Frieha Altaf is all set for her dynamic Beyond Beautiful, a venture close to her heart. Beyond Beautiful encompasses awareness. It creates information. It is for the beauty industry. Beyond Beautiful is all about beauty, health, wellness, hair, makeup, skincare, extreme beauty, men’s grooming all under one roof.

Besides various aspects of beauty, Beyond Beautiful will be hosting a Master class that will introduce new ways of grooming and styling one’s self. The event will feature Master classes by multiple maestros of the sector, including, Zeena Feygina, who is a creative director and Makeup trainer.

Feygina is best known for enhancing the natural beauty and bringing out the best in people’s true selves. She will be educating everyone on how to improve their makeup skills or to polish the ones they already have. Not only Feygina, but Saba Ansari from The Sabs Salon will also be creating multiple makeup looks depending on different features and skin tones. Another name in the Beyond Beautiful Master class list is none other than Nabila.

Here Frieha gets candid with Pakistan Life Illustrated about her pet project. Following are excerpts:

Q: What is the idea behind Beyond Beautiful?

FA: The idea behind Beyond Beautiful came up while I was discussing beauty with a friend. He said his product was a beauty product which didn’t really work with fashion. So he asked me to do a beauty event. I started developing the idea two years ago. I didn’t want to do something regular like just an expo. I felt that we have a lot of beauty brands, hair brands, stylists but don’t have hair or make-up shows, only fashion weeks. I have too many clients who do beauty stuff and we need one place to house all of it.

Q: What is beautiful to you?

FA: Perception of ideal beauty is very warped in Pakistan. Beauty here still means fair complexion. The whole idea behind BB is that everyone is beautiful in their own way. Irrespective of your skin tone or size you are beautiful. Ideal beauty is not just being aesthetically beautiful but something much bigger than that.

Q: Talking about beauty what in your opinion makes a woman beautiful.

FA: I think any woman or man is beautiful when they are themselves. When they take what they have and improve upon it. The way they look, carry themselves, talk, interact, their personality makes them beautiful.

Q: What should we look forward to at Beyond Beautiful?

FA: In Beyond Beautiful we’re going to see lots… from consumer brands to high end brands, professional brands coming under one roof showcasing their craft/product anything related to beauty and wellness industry. It will define media trends, garner media attention, create opportunities for international brands to come into the market and by association widen the local growth and create opportunities for local brands to interact with international distributors.

Q: You’ve come a long way since you started out. Please share the secret behind your success.

FA: Personally, for me, when growing up I never looked at myself or my sister as beautiful. We were always challenged by our family to do more. I am a very sporty person, I’ve got leadership qualities. To me success comes from the drive and the passion that is inside you to change things to do things and to make a difference. I think Pakistan needs people who have that passion to make a difference. Success to me is happiness and happiness comes from different things. For some women just staying home, being a housewife may be a source of happiness, and why not! I don’t think we can sit and judge. I don’t judge people. The secret to my success is also being able to not judge someone and also to make the change and drive everyone to understand what we’re talking about and make it happen. Once you execute something and bring it forward then people begin to understand. A lot of people didn’t understand fashion at that time. People didn’t understand modelling, someone going in films but I think the perception has changed since the last three decades since I’ve been working.

Q: What’s next on the cards for you?

FA: For me 2018 has been fantastic. I wanted to do social work, I wanted to raise my voice against child abuse and labour and all kinds of ills in our society. I wanted to bring something new to the horizon and for me that’s always the case. What’s next, wait and see!