Most of my work is beauty. It is the category I have shot for longest, it is where the credits are — YSL Beauty, Kiehl's, Prada Beauty, Kevin Murphy among them — and it is the category with the most specific demands on a creator.
If you are a beauty brand deciding who to book, this is what beauty asks for that other categories do not, and how to tell whether someone can actually do it.
Your product goes on my face
Start with the thing that makes this category different from every other one I work in.
When a brand sends me activewear, the risk is that it does not fit. When a brand sends me a serum, the risk is my skin. I have had reactions. Not often, and nothing serious, but it happens, and it happens on the thing I am then filmed with for the next several weeks.
Which is why I ask for the ingredient list separately from the marketing document, and why I will patch test before a shoot rather than on it. A creator who does not ask for that has either been lucky or is not thinking about it, and the second one should concern you as much as it concerns me — because a reaction mid-project does not just hurt, it stops your content.
Skin has to read honestly on camera
Beauty is the category where the camera is being asked to tell the truth about a surface, and cameras are bad at this.
Modern phones smooth skin by default. Every beautification setting, every automatic adjustment, every soft light source removes exactly the texture a viewer is trying to assess. If you are selling something that affects skin and the skin in the video has been quietly retouched by the device, the video is dishonest in a way nobody chose.
So the things I do are mostly subtractive: filters off, smoothing off, window light rather than a ring light, no beauty mode, and I do not clean up texture in the edit. What that produces is footage where you can see pores, which is uncomfortable the first few times and is the only version worth running for a skin product.
It is worth asking any creator you are considering how they handle this. The answer tells you a lot, quickly.
Claim discipline, which beauty needs more than anywhere else
Beauty has the tightest language rules of any category I work in, and the gap between what a product does and what may be said about it is where projects go wrong.
What I need is not the regulatory summary. It is the sentences. If "reduces the appearance of" is acceptable and "reduces" is not, tell me, because on camera those are the same length and one of them means reshooting. A short list of usable phrases is worth more than a deck.
The signal to look for in a creator is whether they ask for this before shooting. Someone who improvises around claims will eventually improvise into one you cannot use, and you will find out in review when the reshoot is expensive.
Consistency across repeat shoots
This is the one brands rarely think about at the hiring stage and care about intensely by month four.
Beauty content is rarely a single video. It is an ongoing library, and the library has to look like it came from one brand. Which means the creator's setup has to be repeatable — same light, same surface, same distance, same look — across shoots that are weeks apart.
I shoot at home, in the same place, in the same hours. That is partly preference and partly exactly this: content from March and content from July sit next to each other in a feed without one of them looking wrong. A creator who shoots wherever they happen to be produces lovely individual videos and an incoherent library.
Ask to see two things they shot months apart. That is a more useful test than any single piece of work.
What to look for in the work itself
Three things, quickly, since portfolios all look good at a glance.
Do the hands know what they are doing? Application is most of beauty content. Someone who handles product awkwardly — hesitating, over-dispensing, applying in a way nobody would — undermines the whole video regardless of how good the talking is.
Is the texture visible? If you cannot see what the product is like, the video has not done the main job. Texture is the single most persuasive thing in beauty content and it is routinely lost to bad light.
Do they say anything specific? "I love this" is not information. "It takes about four days" is. Specificity is the difference between content that reads as a review and content that reads as a testimonial.
How I work, plainly
I write, shoot, voice and edit everything myself, which is why a brief comes back in three to seven days without a chain of people in the middle. I shoot at home from product you ship — so nothing starts until the box lands, and that shipping date matters more to my schedule than most brands expect.
Volume is two or three brands a month, which is modest and deliberate. I would rather have a roster of brands who book me repeatedly than be the face of one, and the second booking is genuinely better: by then I know your product, your buyer and the language you are allowed to use, and none of that has to be relearned.
If you have a beauty product and a creative budget, tell me what it is, how many videos, where they run and when you need them, and I will tell you whether I am the right fit.
Common Questions
What should a beauty brand ask a creator before booking?
Whether they patch test, and how they handle skin on camera. Beauty is the one category where the product goes on the creator's face, so a reaction mid-project stops your content as well as hurting them. And ask to see two pieces shot months apart — that tests consistency, which matters more by month four than any single video does.
Why does phone beautification matter for skin products?
Because phones smooth skin by default, removing exactly the texture a viewer is trying to assess. If you are selling something that affects skin and the device has quietly retouched it, the video is dishonest in a way nobody chose. Filters off, smoothing off, window light, and no cleanup in the edit.
How should claims be handled in beauty content?
As sentences the creator can say verbatim, not as a regulatory summary. If "reduces the appearance of" is acceptable and "reduces" is not, that needs stating, because on camera they are the same length and one of them means reshooting.
What separates good beauty content from the rest?
Hands that know what they are doing, visible product texture, and saying something specific. "I love this" is not information; "it takes about four days" is — that specificity is the difference between a review and a testimonial.