline and the meaning. Tell us about the line and how you developed it? It is so different, and it is so fun and vibrant.
SHARI: TooD is short for ‘attitude.’ It started from my own story and struggle with always having perhaps a negative attitude about myself. It is about personal agency, and at any moment we can pivot how we feel about ourselves, beauty standards that were passed on to us generationally and in our heritage. Only until the moment that I discovered how to change about how I feel about myself – my inner and outer world, did I realize that this is the secret sauce that helped changed my way in a positive trajectory. TooD is really about reminding people that we are all creators and we are all non-binary. What I mean by that is that we can be this and we can be that. I wanted to show opposition because I feel we have been conditioned to feel like we have a role assigned to identify ourselves. I wanted to remind everyone that we are all things and should not identify one another by a role. The names of my products are to remind ourselves of the non-binary that we all contain with us to permit our creativity to go there. I made the commitment to the brand that I will never develop concealer – I want to invest in products that bring innovation to the space – whether it is clean beauty, performance, and color but also those that allow us the joy of self-expression. It is about pausing and seeing how I feel honouring that, doing the inner work and visually displaying it on your face and body.
MELISSA: Love it. So playful. What are some of your go-to colors? Where do you gravitate towards in the line?
SHARI: When I first started, I was really into Brother/Sister, which is a holographic blue. When you place it on your skin it totally changes–it will be different on your skin than mine. In the campaign we shot, that was the color I wore on my eyebrows. Recently, I have been feeling Sun/Moon–it reminds me of the moment where the sun and moon meet every night, it is so romantic. The dark purple is called Asleep/Awake and from a spiritual aspect, I was very much ‘asleep’ until TooD and this brand awakened me. I use this one as an eyeliner. I love the color called Sweet/Sour, it is the pink version of Brother/Sister and I use it as a highlighter on my cheeks and on my collarbone, it really illuminates. It is very subtle but adds such a nice glow to any body part!
TooD is really about reminding people that we are all creators and we are all non-binary.
MELISSA: That is a gorgeous color. I love dark purple. Explain the magic swab and its functionalities.
SHARI: It is a re-usable Q-tip, a silicone wand. One side is flat and the other is ribbed and this helps put the product on your hair, or you can draw the eyeliner line with it as well. To show an example, you put the wand in the product and the nubs help put the product and it also cuts down on single-use plastic. I also have the soap brow that I can show you. The TooD brush is made from natural bamboo and is made out of natural bristles. The soap brow comes in a tin and is made from recycled metal and is made with food and soy ink–totally recyclable. This was important to me when we picked our packaging. This is an all-natural way to fluff and accentuate your brows. People talk about micro-blading, and this serves the purpose of natural micro-blading. It gives you the spiky editorial look, or if you want more of a traditional style you can brush it down. It totally keeps your brows in place, it does not keep your eyes flaky or give you that crunchy feeling.
MELISSA: I love the product. I need to get it. What are some of your daughter’s and friends favorite colors?
SHARI: I have three girls who are eleven, nine, and six. My baby Celine loves Asleep/Awake and Push/Pull color. My middle daughter plays a lot around with color and she loves the color Past-Present. My daughter Scarlett loves the color Real/Fake and she does little subtle dots on her eyes.
MELISSA: It is so fun as a little girl to play around with makeup and having that connection with your mother. Tell me about your grey hair? I read your article in Vogue and was left so inspired.
SHARI: It felt good but the irony in it was that it also felt so bad. I think that is something that is not discussed—the personal journey that we have to do to constantly fight against a system that has told us that aging means that you have inspired. I haven’t colored my hair in a year, and I have struggled with it quite a bit. I committed with myself and I purposely put myself in these experiments with beauty standards to see how I come out on the other side. This one has been particularly hard on me, this is my first experience with grey hair. When it came to coloring my hair, I did not feel safe going to a salon in quarantine so I said to myself “let’s see how I feel after a year.” I told myself just two weeks ago that I want to color it again. I want to have a relationship with my hair where I can come back to it, grow it out and color it again and not feels like for the rest of my life I am grey.
MELISSA: That is a very good philosophy. Show us some of your other favorite things!
SHARI: I have a lot of eclectic art pieces. I love sustainable pieces and supporting female founded businesses. When my grandma passed, I told my mother not to throw all of her clothes away, so I have restyled my grandmother’s clothing pieces and I wear them proud. There is a brand called Crown Affair and I absolutely love their products; their mask makes my hair fall into place nicely. I also love their silk scrunchies. I love Dr. Singha’s mustard seed bath. I will fill my tub in this stuff and will have my phone and board meetings in there. That is what is so nice about quarantine, we need to take advantage of what we can do, not what we cannot do. The brand also has a great oil that you spread on and it continues the treatment. The ingredients in the mustard bath are a therapeutic blend with essential oils of wintergreen, eucalyptus, and thyme. It is purifying and energizing.
MELISSA: Thank you so much for your time and for showing your space and sharing everything with TooD.
SHARI: Thank you! I want to see your TooD look. The best part for me and building this brand as being a vessel and letting it go viral and seeing where the vine grows. I love being a witness to everyone’s self-expression.