Annabel Glaze

Founder of Bella’s Beautique

After midnight, when her three children are asleep, Annabel Glaze is working on what she describes as “mixology.” But she’s not brewing up cocktails, she’s creating her next batch of Bella’s Beautique nail varnish colours. Annabel started her own line of lacquers several years ago, having graduated from university and experienced a taste of corporate life – which she says didn’t mesh with her “free spirited” nature. She’d already been doing people’s nails as a side hustle to earn some money while she was studying, so it made sense to launch her own business. “I revamped it, branded it, and went off to some expos to get my name out there,” she adds. “I got more customers, more references, and built myself up as a good nail artist in Jamaica.”

After chatting with a friend who makes her own hair products, Annabel got the idea for launching a range of her own varnishes – something no-one else was doing in Jamaica at the time. As well as getting ideas from the kind of colours customers were asking for, Annabel wanted to use her collection to celebrate her country.

“Nobody was making polish with names related to Jamaican culture, and for me that was a big deal, because people love nail polish names nearly as much as they love the actual colours,” Annabel explains. I had an opportunity to put Jamaica on the map in an area that it’s never been before.”

Every single one of the Bella’s Beautique colours links back to Jamaican and a wider Caribbean culture, with colours including Ackee Seed, Sorrel, and East Indian – named after a type of mango. Punchinella Little Yellow is a twist on the Jamaican ring song Punchinella Little Fellow, and the neon orange shade named Portia is a tribute to the country’s first female prime minister, Portia Simpson-Miller. Annabel has also used her polishes to raise awareness for Jamaica’s Woman Inc organisation (providing shelter for those in need) by putting its 24-hour hotline number on her nail polish bottles. “It’s one I’m most proud of,” she says.

Being based in Jamaica also creates some challenges for Annabel as a business owner, and she explains that taxes on the raw materials that she imports to make her varnishes are high. But that doesn’t stop her ambitions for the business. Annabel says the big plan is to eventually open her own factory, go into mass production and export her products, as well as to branch out into scrubs, gels, powders and moisturisers. “Everything on the arm from the elbow down and everything on the leg from the knee down,” says Annabel.

Interview by Emma Tucker

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