Our Story

Chamak Makeup  was established in 2010 by Sarah Ali.  Sarah has a diverse and unique background in a variety of disciplines. She is a professionally trained, Hollywood certified makeup artist with over 16 years of experience, a portrait photographer, a professionally trained chocolatier and a licensed psychotherapist with a masters in counseling psychology. In January 2009 she opened The Transformation Studio: a world inspired beauty & wellness center, a unique place focused on beauty, wellness and health. She created the first makeup school in Texas, also housed in the studio: Transformations Makeup Academy.

 

As a makeup artist, she started working for cosmetic lines such as Chanel, YSL, MAC & CK Beauty and during that time, made keen observations of makeup trends and customer's desires. She noticed how many women of all ethnicities would spend hours trying to find products that matched their  unique skin tones and colors were either too pink, too pale, too dark, or gray.  They would be sold two foundations, a bronzer, a powder, two different concealers to blend to create the correct shade, spending not only a lot of money but had to spend excessive amounts of time to simply create an even complexion.  Women of medium and darker skin tones would always be frustrated at the lack of  colors which would properly show up on them. Many would  be on the hunt for deep golds, rust, copper, bronze and richly pigmented shades which would only show up for holiday sets.  

 

She began to wonder if she could perhaps fill a much needed gap by creating a cosmetics line with all the shimmery, glittery, glamorous colors that people were looking for and create a custom blend bar for each client to finally have a product made just for their skin type, color, personality and color preferences. Because of her South Asian background, Sarah wanted to personally dedicate the design & shades, find inspiration in the ingredients and packaging from her background. Chamak's environmentally conscientious mission is to also cut down on the use of throw away packaging and aims to work with reusable palettes, bottles and avoid needless boxes.  This allows our brand to keep the costs down for the customers as well.  We are proud to create many products in our in house lab and test products on ourselves, friends, in lieu of doing a smokey eye look on a lab rat.  

 

After much thought, Chamak was selected as the name because of the deep meaning and many layers to the term. Chamak is an Urdu/Hindi word that means to glow, sparkle and radiate. To me, the ideal woman  possesses a sparkling personality, radiates from living a healthy and happy life, and is glamorous with some shimmer and sparkle in her makeup and wardrobe.  Every woman can be a star by adding Chamak to her life . 

 

In 2011 we added custom blend cosmetic services, in 2012 we added skincare and fragrance, in 2013 we developed a gourmet branch with artisanal handcrafted gourmet chocolates, Chamak Chocolates.  Our biggest year was 2015 when we made the move to  create a stand alone location:  Chamak Cosmetics & Chocolates which now houses our cosmetics lab, ready to wear cosmetics, chocolates, a small kitchen/party space.