Princess Senate’s model makeup artist

Selloane dreams of a beauty Empire

‘MAKERESEMESE LETUKA

MASERU – A local make-up artist, Selloane Thakanyane, wants to have her own beauty empire which contains provides all aspects of beauty.

Aged 25, she hails from Thabana-Morena, Mafeteng. She studied at King’s Gate primary and secondary schools and went on to Mount Tabor before enrolling at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology where she studied Television and Film Production.

Selloane started her own business called Nani the Make-up Artist in 2016.

“I had always had a curious mind when it comes to make up since 2010; it was inspired by my cousin who used to say I had a nice face. She would always do me a face beat, and I would look pretty like doll, and from there I started doing my friends’ make up and they would tell me I am good at it.

So I began to develop passion for it, and since then I have been a makeup enthusiast,” she reveals.

Her first clients were a family who had a wedding and she says the fact that was her first encounter professionally she did very well and after that clients came flocking into her business. She says that was the starting point of how her business started to flourish.

Then she had her encounter with the Royal Family of which she says it came as a surprise.

“Senate the princess started following me on Instagram watching my videos and apparently she loved my work that is how I stared doing the whole family people would think they are extraordinary people, but know they are very humble and doing their makeup was really a stepping stone,” she says.

“So far my business is doing really great; I have got a lot of clients. Had it not been for COVID-19 because it restricts movement and events like weddings and graduations which are key things that make our business run smoothly.

So, because of lockdowns my clients started cancelling bookings and that means returning their money and that drained my account so bad, I believe I would have reached a lot of goals that I had set for myself. Last year I failed to reach some of my goals, but this year I am really hopeful in achieving some of them,” she continued.

The biggest challenge she encountered, she adds, was transport.

She struggles to get to her clients since she doesn’t have a fixed station of work, and her clients call anytime, from anywhere, “so if they fail to come to my house or collect me, I lose some of them. I am hopeful, though, that if my business keeps flourishing I will open my own store and own a vehicle.

“I was motivated by friends but my family because I come from a Christian family which was, at first, not appreciating fully y chosen profession as a makeup artist, my dad would always tell me to wash off those ‘demonic’ things from my face.

He would associate them with being a Jezebel until I set down with him at told him that is what I love and passionate about, so after I showed them people’s faces and what I can do, they started to be very supportive, even finically,” she says.

“They would provide and I was able to put it into good use because I bought all the good quality equipment.”

She looks up to some of the best makeup artists in South Africa like Steffy and Makhosi and “one guy named James from the USA.

Those people inspire her to have her own makeup empire which consists of all beauty aspects being skin products, hair, nails, massages and makeup, and she says makeup in beauty industry is really up and rising.

“People are now really venturing into it because they have an understanding what makeup is.”