Pat McGrath Once Used Cocoa Powder on Her Face Due to Limited Shades For Dark Skin

Following the launch of her first physical store in London's Selfridges, makeup guru Pat McGrath shared on BBC's Desert Island Discs that she used to use cocoa powder on her face due to the limited shades for dark skin.

Growing up with a single mom in Northampton, England, there was no room for excuses. "If you can't find it, you can't buy it, make it," her mother often told her. This work ethic stuck with McGrath from her early days of mixing pigments at unpaid editorials to launching a multimillion-dollar makeup line.

"She even used cocoa powder. She came in from the kitchen with cocoa powder all over her face, and she was like, 'this is the right tone of powder'. She dusted it on her face and looked amazing," McGrath credits her mom for her DIY approach to makeup.

Her first self-made product was a moisturizer for her dolls and herself: "I mixed oil and water together, whipped it, put it in the fridge, and it looked like a cream. I celebrated for months with my own cream that I had made. I packed that over my face, and I was shining like a Belisha beacon for months," McGrath told host Laurene Laverne.

On dealing with racism as a young black girl in the 1970s, the beauty maven said she had a "solid base" of home, church, and community. "I was very lucky having the mother that I had who would say, 'Oh, look at that person who is racist, ah, poor thing. Anyway, let's go shopping,'" McGrath shared.

When Laverne asked about the "skinny and white bias of the fashion industry," McGrath commented: "That was the standard of the industry when I was growing up, but I am so happy to see the changes that I'm seeing now. We have models from all different social backgrounds, different weights, body types, different religious backgrounds, shows that are over 50 percent women of color, and it just wasn't there for such a long time. And now it's just so fantastic to see."