10 Years in LA: Now It's My Turn to Sit in the Chair
Who's In My Glam Chair with Alexis Oakley
Celebrity makeup artist Alexis Oakley reflects on her transformative ten-year journey living and working in Los Angeles. She details her evo
Key takeaways
- Alexis moved from Missouri to LA at 18 with no industry connections or backup plan.
- She utilized rejection as 'ammunition' rather than a reason to quit, inspired by Kris Jenner's philosophy.
Main topics
- 10-year career retrospective
- Overcoming professional rejection
Notable quotes
If the answer is no, you're asking the wrong person.
Conclusion
A powerful testament to the value of grit and the idea that true succe
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Speaker 1 (0:05) Welcome to Who's in My Glam Chair, where the glam is good, but the conversations are even better. I'm Alexis Oakley, celebrity makeup artist, and after 10 years in the glam chair, I've learned that getting ready is when you talk about everything. Beauty, business, dating, confidence, careers, and the things we probably shouldn't say out loud. Nothing is off limits. New episodes drop every Wednesday. So grab your makeup bag, your coffee, and get ready with us. This is Who's in My Glam Chair. Speaker 1 (0:37) I feel like there are two different versions of my life. There's obviously the version that everyone sees now where I'm working with celebrities, I'm going to events, I'm working with brands. And I feel like from the outside, it probably looks like everything just worked out so easily. And it's kind of crazy because this week, actually, I am celebrating my 10th year in Los Angeles. I moved here a decade ago at 18 years old. I knew absolutely no one. It's so crazy to just see how much my life has evolved since then. I was 18 years old when I moved out here. I moved from Missouri, fresh out of high school. I got rejected from basically every single makeup counter that I applied to in my hometown. I had no idea if this career was going to work. I just knew that I didn't have a backup plan and I was going to make. this work, no matter what it took, so many things that 18-year-old me dreamt about are happening. And now it is my daily life. And I truly don't think that there is a better time to start this podcast than now, 10 years in LA. And it feels really special too, because I feel like I'm kind of closing one chapter and entering a new one. I feel like so many things in my life have changed in this last year. And this just kind of feels like the next. natural step and evolution too. Obviously, I've spent the last decade of my life standing in front of the chair, listening to everyone else's stories, and I'm ready to tell mine, and I'm ready to have a podcast, and I'm ready to kind of let you guys in on those conversations that I've been involved in in front of the chair for so many years. But welcome to Who's in My Glam Chair. I feel like a lot of people are like, okay. Why the podcast? Why the glam chair? And the biggest thing that I have learned in these last 10 years is that some of the deepest conversations happen in the glam chair. I'm not sure the science behind it. I'm not sure what it is. But for some reason, the second someone sits down in a glam chair, they start spilling their deepest, darkest secrets, some of which. they should probably be keeping to themselves. And I feel like the most relatable example of this would be getting your hair done because we all go and get our hair done at some point. And we sit down in the chair and I even notice it for myself. The second I sit down in my hairstylist chair, they're no longer my hairstylist. They're my therapist. And I'm going to tell them everything. I'm going to tell them about my sex life. I'm going to tell them about the eczema that I found on my body. I'm going to tell them about my childhood trauma. Like nothing is off limits when I sit in the chair. And you can only imagine how celebrities are when they sit down in the glam chair because they keep their circles really, really small, right? So I'm one of the few people that get to see them in this unfiltered version of themselves off of Instagram. And I kind of started thinking, like, I have been there with my clients through every stage of their life. I have been the person that they are talking to about their breakup. about who they're secretly dating, about the things that they're insecure about, about their family, things that are happening in their career that nobody knows about yet. I am there for all of those moments. And I'm so lucky that I am in that room and I have a really unique seat for it. I have also done makeup for people during their biggest career highlights, which are also some of my biggest career highlights. Obviously, I've done makeup for... The Met Gala, the Oscars, the Grammys, the VMAs, weddings, magazine covers, tours, huge announcements, so many different things. And you would think that when we're sitting in the glam chair getting ready for a moment like the Met Gala, we're talking about lipstick, but most of the time, we're never talking about lipstick. We are talking about the tea of it all. Absolutely. Over the years, I've just realized that the glam chair truly is. one of the most vulnerable places in the entire world because there's something really special about getting ready, right? Think about getting ready with your girlfriends for a night out. You kind of start to reflect on who you are and how you're feeling about yourself and you notice your insecurities. You see the things that you really love about yourself and... Over the last 10 years of my career, I've just kind of started thinking, like, why are we not recording these conversations? Because these are the interesting conversations that people want to hear. They don't want to hear celebrities go on a podcast and be like, everything in my life is perfect. They want to hear about all of their trials and their tribulations and all of those things. Obviously, within reason, I'm not going to get all my clients canceled. There are some conversations I will absolutely take to the grave, but then there are others that I think people deserve to hear. And that's really where the idea behind Who's in My Glam Chair came about. Obviously, it started off as a mini mic series and then just naturally evolved into a podcast, which is so exciting. And with that, I do want to make it really clear from the beginning. This isn't just a beauty podcast. Obviously, beauty is a really big part of my life. It's the whole reason why I'm sitting here. But it not only gave me this career, it also just gave me these incredible connections. And I am so lucky that I have the opportunity to be around not only celebrities, but some of the most influential and successful women in the world, whether that be entrepreneurs or people that work on the PR side of things, just really successful, badass women in general. And I'm really interested in sitting down with these people and truly learning who the person is that is sitting in that chair. I want to know what they're insecure about. I want to know what they failed at. I want to know how many no's and how many times they got rejected before they got to where they are, because I feel like so many of us just see the final big picture. Everyone sees. what I have accomplished now that I've been working my ass off for 10 years, but no one understands how many sacrifices you made to get to where you are, how many tears you shed to get to where you are, all of those types of things. And that's what I want to know. And also what I've learned is everybody's just a person. I feel like we look at these celebrities and think that they have it all, the money, the fame, the fortune. We think that they have it all. And I have learned from working in these rooms that everyone is just a person. Everyone wants to feel beautiful. Everyone wants to feel chosen. Everyone wants to feel successful. And sometimes it's the people that you would least expect to be really insecure that need the most validation during glam too, which is really interesting. And those are the types of conversations that I'm fascinated in. And I want to let you guys in on. So who am I, right? I'm just a girl with a mic at this point. If you've never... Followed me if you've never seen my get ready with me's or my day in the life vlogs or anything like that. And I feel like we've all heard the joke by now. We need to make podcasting equipment more expensive. And some people might feel that way about mine. And listen, I get it. But let me prove you wrong. I want to start from the beginning because I feel like I've definitely shared my career and how I've gotten to where I am at different points throughout my TikTok. But there's only so much you can share in a 60 second video. I am from Missouri. I have always been obsessed with beauty. I didn't have any connections, right? I didn't have a family friend that did makeup or I didn't know anyone in Hollywood. No one handed me contacts or anything like that. I did not have a job waiting for me in Los Angeles. I just knew I loved makeup. And I tried to