The following is an excerpt from the Glow Journal Podcast. You can listen to the full interview now on iTunes and Spotify.
When Elle Ferguson was a child, beauty, to her, was comprised of two very different camps.
“I have two extremes. My mum was a Beauty Queen for Australia. She was in the Miss Australia Quest, so I grew up with her sashes and tiaras in the house, but was really the complete opposite- when I say “natural beauty,” that’s what she was. My idea of beauty was going down to the beach and scrubbing our skin with the sand, drinking loads and loads of water, eating organic, and if we were ever allowed to wear makeup it was hippy-inspired. We would blonde our hair with some sort of henna, and it was all organic. There were two extremes- there was this fashion, Vogue-y, beauty life, and on the other hand there was this extremely natural beauty.”
Elle was, she tells me, always going to grow up to pursue work in a creative industry. “For me, it was always going to be something creative,” she explains. “Our house was so creative- my sister is a jewellery designer now and my mum had a fashion label. When I was young, what was amazing was that I could be anything. I don’t think a lot of children grow up that way. I was told that I could be anything in the entire world, but I needed to study.
“I actually modelled quite a lot in high school, and I got offered a really good contract but my mum said to me ‘Your looks aren’t going to last forever, but your brain will,’ so I went straight off into Visual Merchandising. I did 12 months [of studying] straight out of school. From Visual Merchandising, I realised that I loved hand drafting and I loved plans. One of my lecturers said to me ‘You should try to get into Interior Design & Architecture.’ I did the entry exam, submitted the portfolio, and got in. Into my second year, I realised that I couldn’t colour in between the lines- I was this crazy, eccentric creative that didn’t want to use a ruler to measure everything and do everything by scale. When I graduated, I did an end of year exhibition and was lucky to get Most Promising Student of the Year. It was bizarre, because I thought they hated me because I rocked up with acrylic nails and Ugg boots- I thought I was the antichrist to the interior design world. At the end of year exhibition, there was a lady who worked for One Teaspoon. She approached me and said ‘There’s a job going as National Visual Merchandiser,’ and I said ‘You won’t believe this, but I actually have a Visual Merchandising degree, and I need to get out of interior design because I need to be back in fashion. That’s what keeps me alive.’
“Straight out of interior design, I fell back into fashion. I was there [One Teaspoon] for just over a year. When I worked with One Teaspoon, that saw us launch into David Jones nationally. We set up amazing stores in Western Australia, in Melbourne and in Sydney. Luckily enough, when I was at One Teaspoon, I think Jamie Blakey really saw my potential. There was a job going at General Pants, who stocked One Teaspoon, and Jamie put me forward for it. It was the Head of Womenswear Visual Merchandising. I was like ‘I can’t work there, these people are too cool for me. I’m just a girl from the coast. I can’t do this.’ So I didn’t take the interview for three months. The head of Visual Merchandising and Creative Direction tracked me down when I was installing a window in Bondi Beach, and we literally did the interview in Gould St. He said ‘I had to come to you- you’re the only woman who’s ever made me work for it!’ So I left One Teaspoon and went to General Pants.”
Taking that interview lead to a six and a half year tenure as National Visual Merchandising Manager for Womenswear- a period that allowed Elle to hone her creative and styling skills and, eventually, begin to build her personal brand.
“I hold General Pants to so much of who I am today and the work ethics that I use every day,” Elle tells me. “General Pants really moulded me into the person I am today. I don’t know how to put it into words. I still feel like I’m part of that family. There, I learnt that you can do anything. If you want to hang pieces of wood from ceiling with wine bottles on them and then cover them in gold foil, you can do it. I used to run 43 stores. I had two people in each store who reported directly to me, and it was my vision. Everything that you [consumers] were wearing over those six and a half years, I’d put together.
“What I loved about General Pants was that they looked like the cool kids, but they worked so hard. They’re the one business that I can say I worked for for 36 hours without showering or sleeping. We did it because we loved it. We were invested and it felt like ours.”
The rise of digital changed the way that Elle and her General Pants teamed did things. It began with the way they sourced inspiration, transformed into the medium upon which they consumed content, and soon became a place for them to share work of their own.
“At General Pants, we looked for inspiration everywhere,” Elle says. “I was around two years into General Pants when blogging was happening overseas. These “bloggers” were the girls we were looking to for inspiration, instead of going through the glossy magazines and pulling out photos of celebrities. Part of my job was pulling inspiration from everywhere, and we used to have these amazing cork boards that were floor to ceiling everywhere in the office. We’d put the trends of the season on those pin boards.”
Once each and every cork board was filled from floor to ceiling, Elle and her team realised the images needed to be stored somewhere- somewhere digital, where they could look back with fresh eyes and seek renewed inspiration. The photos were moved to the General Pants server, and Elle began replacing her afternoon coffee with another time of energy booster- an email filled with style inspiration.
“In the office, I used to send out a 3.30 email. It had hundreds of images that would just make you feel alive in the afternoon- I called it an ‘Afternoon Delight.’ It had no sense in it. It started with fives girls getting the email, then it went to 10, then to 20, then 30 guys and girls, and everyone was just gagging for this Afternoon Delight email. One day, we sent out an email and it crashed the server at General Pants. The server was connected to all 43 stores across Australia. What I learnt was that I needed somewhere to put these images. It needed to be a source of inspiration that people could just click on and be available to anyone, anytime. That’s how the blog started.”
The blog Elle speaks of is They All Hate Us, one of Australia’s very first fashion blogs of which she was the co-founder. What eventually became a personal styling mecca didn’t initially include any photos of the women behind it, however- in fact, Elle was reluctant to even call it a “blog” for at least 12 months. After a year of posting sourced imagery, Cosmopolitan Magazine nominated They All Hate Us for a Fun Fearless Female Award in the Blogging category. It was then that Elle realised people were paying attention.
“It was the first time they’d had that category in the awards,” Elle says of the nomination. “We didn’t know how they even knew about it. Because they put us in the magazine and were talking about it, it blew up.”
Despite such accolades, Elle found it difficult to be taken seriously by fashion industry stalwarts in They All Hate Us’ infancy. “Blogging, back then, was a dirty word,” she explains. “50% of people loved it, but 50% of people hated it. I remember sitting at the Cosmo dinner, and the woman sitting next to me introduced herself as a Beauty Editor and I introduced myself as a Blogger. She went into a conversation about how blogging was a fad and that Facebook wasn’t going to last.
“The Australian Women’s Weekly wrote not a very nice piece about blogging. It was really sad, because they’d actually done a whole day’s shoot with us and some other bloggers. They lured us in thinking it was one thing, but when we got the article it was quite the opposite.”
In due time, They All Hate Us began receiving the positive recognition it so deserved and, at its peak, was bringing in a whopping 7.4 million readers per year.
“It was really real. It was authentic,” Elle says of the They All Hate Us mass appeal. “We were very consistent with our posting. We actually never took advertising on in the sense of banner ads, so we were one of few blogs at the time that didn’t have any advertising on the blog. That was something that we really stood by, because if we worked with brands it was always a brand that we loved. It was genuine. The readers, really early on, invested in our brand and believed what that brand stood by.”
Although the They All Hate Us held fashion at its core, Elle had long possessed a vested interest in beauty and began to weave it into the content she contributed to the They All Hate Us platform.
“I don’t leave the house without a tonged blonde lock. I’m always tanned. To me, it was never a hindrance- it was just part of me. Through the whole journey of They All Hate Us, I was always “done,” but undone. I’m addicted to reading beauty articles, and during that They All Hate Us journey I would always share my knowledge. It [beauty content] was sprinkled through, and I found that girls were really interested. Beauty was in there, but fashion content was leading the way.”
After six and a half years at General Pants, and with They All Hate Us taking up the bulk of her time away from the office, Elle decided to make a move- not into full time blogging, but into a senior role as Global Visual Merchandiser for Seafolly. “I always say that when you say something and you really mean it, it comes true,” Elle tells me. “I wrote down and said out loud what kind of job I wanted, and then Seafolly came. I loved that it was a global company, because I was really interested in what was happening overseas. I also like the challenge of being the head of the department. I felt like it was right for me, professionally, to do that. The people they worked with, the models they were casting and the creative was all super exciting, plus it gave me the opportunity to train the staff on styling. There was such a big shift in the swimwear and activewear categories that was happening, and it gave me the ability to sprinkle a little bit of the “Elle Effect” in the business.”
Roughly six months after Elle took the role at Seafolly, Instagram began to transform from a basic social networking site into the influencer platform we know it to be today- which gave They All Hate Us another platform upon which to develop a following. “People wanted to know who was behind the blog,” Elle explains of the new direction the explosion of Instagram saw the blog take. “I used to take all of my Instagram photos in the foyer of Seafolly or against a roller door out on the street, and people started to hone in on things- the denim shorts, the curls, the tan. From there, we realised that there was something about people wanting what I was wearing.”
That interest lead to the launch of the They All Hate Us blog shop- a section of the website that allowed readers to shop an “edit” of the duo’s favourite items. On the day of the webstore’s launch, every single piece, shot on a backlot in Mascot, sold out. “I was speaking to the CEO that day and he said ‘This is going to be big,‘” Elle says. “I said ‘No, it’s fine, I can still do my job,’ and he said ‘Promise me now that you’re not leaving,’ and I said ‘I’m not leaving, I love my job! I’m just going to do this as my side hustle!’ Literally six months later I had to walk in and say ‘I’m so sorry.'”
When the time came for the inevitable move into full time blogging and business ownership, Elle ensured she was financially stable. “I made sure the blog was making enough money for me to leave,” she explains. “Roxy [Jacenko, Elle’s former manager] said to me, right back at the beginning, ‘Free dresses aren’t going to pay your rent,’ so when I left Seafolly I made sure I was earning enough money through the blog and through sponsored posts that I could leave. Even now, I’m really strategic with the way I earn my money. I earn it, and then I funnel it back into projects. My mum taught me that really early on. I actually live a debt free life– I don’t have a credit card and I pay my bills. If something were to happen, I’m safe.”
Although it was less than 12 months ago that Elle launched her beauty brand, Elle Effect, she explains that the business idea had long been bubbling away in the background. “It [the idea for Elle Effect] had always been there. When I look at my One Teaspoon days or General Pants… I used to call it the Wow Factor. Everything I did had to have that Wow Factor. Throughout my whole career, I was sprinkling a little bit of me through everything I did. The Elle Effect was always chugging along in the background, but I didn’t have the confidence to take that leap of faith.
“In January 2017, I said to myself ‘I’m just going to say yes.’ One of those first ‘yes’s was in January 2017 when Jen Atkin [celebrity hairstylist and Ouai brand founder] came to Australia. She messaged me on Instagram and said ‘I’m such a fangirl, I want to meet you.’ I thought ‘This isn’t happening.’ She wrote again saying ‘I love your style, come to my hotel and let’s hang out.’ I rang my manager and said ‘I think the real Jen Atkin has messaged me and wants to me to meet her at her hotel room.’ It was the beginning of the Ouai for Jen, and I was already obsessed with her because of the Kardashians, but many people didn’t know who she was. I dragged my manager along to the hotel, and Jen opened the door up and was like ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m meeting you!’ and I was like ‘Are you kidding? I can’t believe I’m meeting you!’
“I asked how she found me, and she said ‘Kourtney Kardashian was addicted to They All Hate Us, and through They All Hate Us we found you.’ It was spinning me out, because that world felt so far away. It made me think to myself ‘I knew I had an audience in America, but something is resonating with these people.’
“In February [of 2017], I went and shot the Ouai campaign with her in LA. It was really a ‘Wow’ moment. I shot with Steph Shep and Kristen Noel Crawley from KNC Beauty, and these women told me the stories of how they launched their own brands and made these amazing companies while I sat there and listened.
“I came back to Australia, and I’d been doing some sponsored posts for other tan and beauty brands. By chance, I found out how much product they had sold off one of the posts. I knew the talent fee, what I’d been paid, and I got to thinking… My retail hat was back on. I sat on it, sat on it some more and really thought about it. I sat back and looked at the landscape of influencing and blogging, and I realised that in myself, I had made a brand. It was the denim shorts, the tan, the blonde- there were key factors that made up that signature. I realised that the Elle Ferguson tick of approval, in itself, was a brand. I thought to myself ‘There’s something here. I’m going to stir the pot and see what I can do.'”
In June of that year, Elle was invited to Kim Kardashian’s Los Angeles home for the launch of KKW Beauty. Inspired by the Kardashian’s own entrepreneurial spirit, Elle began to lay the groundwork for what would become the Elle Effect. “I spoke to a couple of people about what I was thinking of doing and they said ‘Yes, go for it.’ I didn’t necessarily know what it was, but I want to do something. Everybody thought it was going to be fashion.”
Elle credits her own naivety for launching a beauty product, rather than a fashion brand. “I knew too much about about fashion,” she explains. “I knew so much about fashion and how it works, what it did, how to do it and where to do it, and I knew absolutely nothing about beauty. I was really naive about it, but in the same breath I liked the fact that beauty applied to everybody. There was something beautiful about that. With fashion, especially when we were buying sizes or scaling, you had to stop at some point. You couldn’t cater to everybody. With the Elle Effect, I could include everybody.”
Despite initial plans to launch her brand with a story of three products, Elle made the decision to channel all of her energy into just one- a tanning mousse. “I learnt that, while working with the chemist directly on the formulations, it [the product] needs your sole focus. I don’t have a big team- it’s me. When it comes to testing, formulations and opinions, it’s me and the chemist. I worked out that I needed to funnel everything into that one product and make that one product the best version I could possibly get. I just couldn’t do that and spread it across three. I also like the fact that with one product, the message couldn’t get diluted. I stand behind that Elle Effect Tanning Mousse 100%.
“I really, really wanted the product to be Australian made and Australian owned. That was important to me, with all the time I spend overseas waving the Australian banner so high. I tried for six to seven months, calling chemists and emailing chemists and they wouldn’t even email me back. Somebody finally came back to me, and they said it was going to be 18 months before I could even get into a chemist to talk about a product. I knew I didn’t have that time- I felt like it needed to happen. I knew things were changing in the landscape of in the influencer, and instead of collaborating with brands you were becoming the brand.
“Every time I went to LA, I would always get a [spray] tan because there’s different formulas in each country. The tan I would get in America was always better than what I could get here. I would always ask the girl who tanned me ‘What’s in this?’ I got some names of chemists throughout California, and I rang and emailed and one of them got back to me. I said ‘Could I come and meet you? I have this idea to make a tan.’ LA is the city of dreams, so they said ‘Sure, come in!’ That’s where it started- in a chemist just outside of the city of California, talking about how to make the perfect tan.
“The formulation is an emulsion of the things that I’d found wrong with other tans and had made right. It had to work, firstly. It also had to feel good on the skin. I needed it to not dry the skin out. We went with a foam rather than a spray because we ship globally, and a lot of countries don’t let aerosols in. The ‘sticky’ factor was a big thing, as were marks on your sheets. It was me, listing out all the things that were wrong that I wanted to make right.
“One of the common factors was the smell. You don’t realise how toxic a tan can smell until you smell it without all the bells and whistles. I thought ‘If this smells bad, what is it doing to my body?’ A lot of brands go about masking the smell of tans by adding coconuts or fruits. You’re trying to cover up a smell rather than trying to eliminate it. When I was going through that process, I was trying to work out what we could add or remove to make this tan smell nice. Rose is my favourite flower, so we tried it. The chemist I was working with was really into natural ingredients and making sure we were using the best of the best, so they suggested adding essential rose oil. I thought ‘No you can’t- an oil base with a tan mix isn’t going to work.’ We went back and forth trying to get the right scent, and that’s what makes me [the Elle Effect Tanning Mousse] different to everybody else. When you look at other tans, it really stands out when you don’t have to smell toxins”
Today, almost two years after Elle began working on the first iteration of the Elle Effect Tanning Mousse, she’s hard at work on new products- and exploring the development options that have since opened up in Australia.
“Those chemists in Australia have finally decided to take my emails, so I’m also doing some development in Australia with a couple of products, just so I can see the process, the quality and what I actually can make out of Australia. I’ve also changed my packaging. The amazing thing about me being in control is that I can change things.”
With change on her mind and growth on the horizon, Elle has big things planned for Elle Effect- and true to form, she won’t be doing things by halves. “This year is super exciting. We have a bunch of new products coming out under the Elle Effect brand. We are in Mecca throughout Australia and New Zealand, which is a huge achievement for me because I’ve always been a Mecca girl. I’m looking at how I can grow this business. My dream is that every woman and man has got an Elle Effect product in their bathroom cabinet. I’m looking forward to a place where I can grow that business enough that I can step to the side and it can stand by itself without Elle Ferguson. I look at Elle McPherson, KKW Beauty [Kim Kardashian’s namesake brand] and Emily Weiss with Glossier- they’re amazing. They’re real businesses.”
“I think where we are right now as women, as business owners and as entrepreneurs is so exciting.”
