Thirty years of living in New York hasn’t extinguished the Monaghan accent of Orla Maguire, founder of global beauty brand Lash Star.

On a flying visit home to see her family, I caught up with the fashion grad turned beauty boss as she finished a whistlestop tour of Europe meeting the newest stockists of her beauty range.

A busy Mum of four, Orla never intended to get into beauty until a few years back, and her previous life as a stylist and a sittings editor at Cosmopolitan magazine in New York sounds every bit as glamorous as you would imagine it was. Over coffee, Orla explained to me her roundabout way of getting into the beauty world.

Orla Maguire – Lash Star

Orla graduated from NCAD in Dublin with a fashion degree, by which time she was assisting Ireland’s best-ever stylist, Catherine Condell. Clothing was her passion, she says ‘I was so thrilled to have the degree in fashion because I felt I wanted a whole background in clothing. When I was in college and assisting Catherine she was going to London to do Fashion Week for Paul Costello and John Rocha, and I was like, how can I get on that trip, you know?’

Paying her own way to get to London, Orla soon found herself working with the top models of the ’90s – Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Amber Valetta and the rest. But, New York was calling and she soon found her way into the highest echelons of the fashion and beauty industry there.

New York, New York

Before Orla Maguire even realised she would launch Lash Star or any other beauty business (she has another on the way), she soon found herself working on shoots, campaigns and videos with the best in the business. Sam McKnight, Christy Turlington, Mary Greenwell, Ben Affleck and Whitney Houston, Orla worked with them all.

Anyone else would be scared to death to work with such big names but not Orla. She says ‘I was never really starstruck. I remember being in LA one time and we were shooting Ben Affleck, and he started taking the p*ss out of me with an Irish accent and I said to him ‘Oh, you must have been playing the role of an Irishman in your school play’, I said something kind of sarcastic. And I remember his agent looking at me completely appalled.’ But it was her fashion work that ultimately led to the beginning of Lash Star, which is now one of the most popular lash and mascara brands in the US.

Building A Beauty Brand

Orla says that to know your business inside and out is to be the owner-operator of your brand, and she certainly stays in touch with every element of Lash Star. She is as likely to follow up on any customer complaint with an email to apologize as she is to appear on QVC on TV in Italy to promote the brand (with no Italian).

Despite her Lash Star mascaras, 10 different false lash sets, eyeliners, curlers, kits and tools being very affordable for the quality, she has spent years finding the right manufacturers. She says ‘Our mascaras come from Italy, the gel liner comes in from Japan and our wooden kohl liner is made in Germany. She says it was important to ‘to source the best manufacturers instead of having everything done in the same factory as a lot of just turnkey brands do. You know, when you see a lot of celebrity brands, it’s just all turnkey, they do the packaging, they do the formulation and everything.’

Customer Trends

Being an owner-operator means beauty bosses are more in tune with trends and how their customer wants to shop. Orla’s Lash Star is an in-store and an online brand (here it’s on Cloud10Beauty.com) but she has built her brand’s profile in several ways. She says ‘I realised I need to concentrate on other channels, I needed to build up the e-commerce. QVC came on board, which was a fabulous opportunity because it rounded out the brand as being omnichannel. So now I’m online, in-store, and on TV.’

Lash Star is currently available at Harrods, Fenwicks, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom and Douglas. As she prepares to launch a very exciting tubing mascara in 2024, Orla’s best-selling Full Control dual-ended mascara is continuing to woo wearers from other lash brands and her Heated Lash Curler is the best you will ever use. She says she is still in ‘growth mode’ with Lash Star. We reckon global success is on the horizon for this Irish-born beauty boss.