Striding on

Shahnaz Husain on setting shop in UK’s Selfridges and meeting Obama.

Fake flowers compete with faux fur in her sitting room, but her business strategy is au naturale. After all these years in the business, beauty expert Shahnaz Husain is still going places, “selling civilisation in a jar”. She is set to open shop at the Llyodpharmacy in Selfridges, the internationally acclaimed departmental store on Oxford Street in London.

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“It all started when the sales girls would come to me with their beauty problems when I’d visit the place. I’d send a couple of complimentary jars to treat their troubles, and the word spread. They wanted more, so I thought, why not,” she says.

The outlet, which opens over the weekend, will stock her new range of products infused with plant-cell sap. It’s just “pure, old science,” she insists.

Another feather in Husain’s cap is her recent meeting with US President Barack Obama as part of the Presidential Summit for Entrepreneurship in Washington. “If you hear his speech, you can’t hear anyone else’s,” she declares in awe.