Today is product development day at Issy Cosmetics, and the brand’s co-founder and creative director Joel Martin Andrade sits in on our video call wearing a plain black t-shirt and deep blue eyeshadow.
“We’re testing a lot of new products right now,” he says. “We do it every week to see if our opinion on them changes, week after week. If we’ve tested something for a long time, we ask ourselves, okay, is it ready for sign off? Are we confident to have it go to production? I normally go home looking like a clown.”
It’s clear from its visual language that Issy Cosmetics isn’t afraid to announce itself. Its logo is a heavy, solid typeface that is unafraid to take up space. The packaging is inspired by retro-futurism: chromatic silver finishes against stark white cases and blocky text. Its identity is best appreciated in its new physical store at One Ayala Mall. It feels less like a beauty store and more like the command deck of a spaceship. Think of what an alien’s vanity table might look like, and the Issy aesthetic comes to mind.
Business-wise, the brand distinguishes itself with its gung-ho approach to releases. A big part of the Issy Cosmetics appeal is in its wide shade ranges, especially when it comes to base products. It recently released its Active Foundation range with 27 shades, unheard of for most Filipino beauty brands. In 2023, Issy released a total of 154 SKUs (or stock-keeping units). According to Andrade, they plan on keeping up with that pace this year.
Since the brand started in November 2019, it has shown how pivoting to a stronger identity has proven successful for Issy. When it began five years ago, it was still known as Issy and Co. and its positioning was similar to what Filipino beauty brands back then looked like — minimalist and pretty. Andrade says that its first two years of business were about going with the flow. (“It’s like you’re new in class and you don’t want to rock the boat.”) They consider themselves a “pandemic brand,” and have been grateful that they did e-commerce from the very beginning, so there wasn’t a lot of adjusting that needed to be done when the country went on lockdown in March 2020.
Things began to change in 2021. Issy and Co. had grown its own audience, but the industry was changing fast, too. Beauty and personal care only grew in popularity over the pandemic, and new brands were launching with more frequency. The business needed to evolve, one way or another. Andrade recalls how he had gotten fatigued with the usual approach to beauty campaigns, and sought out something different when they released their Active Skin Tint, a tinted moisturizer with SPF35 and 12 shades. The team took notes from the popularity of activewear and fitness at that time and launched the product with a campaign that the team meant to feel dynamic and inspiring. “People loved the fresh approach and how it felt more sporty,” he says.
The success of the Active Skin Tint campaign gave way to more change. Later on, the Issy and Co. name was dropped to just Issy, and the minimalist logo was changed to a bolder typeface. Campaign images featured full fashion looks—even headshots would have models wearing statement earrings or face piercings. Joel explains how the rebrand signifies a renewed confidence in the brand. “In my head, there are only a few people you can call by one name: Britney, Mariah, Kylie.” he says. “We deserve it. It’s like really having the confidence to stand on our own.”
Andrade’s words may capture the heart of the brand through his creative direction, but he admits that his appreciation for makeup truly began upon taking the job at Issy. Co-founder and CEO Jasmine Ang Chua met Andrade during his time at Golden ABC, the parent company of retail brands like Penshoppe and OXGN. Jasmine had been helping out at their family business as a garments supplier while Andrade worked as a fashion designer for the brand. She wanted to invest in the beauty industry and saw potential in him as a creative partner. Andrade says that Jasmine, who is currently on maternity leave, impressed him with her confidence in pursuing the business.
“You don’t hear a lot of women making power decisions like that, and have the guts to create their own company,” he says. “It’s not a very common tale to hear. Normally, in Chinese families, they inherit the family business, not make something totally new themselves.”
It was new territory for both of them. Makeup was neither of their brand of expertise. Jasmine brought her business acumen while Andrade’s fashion background informed their vision. Later on, the addition of makeup artist Slo Lopez as a consultant for their product development helped give the brand a boost in terms of formulation and practical use. Andrade had commissioned Lopez to do makeup for Issy’s first-anniversary shoot and asked for her input on the Active Skin Tint, which, back then, was still a work in progress. Since then, Lopez has worked in tandem with Andrade in developing all their new releases.
“She’s a makeup artist but I won’t call her just a makeup artist,” Andrade says of Lopez. “She’s a makeup freak. Like, we can talk about silicones all day.”
Lopez herself admits that she has strong opinions about makeup products, having been a consumer from a young age. She regularly purchases new products with the intention of studying their formulas, like an after-school science project. When she was tapped to share her insights about Issy’s works in progress, she knew that she wanted every release to be purposeful. “From a sustainability standpoint, I don’t like products that are just copies of things you can get already from another brand,” she says. “I go out of my way to really try and make sure that it’s not a waste in manufacturing.”
Lopez provided the expertise while Joel and Jasmine tested out the products as casual consumers. The result is a lineup of products that were good enough to be stocked in an artist’s kit, while being easy enough for an everyday user to wear. At the brand’s current price points, it was also accessible to a wide range of makeup users.
It turned out to be a partnership that built on their strengths. Through Issy, Lopez was able to channel her makeup knowledge into developing and improving products. A stronger confidence in their product formulation gave Andrade and the brand more room to push the envelope with their campaigns. “It’s like we found the ‘crazy’ in each other,” Lopez says. She used to design looks by hand, without the use of pegs, and would offer safe and wild options. Andrade used to worry that going left field would turn off their existing fan base, but Lopez encouraged him to include some offbeat options anyway.
“If you don’t end up using it, then you don’t use it,” Lopez would tell him. “But now, it’s Joel who’s the one who asks for it and says, ‘I want four aliens.'”
Today Issy Cosmetics is known as a brand in flux: rapid-fire drops that are different each time — whether it’s a completely new product or innovative repackaging. When they re-released their Lip Bullets in December 2023, they offered matte, velvet, and satin finishes. The lipstick is packaged in a chromatic tube, and each finish has an assigned packaging texture (The matte Lip Bullets, for example, are done in a galvanized metal-like tube.)
What may be the brand’s biggest innovation yet is the development of its Active Foundation. The product not only promises to be self-setting, but, as earlier mentioned, has 27 shades to choose from. It was a gamble to release such a wide shade range all at once. Filipino beauty brands typically release three to six shades for their base makeup ranges.
Lopez says she was inspired by the variety of faces she encountered on the job; she explains that it helps not to be a celebrity makeup artist because she wasn’t just working with one face most of the time. Some models had skin tones that didn’t match any foundation in most makeup artist kits, so they either had to make do with what was available, or they would be asked to bring their own foundation. “It was just insane to me that we were in 2021 at the time and I’m not that dark,” Lopez says, “I had a hard time finding my shade.”
From all the models she’s worked on in the last few years, she grew a deeper understanding of how many shades needed to be included for the Active Foundation. Lopez would hand-mix formulas to get the texture and consistency right; she wanted to make sure that the foundation range was not just diverse in color, but also in terms of depth and undertones. She says that her main contribution was to organize the shades in a system that would make the Issy shade range digestible to consumers.
“It might not be your cup of tea but I think you can always say that an Issy product has a lot of thought put behind every part of it,” Lopez says. “And we do go out of our way to listen to the consumer.”
While Lopez provided an expert’s eye in developing formulas, the strength of a product only goes so far without the right context. She credits Andrade’s creative direction as the reason why their audience was able to appreciate the products better. “That’s where my partnership with Joel really shines. Because he’s really good at making sure that the images we put out are digestible and compelling,” says Lopez. “When it comes to presenting how to use it or skin tone-matching, he goes out of his way to make sure that the e-commerce [platforms] have videos that show this to audiences.”
As the gears work behind the scenes, it’s Andrade’s responsibility to make sure that the finished product is not only well-made, but also represented properly. He sees Issy Cosmetics as a future-looking brand in how it aims to create products that are cutting-edge, but also in producing arresting images through their campaigns. His fashion background informed his understanding of what perspective does for a brand. He knows that Issy isn’t for everybody, and that’s okay.
“I hate it when brands try to do everything within one brand. No person is every person, right?” Andrade says. “I think that’s when a brand starts to lose its strength.”
Since launching Issy, the creative director has gone on to work on two other beauty brands: Chu Chu Beauty, a spiritual opposite to the Issy Cosmetics identity (“Because it’s so cute, people underestimate it. And then when they use it, ‘oh my god, it’s good’”), and Lucky Beauty, a makeup brand founded by actress Andrea Brillantes. “I told [Andrea], beauty is your lucky charm,” he says. “That’s why we don’t call them products. We call them charms. And, honestly, aren’t these a wearable anting-anting (Filipino word for charm)?”
What Andrade ultimately wants to achieve with Issy and all his other ventures is to show how beauty isn’t just about a daily necessity, but a source of inspiration. “I really think that makeup is, in a way, a form of therapy and escapism as what fashion did for me as a gay kid that never really fit in,” he says.
To do that, he’s made sure that their visual direction communicates that it doesn’t have to be for everybody, but it can be. He aims to represent beauty in as many ways as possible. “I’d make sure to put trans people there, queer people there. And it’s not me making the casting and thinking, oh, I have to have a queer person,” he says. “I really find these people beautiful, and I know the public might not agree that they are beautiful per se, but maybe, if I keep using them enough, [they will start noticing and say,] ‘oh, they are beautiful.’”
At the core of what they do at Issy Cosmetics is to look beyond what is here now and seek out what hasn’t been done before. Their futuristic identity doesn’t just speak of how they want to stand out visually, but reveals the brand’s vision to explore what else they can do in the beauty space.
Issy Cosmetics may not have wanted to rock the boat when it first came out, but in its fifth year in business, it has become captain of its own spaceship. The brand’s multi-disciplinary approach resulted in products that have found success in both casual consumers and makeup professionals. Anyone can appreciate a good makeup product, but its strong visuals are its big hook, a way to attract a particular makeup user. Andrade says that Issy users aren’t afraid to stand out, but are always on their own terms, and this is how he always wants the images to empower them.
“Our priority is beauty, not pretty. What I’m really trying to do here is to bring a new understanding to what the term beautiful really means,” he says. “I think a lot of people think beautiful is just pretty. It is. Pretty is beautiful. But beautiful can mean so much more, and that’s what I try to do with Issy.”
Check out some of Issy’s top products, each capturing the essence of that futuristic allure.
Issy Active Foundation
P699, Lazada
Issy Active Skin Tint SPF 35
P499, Lazada
Issy Creme Cheek Blush
P349, Lazada
Issy Creme Cheek Bronzer
P349, Lazada
Issy Lip Bullet True Matte
P349, Lazada
Issy Solar Balm Glow SPF 30 PA+++
P399, Lazada
