LIP SERVICE TO A NEW GENERATION
She perked up Kylie Minogue’s pout, gave a swish of colour to the lips of European royalty and through her namesake cosmetics brand, Natalie Bloom, has brought joy, confidence and a cool girl aesthetic to a generation of women.
Bloom arrived like a breath of fresh air into the Australian cosmetics market in the early 1990s as a young, female entrepreneur creating purposeful, effective and beautiful cosmetics that soon caught the attention of the world.
Her Bloom Cosmetics brand had character, soul and quality.
The famous Miss Bloom motif stood out from the corporate giants and women trusted and identified with its independent, youthful founder who took a risk and launched the company from the garage of her parents’ Melbourne home at the age of just 22.
Elle Macpherson, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Helena Christensen, Natalie Imbruglia, Olivia Newton-John and even Mary Donaldson, now the queen of Denmark, were fans, in particular of the famous lip gloss – the little tube of glossy goodness that helped a generation pucker up.
Now, a new generation is “blooming” with daughters Chloe and Amber Hamersfeld joining their mum to take Bloom Cosmetics into another era.
It is an evolution of an iconic Melbourne brand, heralded by the relaunch of that legendary lip gloss.
Born in Melbourne, Bloom’s road to cosmetics royalty began after she graduated from RMIT, where she studied design and was looking for creative fulfilment.
“I was 22 and I had no business plan or strategy, I just wanted to do design,” Bloom said.
“I was working in a studio for a year, which was not very creatively inspiring. It was the early ’90s and I started going out with Brian (Hamersfeld, who she married in 1999) who is the definition of an entrepreneur, and he was like ‘why don’t you just start a business?’ or start doing things.”
Bloom, whose family founded the Portmans clothing brand, decided to tap into her creative design flair and came up with a range of greeting cards that were quickly snapped up.
“I’ve always had a love for natural ingredients, I still do, and next I did a candlemaking kit, which was beeswax sheets and a bottle of scented essential oil with the wick. That really took off, unexpectedly,” Bloom said.
“I set up a tiny stand at a trade fair and it came to the last day and a lady came up and was chatting to me. At the end of the conversation I asked, ‘oh, where’s your shop?’ and she was like, ‘I am the buyer for Myer’.
“It was early 1993. I think that was a wake-up call to say, ‘Well, am I doing this as a business or a hobby?’”
Bloom Cosmetics as a business was born that year and it quickly flourished. With the candlemaking kits stocked in Myer, Bloom started exploring natural cosmetics.
“I wanted to do a beeswax lip balm with natural scent and that was the beginning of getting into the lip category, which was the stepping stone to lip gloss,” Bloom said.
“It was sort of the first product on the market at that time that was using natural scent, ingredients that were good for you, and we did playful packaging. Everything was quite design driven and it just snowballed.
“We moved into the cosmetic division at Myer and that was a great moment to say, ‘OK, we are here and we are expanding’, and at the same time we started to expand internationally and had distributors in every country in the world.
“We were stocked in Harrods, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, all those key amazing retailers around the world, and then Sephora, which opened in the US at the end of the ’90s. It was just amazing and such a fun time.”
While the brand grew rapidly to include eye shadow, lip pencils, eyebrow pencils, mascara, lipstick, scented candles, blushes, powders, essential oils, accessories such as cosmetic brushes and bags, and even hankies, it was the lip gloss that was – and arguably remains – the hero product.
Every cool girl had it in their clutch.
“We got letters from the likes of Naomi Campbell and Elle Macpherson, even Princess Mary wore our lip gloss at her wedding and sent me a letter on that (royal) letterhead, which was divine,” Bloom said.
“One day I was sitting at my desk and the receptionist said ‘Olivia Newton-John is on the phone’. She was my childhood idol. I was like, ‘What?’
“She just rang to say, ‘I’ve just bought your lip gloss and I bought some for my daughter Chloe and I just want to say congratulations’. I mean, just the most divine human being.
“Kylie Minogue was amazing to me. She wore our tangerine lip gloss on tour. She had to have lots and lots of it, so much of it, because it got reapplied so often throughout her concerts.
“Natalie Imbruglia, who I absolutely loved, also wore it.”
Bloom was named Victoria’s Young Australian of the Year in 1997. In 1999, she was included in a list of “30 Successful Women Under 30” in Cleo magazine, and made it on to the BRW “40 and under rich list” in 2007.
Bloom lipsticks were in the gift bags received by the biggest names in Hollywood at the Vanity Fair post-Oscars party in 2000.
By 2012, wanting to devote more time to her four young children and sensing a change in the retail environment, Bloom shifted gears and moved the business to an online model.
“The retail landscape had changed so dramatically and
our youngest son, Ben, was born in 2011,” she said.
“I just thought, I can’t do this in this capacity anymore. It had been 20 years since I started. I saw the online space as such a creative space to work in and I’d done the whole big global retail thing. A lot of my competitors had been bought out by the big guys, either LVMH or Estee Lauder. It was time to shift things around.
“I actually don’t know how I managed. I ran the business for 10 years before having kids, but then with young kids it was manic.
“I had a nanny for when I was at work, but I did not want any help with the kids when it wasn’t business hours. I threw myself into being a mum. There were nights that I was breastfeeding then going to my computer because it was daytime in America. It was a 24-hour schedule.
“To have this opportunity to keep the business going as an online model while being the mum I wanted to be was just a dream come true.”
Changing gears also allowed Bloom the space to pursue her other passions. Constantly curious, she is an avid beekeeper, a talented artist, a passionate cook, adores France and French style, is interested in interior design and is a keen gardener.
As a testament to the power of the brand, Bloom Cosmetics never went away, existing online for the past 13 years being carefully tended by its founder.
But now it is being reinvigorated.
In mid-2023, Chloe, 22, and Amber, 21, who are studying design at RMIT, joined the business, and Bloom’s eldest son Zac, who is studying IT, has also been involved. “It feels like a full circle moment … I started Bloom at the similar ages to the girls,” Bloom said.
Chloe said: “She is encouraging us to do whatever sparks joy and excitement for us.
“There’s so much opportunity to move it to different avenues and to just expand more and more and keep creating things, which is exciting.
“We have seen Mum working on and being excited by Bloom over the years, but now, being part of it, there’s a whole other level of appreciation because we can see how much time and work goes into every single step, and to think that she was doing it on such a large scale and with four kids is crazy.”
Amber and Chloe have taken the lead with the brand’s social media channels.
“It’s so fun, we are being authentic and showing up online, being ourselves, being weird, being silly and showing the product,” Amber said.
“People are seeing who we are – they are seeing a face and personality.”
Evolving the business into its next era has including leaning into the brand’s proud history.
“We did sit down (as a family) and do a big strategy session and Chloe was a big part of saying ‘what are our pillars of strength?’ and ‘how we are going to talk to them?’, such as being an Australian brand, having integrity, having history, and the nostalgia behind the brand,” Bloom said.
“Amber would love to get into skin care, but we’re not going there right now.
“We’re trying to stay focused predominantly on the lip category.
“We also have to be mindful of products that work in an online environment. We’re planning to relaunch our brow gel before Christmas.
“I always want to keep going back and doing products that reinforce my love of natural materials and ingredients.”
The famous Miss Bloom, who represented a woman living her best life, with a career, a sense of fun, wearing a great pair of heels and at the wheel of a zippy car, is still very much a part of the brand’s identity – as is the Bloom vintage Fiat.
“We have done a big moment on the car with her,” Bloom said.
“We’re just going to have a bit of fun over spring and summer and park it in iconic Melbourne locations to do giveaways and connect with the consumer.”
More than three decades since stepping into the cosmetic entrepreneur space, Bloom is delighted to have her daughters joining what is very much a family business and she is drawing inspiration from their boundless energy and insights.
“Bloom has always had a playful spirit and appealed to people that like authentic things, don’t take themselves too seriously and have an appreciation for nature,” she said.
“It is about natural beauty and products that make you feel good.
“I am not there to do what I did and turn it into this crazy monster, because I know where that leads. I just want to keep its soul and personality and creativity.
“We’re having fun, we’re having a great time and there’s an opportunity for anything to happen.”
bloomcosmetics.com
