A renowned makeup artist and teacher, Bina Khan has been in the field of beauty for more than 25 years. Known for her signature bridal makeup looks - which is a celebration of South Asian skin tones - Bina decided to shut down her salon in Karachi last year after Covid-19 hit. The reason was the simple fact that she didn’t want to expose people to unnecessary health risks.

Even though, she now spends most of her time in London, she flies to Karachi twice a year for bridal season. “I have a pop up at my friend’s salon and you will see me doing makeup in a full face mask to ensure I keep everyone safe,” Bina Khan tells Instep.

Recently the makeup expert launched her own makeup line, Just B and we had to get hold of her to know more about what inspired her to come out with her own brand. According to Bina, she realized that there was a blank space in the market for cosmetics that worked well with South Asian skin tones, and that is when she decided to take matters into her own hands, turning that vision into a reality.

Talking about the inspiration behind Just B cosmetic line, Bina shares, “It’s every makeup artist’s dream to come out with a makeup line. I’ve been creating and mixing colours that I couldn’t find in the market. In fact, my clientele and social media following have been asking for them for years.”

She continues, “My partner Madiha Chan, an engineering lead in Silicon Valley, attended a session of makeup classes with me and remarked on the lack of products catering to a more varied skin tone as she learned how to mix things to work for her skin. Fast forward a few years and here we are to fill that void in the market - Makeup that works for us! Straight out of the box! It’s literally our tag line!”

This brought us to the question of how she came up with the beauty range’s name. “As a makeup artist I’ve always struggled with the messaging that we’ve always heard as women, that you aren’t apparently good enough until you have ‘fixed your face’. I dislike the idea that makeup is a ‘fix’,” she stresses.

Bina went on to add, “I don’t want anyone to be enslaved by makeup, to feel you HAVE to put it on. We think you’re awesome just as you are. We want you to JUST. BE. Instead, we like to think of makeup as a way to express yourself and as a way to magnify how you are feeling or who you are. Or maybe it’s a little mood lifter. A moment of creativity. And we wanted to celebrate the beauty of brown skin and none of the alteration. You can Just B.”

The expert went on to share that her pet name is B and that her loved ones as well as most of her clients have always called her B. “Since I am handing you guys my signature shades that I am known for, I feel like this is the core of me as an artist. So Just B is both a call to action and a play on my name,” she explains.

For now, Bina has just launched her brand with just lip colours, so we asked the reason behind it. “We have started out with our Lip Spectrums, which contain two full sized lip products in one. I think finding the perfect lip colour was what we’ve struggled with the most. As a girl, I remember realizing that most colours in the tube were not for me. I used to think it doesn’t suit me, I am too this or too that. It never occurred to me that there was nothing wrong with me, and it was just that the product wasn’t taking me in to account,” she elaborates.

“Lipsticks are the biggest staples of everyone’s kit so it made sense to start with that. We’ve the perfect mixes of red, magenta, peach, champagne and pink. That’s a core kit of looks taken care of, it’s the core of my repertoire as an artist. We wanted to create a product that had maximum inclusivity, no more ‘this doesn’t suit me’ issues.”

“I don’t want anyone to be enslaved by makeup, to feel you HAVE to put it on. We think you’re awesome just as you are. We want you to JUST. BE. Instead, we like to think of makeup as a way to express yourself and as a way to magnify how you are feeling or who you are. Or maybe it’s a little mood lifter. A moment of creativity. And we wanted to celebrate the beauty of brown skin.”

So what they have done is handed you either side of the colour spectrum of a product, like two bookends of a shade range, from deep to bright. In that particular spectrum, depending on how you layer, is your perfect colour. “We also wanted to give you variation in texture so one side is a lovely powder matte and other side is the most incredible smooth cream, all packed with super rich pigment. That’s why we called them pigment fluid and pigment glaze. We made sure to custom create colours for our skin and textures that work together to create lasting but breathable shade,” she informs.

On whether her makeup range meets the international standards, Bina reveals that Just B is ISO 22716 and GMP certified, which ensures that the processes and quality of product is consistently at the highest bar in the cosmetics regulation industry. “We are an American company and our products are manufactured in Italy. We are on sale currently in the United States and home (Pakistan) and soon we hope to expand in to more markets. We are working actively towards the U.A.E, the UK and countries in Europe.”

The best part is that the brand is cruelty free, animal product free, other than conscientiously sourced beeswax, which is the only reason why they can’t call the brand vegan. In fact, the products are housed in recyclable materials and the packaging is sourced responsibly from managed forests (FSC certified paper).

When asked about plans of expanding her makeup brand beyond just lip spectrums, the makeup expert responds in the affirmative. “We hope to move in to other areas soon, but since we custom create our products from scratch, that development takes time. Our lip spectrum, for example, took over a year to perfect from the time I hand mixed the first sample. Those samples fly back and forth for approval from Italy to wherever I am and to my partners in the US, and each time we tweak the product you add another month to the manufacturing time.”

She went on to say, “One of the ‘Not Just Pink’ lip spectrum colours, ‘Mondays’, which is the day-to-day pink we wanted to create, took five tries to get it right. That’s five months! Throw in Covid shut-downs and global shipping disasters and you begin to understand some of the challenges we face. But it’s worth the wait.”

Bina shares that her future plans include expanding in to all areas of beauty that make those who have felt unseen, seen. “I want to address and correct the beauty bias that we’ve always wordlessly accepted as brown skinned women, that to be fair and light eyed is ideal. And that we don’t deserve products because we aren’t that. I want to show us all how beautiful we are and I want us to start believing that. And I am blessed to have found the perfect partners for this in Sean and Madiha Chan.”

She adds, “I want to fight against this notion that social media has perpetuated of perfect, flawless, ageless, poreless procedure/filter driven notions of beauty. There is beauty in the unique, in every age, in texture, tone, personality. This cookie cutter look that social media has perpetuated is harmful and frankly really boring to look at. I want to keep the conversation moving that you have the right to be comfortable just as you are. You’re amazing and there is no one like you. I hope Just B continues to push that conversation forward and helps us celebrate ourselves!”

– Photography: Ashley Batz and Nadir Toosy.