Every brand has one sentence from which everything else follows. Ours is: Professional make-up should reach every woman – regardless of skin colour, budget and where she lives. It dates from long before the first product existed and still explains why our foundation has fifteen shades, why our cases are made of bamboo and why we sell refills.
Backstage: where the idea was born
The founder of Dorothy Roffat Cosmetics worked for over fifteen years as a make-up artist – four of them as senior make-up artist for Givenchy and MAC Cosmetics in Paris, later as brand ambassador for Givenchy and Kenzo with sales seminars in the USA, the UK and South America. Then freelance: fashion houses, designers, international artists, Paris Fashion Week, the Cannes Film Festival, magazines such as Elle, Grazia and Miss Ebène. Four years in a row she was voted among the three best make-up artists in Europe.
Backstage you see the same problem every day: models with dark skin for whom no brand in the kit has the right shade. Make-up artists then mix their own – on the drugstore shelf that option does not exist. That was the starting point: a line that covers all skin colours and skin types from the outset instead of treating them as a special case.
Two years for one case
The second principle was the packaging. Established cosmetics packagers could only supply plastic; for bamboo, a young company had to be found that was willing to build entirely new tools. Two years of development, countless samples, a design that is now protected at the World Intellectual Property Organization – and at the end the compact case, the eyeshadow palette and the brush handles you recognise immediately. Bamboo was never the cheap solution, but the right one: fast-growing, light, warm in the hand and refillable.
Professional quality, honestly formulated
The formulas are developed with certified cosmetics laboratories in Italy and France that also work for major luxury brands. The standard is the same as backstage: coverage that lasts eight hours, colours that are right on every skin tone, textures that can be worked with a brush. All products are dermatologically tested, paraben-free and not tested on animals. And because we come from the professional world, we also say what our products are not: not natural cosmetics, but professional colour cosmetics in sustainable packaging.
Fewer colours, but the right ones
The decision not to offer fifty lipsticks but ten, not thirty blush tones but six, also comes from a make-up artist's kit. Every shade has a purpose and a skin tone it was made for. That makes choosing easier – and is a quiet statement against excess.
Today
From the first series production in bamboo via the first own store to the online shop in three languages: the brand has grown, the sentence from the beginning has stayed. If you are unsure which shade suits you, send us a photo taken in daylight – personal advice is the part of backstage work we never gave up.
More about the brand · The foundation in 15 shades · The brush collection