IKEA
Bringing Beauty Education Into the IKEA Experience
When IKEA Ulm invited me to create and lead a beauty masterclass, the brief was an interesting combination of two things I know very well: beauty education and helping people create better systems for the way they live.
As a Los Angeles makeup artist, licensed esthetician, beauty educator, and beauty marketing professional, I've spent more than 20 years working with products, routines, and the people who use them. For this IKEA event, I brought that experience into the store with an interactive beauty masterclass designed to help attendees rethink their hair, skincare, makeup, and everyday beauty routines while also showing them how IKEA products could help organize those routines at home.
Creating a Beauty Experience for IKEA
The class was designed specifically for the IKEA bathroom department, so the environment itself became part of the experience. Rather than simply standing in front of an audience and talking about beauty, I developed an interactive presentation that connected beauty routines with the physical spaces where those routines actually happen.
The masterclass covered haircare, body care, skincare, makeup, product selection, color theory, and personalized beauty routines. I also incorporated the products people already owned, because a good beauty routine isn't necessarily about buying more. It's about understanding what you have, knowing how to use it, and creating a system that makes your routine easier.
The event was presented in English with an interpreter, which meant I also had to make the information clear and accessible for a German-speaking audience without losing the conversational, personal quality that is important to my teaching style.
Turning Beauty Routines Into Systems
One of the biggest themes of the class was organization. Beauty products have a tendency to take over bathrooms. Skincare ends up scattered across the counter, makeup gets shoved into drawers, hair products collect around the mirror, and the things you actually use every day become difficult to find. I developed the class around the idea that organizing beauty isn't just about making a bathroom look better. It's about creating a system around the way you actually get ready.
We looked at organizing products according to routines and creating dedicated zones for things like shower products, haircare, skincare, and makeup. We also talked about shared bathrooms, countertop organization, and creating a functional getting-ready station.
That gave IKEA's bathroom products a natural role in the education. Storage wasn't being presented as an isolated product category. It became part of a larger conversation about making everyday beauty routines more functional.
Creating Educational Materials
To support the masterclass, I created a beauty workbook covering topics including hair, skincare, makeup, color theory, and personalized routines. The workbook gave attendees something they could use during the class and refer back to afterward. It also allowed me to take what could have been a one-time presentation and turn it into a more useful educational experience.
This is something I've done throughout my career. Whether I'm creating professional education for a major beauty brand, writing consumer skincare content, or teaching a live class, I look for ways to take information that can feel complicated and make it practical.
Beauty Education Meets Retail
What made this project particularly interesting was the opportunity to bring together my two very different areas of expertise. I've spent my career in the beauty industry, but I've also spent years thinking about branding, marketing, consumer behavior, retail experiences, and how people interact with products.
The IKEA beauty masterclass allowed me to combine all of those things.
Instead of simply teaching people about makeup or skincare, I created an experience that connected products, routines, organization, education, and the physical retail environment. The result was a beauty workshop that felt relevant to
IKEA while still being genuinely useful to the people attending.
From Makeup Artist to Beauty Educator
This project is also a good example of how my career has evolved. I originally trained as a makeup artist and licensed esthetician, then moved into professional beauty education, copywriting, brand marketing, and content strategy. Today, I can bring all of those experiences into a single project. For IKEA, that meant developing the educational concept, creating the presentation and supporting materials, teaching the class, and adapting the content for a live retail environment.
It was a very different kind of marketing project from writing a product page or developing a social campaign, but the foundation was the same: understand the audience, understand the brand, and create an experience that gives people something useful. And in this case, that experience happened right in the IKEA bathroom department.
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