The following is an excerpt from the Glow Journal Podcast. You can listen to the full interview now on iTunes and Spotify.
“I was obsessed with looking brown,” James Read, Lady Gaga and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s go-to tanner, tells me of his teenage years. “I discovered these tanning towels and sometimes I wouldn’t do it very well- I’d get these tanned hands. I was 15, and I’d go to school orange, and everyone was taking the Mickey out of me.”
Today, faux tanning doyen James Read would never have the Mickey taken out of him following one of his now famous spray tans. Widely credited, and rightly so, with popularising spray tans both in salon and at home, James was the world’s first tanning expert. “I wanted to treat tanning as not just a spray tan, but as an experience.”
Before his teen tanning nightmares, James interest in beauty began in his mother’s bathroom. “I used to slather on my mum’s Nivea cream,” he tells me. “I was obsessed with using mum’s beauty products… not her makeup though. I wasn’t getting dressed up in her clothes!”
Despite an early interest in beauty, James’ professional career began in the kitchen. “I trained as a chef and loved it,” he says of his first adult job. “I was never one of those people, though, who wanted to spend all weekend in the kitchen. I did it for about eight months but I never really loved it. I love spending Christmas with my family, so as soon as someone told me I would have to work over Christmas, that was it.”
Recognising his own lack of passion for life as a chef, James turned his hand to psychotherapy. “My parents used to be counsellors so I was always really into criminal psychology, how people feel,” he explains. “I just love people. If anything, it [studying] opened up my own self as well, as it makes you let down on your walls.”
“I remember going away on this trip to a convent for two days,” James tells me of his most vivid memory from him timing training as a counsellor. “It was two days of personal centred counselling, so you basically sit around for two days, talk about yourselves and counsel each other. I remember the first night we got there I got everyone drunk, then the next day we were all so emotionally hungover that we all started crying- I was a bad influence!”
Although seemingly unrelated, James firmly believes that his early training has shaped the career he has since forged for himself. “With tanning, you have someone standing in front of you who is naked and helpless,” he says of the link between counselling and beauty. “People want to share their lives with you, so you have to be able to listen and understand and help them. Sometimes that is a counselling session in itself- not just for them, but for me. I remember when I used to have my own salon at the Sanderson Hotel, and people used to come and cry out their problems. It’s like a hairdresser or a makeup artist. It’s your quiet time, your time to offload. You go in feeling down and you come out looking tan and feeling confident- like you can take on the world.”
James moved on to work in department stores, which is where he began to realise that beauty and, more specifically, tanning, could become a viable career path. After seeing premium self tanning brand St Tropez “everywhere,” James’ curiosity was piqued and thus his passion was ignited. “I started doing retail for them,” he tells me as he prefaces the story behind the chance encounter that may well have changed his life. “Someone rang in sick once who did the spray tans, and Billie Piper was coming in that day for a tan. I ended up doing it, even though I had no training. That was 17 years ago.”
At that time, the infancy of 2001, tanning was not a trend, nor was it the part of life it is today. “My goal was to change people’s perception of tanning,” James iterates. “I wanted to take away from the days of Ross from Friends. I wanted tanning to be on the same level as a hairdresser, manicurist or makeup artist. Tanning, when I first started, was never really a career. Now, it’s a profession.”
Changing the global perception of tanning is precisely what James did, taking on a role with beauty empire L’Oréal Paris to devise and market tanning products and quite literally turn tanning into a worldwide trend. “L’Oréal really had the money to take my vision to the next level. I came up with trends for them, we started doing sponsored articles in magazines- James Read for L’Oréal Paris. They had the budget to take tanning to the next level. We showed that tanning was for everyone. It wasn’t just for someone thing, with blonde hair, who looked like an 80s supermodel. Tanning gives you confidence.”
With false tanning finally gaining mainstream momentum, James took it upon himself to launch a stand alone tanning salon- the first of its kind anywhere in the world. “When I first opened my own salon, it was called The Studio by James Read. The concept was that of Studio 54. It was wall to wall gold, but still classic. You went in and it was the place to go. The furniture was all 70s. It took you back, but it still had that classic element of the brand. It was about taking someone on an experience. We had waiting lists of people wanting tans.”
“When I first started tanning, people used to get paranoid about a male doing the tan. Unless it was a makeup artist, it wasn’t heard of to have a guy working in beauty. People would come in [to the salon] who hadn’t heard of me, and they’d walk in and say ‘Oh! You’re a guy! and I’d say ‘Don’t worry, I’m gay!'”
It was at his own salon that James pioneered what has since become his signature tanning style- building up the tan in light, precisely applied layers rather than as a block of colour. Having changed not only the global perception towards tanning but also the way in which technicians were applying false tanning solutions, James’ list of celebrity clientele swiftly grew to include the likes of Lady Gaga, Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Kate Moss, Mariah Carey and a slew of international Vogue editors. “I was always taking a risk and thinking ‘What can I do next?'”
What did come next was London Fashion Week. “No tanning brand had ever done fashion week,” James explains. “It was during that time that I met Charlotte Tilbury, then fast forward a few years and I’m tanning her at home. I do believe that when you meet people, you meet them for a reason. Whether that reason is good or bad, it’s a part of your journey. I always appreciate everything that happens. You have to.”
Having opened his own salons and with nine years as St Tropez’s resident tanning expert under his belt, 2012 saw James take the leap into a venture we now know as James Read Tan. “About nine years in, I all of a sudden decided to go out alone, do it myself and take the risk. I was one of those people who would go to every party and hand my card out to every single person,” James tells me of how he worked to build up the brand from scratch. “As I’ve got older,” he adds, “I’ve found myself getting quite anxious going to parties. I think I suffer from anxiety a little bit going to parties. I get panicky, sweaty and nervous. Even product launches and events, there’s been times when I’ve gone into the toilet and hidden for 10, 15 minutes.”
“I wanted to do a product range that was different,” James explains of the thought process behind his namesake’s brand initial product release. “It wasn’t about just bringing out a mousse or a face tan. It was ‘How can I get people talking?’ If a journalist isn’t going to write about it, will anyone buy it?”
“I used to use face masks, and rather than washing them off after 20 minutes I would sleep with them on and wake up with glowing skin. I thought “Why don’t I do this with tan?” Then I came up with the Sleep Mask Tan. When we launched the Sleep Mask, it was the first product that combined skincare with tanning. A lot of brands had launched products for the face, but what they really were were the body products packaged in a face product.” As with almost all truly revolutionary ideas, within the beauty sphere and well beyond, formulas and concepts similar to the James Read Sleep Tan Mask were quick to pop up amongst the offerings of several other global beauty brands. Today, James is not perturbed by copycats. “We create products that have never been done before. If you follow or look at what other brands are doing, then you’re not really changing the way people see your industry. Never follow. Lead. I always have that ethos, the thought pattern, that Chanel have: wait three years, and then do it better. Never copy.”
James’ originality (and, of course, the efficacy of his product range) is what has seen his brand grow to be stocked in, at the time of writing, 38 countries worldwide. “I remember doing an event in New York for Net-A-Porter,” James tells me of one of the brand’s real breakthrough moments, “and the beauty director of American Vogue came around and I asked ‘Have you heard of James Read before?’ She said ‘You’re in the April issue. Happy fucking Christmas!’ When she left, I cried. At that point the brand had already been in UK Vogue three times in a year, and to then be in American Vogue…”
At that time, Vogue was it when it came to reaching a global audience- a time when social media simply didn’t afford brands the reach it does today. James explains to me that social media has changed the way he, and almost all business owners, have dealt with social media marketing. “It’s about how people perceive your brand,” he explains of the Instagram effect. “When they see your brand, does it attract them? Does it pull them in? I think it’s like a film. If you see a trailer for a film and the trailer’s good, you’re going to want to watch the film. With social media, it’s much more about using yourself to push the product. The product isn’t going to just sell itself.”
Given that the brand is his namesake, James feels the products requires a different approach to that of more anonymous labels. “I’m very protective,” tells me of the James Read Tan empire (although he would never call it that). “I want everything to be perfect. There’s always going to be the odd mistake or hiccup, but I think mistakes and hiccups help to shape you into who you are. You learn from your mistakes.”
Despite having a whopping 30 awards under his belt, James has bright visions for the future of James Read Tan. “For the next year, I’m really driven to take things to the next level and really go for it. I’m not going to hold back. I know exactly where I want to take things. I’m so, so confident. I’m gonna kick some arse. The Queen is back- as Madonna would say!”
To listen to the full interview with James, subscribe to the Glow Journal podcast now on iTunes or Spotify.
