Keisha Elise Cosmetics

Cosmetic Brand, Beauty Brand in Durham, NC

Address
900 Park Offices Dr Suite #145, Durham, NC, 27713
Phone
(919) 444-8197
Website
kecosmetics.com

About Keisha Elise Cosmetics

Keisha Elise Cosmetics began with a mother watching her daughter grow up. Lakeisha Turner was teaching full-time when Kaylah was born, and the beauty aisles she walked afterward felt narrower than they should have: shades that skipped over girls of color, ingredient lists heavy with things she did not want near her child's skin, packaging destined for a landfill. In 2019 she started making the products she wished existed, and the brand carried her middle name onto the label. The line is built around a single idea the company calls Mommy & Me Clean Beauty. It is vegan and cruelty-free, formulated to be gentle on sensitive skin, and organized so that a mother and daughter can share the same routine rather than keep separate ones. The Kaylah Marie Collection is named for Turner's daughter and made with younger skin in mind. Across the catalog the pieces stay small and wearable: girls' glitter lip gloss, a vegan shimmer lip balm, matte lipstick, holographic eyeshadow, mink faux lashes, and accessories like a double-sided portable mirror and a waterproof cosmetic bag. Turner's background sits underneath all of it. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Family and Consumer Sciences from North Carolina Central University and worked as an educator and program manager before the brand became her focus, and that teacher's instinct shows in how the company frames beauty as something to grow into rather than something to fix. The stated aim is to make people, and especially women and girls of color, feel seen and valued, and the product design follows from that rather than the other way around. The brand also gives its purpose a practical edge through an Educational Scholarship Fund for Single Moms, which helps single mothers cover educational and childcare costs so they can keep pursuing their own goals. It is a through-line back to Turner's own starting point as a working mother, and it is part of why local and community coverage has followed the company since it launched. In Durham the brand keeps a pop-up shop at Boxyard RTP, Suite 145, open Tuesday through Saturday, where the products can be seen and tried in person rather than only ordered online. The rest of the catalog lives at kecosmetics.com. What holds the shelf together is consistency of intention: clean formulas, inclusive shades, and a mother-and-daughter premise that treats a lip gloss or a lip balm as a small shared moment rather than a transaction. The result is a compact, deliberate line that reads the way it was built, one product at a time, by a parent making beauty she would hand to her own child.

Keisha Elise Cosmetics was founded in 2019 by Lakeisha Turner, a former full-time teacher and program manager, after the birth of her daughter Kaylah made the gaps in the beauty industry personal, from limited shades for girls of color to unnecessary chemicals and waste. The clean, vegan, cruelty-free brand grew around a Mommy & Me premise and the Kaylah Marie Collection named for her daughter. It is WBENC-certified, runs an Educational Scholarship Fund for single mothers, and has drawn community and media attention, including a feature on Tabitha Brown's 'Very Good Mondays.' Customers and coverage consistently point to the same things: inclusive representation, skin-safe formulas, and a mission-driven, family-centered story behind the products.

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