Raisa Flowers stands out from the crowd. With her bleached-out eyebrows, signature cyborg contacts and ever-changing technicoloured neon hair, Flowers is known for the avant-garde beauty looks she creates both on herself and on clients including former Dazed 100-er Kelela and Brooklyn rapper Junglepussy. “I feel like my ability to make people feel beautiful, especially black women and other women of colour, is really important to me,” she says. “A lot of times I feel like we’re overlooked in the industry.”
Hailing from New York City with a Caribbean background, Flowers has her roots in the underground club scene where she first got her start doing make-up. A regular face at fashion week, she has not only worked behind the scenes for designers at New York Fashion Week, but has also been centre stage, walking the runways of Gypsy Sport and Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty label.
As well as disrupting the beauty scene with her experimental, colourful looks, Flowers uses her platform to speak out about the lack of diversity in the industry, challenge society’s accepted body image conventions and raise awareness for LGBTQ+ rights. She’s sworn to secrecy on the projects she has coming up this year, but rest assured – they’ll be major.
Alex Peters