As one of the top beauty influencers today, Lisa Opie keeps her millions of followers engaged with daily videos on TikTok and consistent original content on other social platforms.
She frequently collaborates with influencers including Ariel Versace and Miss USA and Miss Universe titleholders on their pages and when she’s offline, she is running LadyCode, her popular cosmetics company. For fall, Lisa Opie’s LadyCode is partnering with beauty influencer Brandi Pope, AKA the Glam Belle on a “Beauty and the Beach” eyeshadow palette.
The limited-edition palette includes 18-shades with 7 high pigment mattes and 11 shimmers that will deliver endless possibilities of dreamy, glam looks throughout the season. It is available now for $39 at LadyCodeShop.com.
Lisa Opie
Photos: LadyCode
“I love creating products that are missing in the industry,” says Lisa Opie from her Miami home. “Items like face and multipurpose pigment palettes… it’s the best part of my job!”
LadyCode has evolved through since its 2014 launch. It began as a women’s wellness resource that featured lifestyle, fashion, health, and beauty news, as well as travel tips and reviews. In 2016, a YouTube channel, with Lisa Opie delivering makeup tutorials, was added. It quickly grew to 45,000 subscribers, prompting Opie to add a shop section to the site. At first, LadyCodeShop.com concentrated on a small offering of wigs and lashes. It has since grown into the successful full-ranging cosmetics line it is today.
While women’s empowerment remains the dominant motivation behind the LadyCode brand, the company has become more inclusive, with products made for and used by anyone and everyone who loves glam. “We take a lot of time and care to make sure that our products are perfect for all ages, races, and genders,” Opie explains. “Our customers are fun and live limitlessly and confidently.
I think the perfect example of how much confidence makeup can provide a person is through drag…. have you ever met a drag queen that’s not confident?”
Lisa admits she wasn’t always so confident. As the daughter of devoutly religious parents living in in Virginia, she was homeschooled until the sixth grade. Other than her three sisters, she rarely socialized with children her own age and she wasn’t allowed to read magazines or wear makeup.
She entered junior high as a socially awkward, self-described “ugly duckling” with low esteem and no clue on how to dress. The school was predominantly Caucasian, and Lisa was bullied for being half Asian. “Kids would pull their eyes and say ‘ching chong ling long’ to my face or make fun of the food I would eat for lunch,” she remembers.
Lisa recalls sneaking copies of Seventeen into her room and purchasing the make-up she saw the girls in the magazine wearing. She also began following early online influencers like Jeffree star and Tila Tequila; especially Tila as she, too, is Asian and Lisa found her tips on how to apply make-up to eyes so they appear bigger and rounder to be inspiring.
Her love of beauty and fashion sparked an interest in beauty pageants. Lisa entered local competitions and in 2012, competed in the Miss United States pageant, placing fourth runner up. It was there that she met the pageant’s national director who took notice of Lisa’s self-made swimsuit and offered her a three-year sponsorship contract that enabled her to launch her first enterprise, Vizcaya Swimwear.
“I learned everything through trial and error with Vizcaya swimwear,” Lisa Opie recalls. “Fashion is a tough business, keeping up with trends, ordering sufficient inventory, making sure everything fits well on customers, and competing with fast fashion.”
The two most important things she learned from her first venture: the marketing power of social media and how to leverage that power effectively. They are the secrets of her success at LadyCode.
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With love,
FWO
