‘Dare to fail forward’: Ami Colé founder Diarrha N’Diaye joins Skims Beauty
After closing her award-winning beauty brand Ami Colé, Diarrha N’Diaye will now help lead the strategy and development of Skims Beauty.
One minor setback can be the key to unlocking new opportunities, just ask Diarrha N’Diaye. Months after announcing the closure of her fan-favorite brand Ami Colé, N’Diaye announced her latest step in the beauty role: executive vice president of beauty and fragrance at Skims.
“I have sat on salon floors, worked eight-hour shifts at beauty retailers, started a company, and am now taking an executive seat at a beauty brand promising to bring a fresh approach to beauty,” N’Diaye told The Cut. “I have been around the block, and I’m happy to bring this vault of knowledge to Kim’s beauty closet to work on a new wave of inclusive beauty for all. The sky really is the limit, and I want every little brown girl to know that.”
N’Diaye made an unforgettable impact on the beauty industry with the launch of Ami Colé, a clean, inclusive beauty brand, in 2021. By putting melanin-rich skin at the forefront of its product development, Ami Colé quickly became a fan favorite, especially among Black communities. However, as years went on investors gradually changed their tune from “betting on big inclusion” to creating standards that had the founder riding “a temperamental wave of appraising investors.”
“Ami Colé launched in May 2021 to a devoted, excited audience of Black and brown women who felt seen and celebrated by what we offered. At first, the brand offered skin tints in shades they couldn’t find elsewhere and started a lip-oil craze that still carries through to this day,” N’Diaye wrote in a personal essay on The Cut. “But after looking at every option, it became clear that continuing in this current market wasn’t sustainable. After nearly four beautiful, soul-stretching years, Ami Colé will close this September. This decision was so hard for me — the business bears my mother’s name and, as I built it, my daughter’s name, too.”
Now, N’Diaye hopes her story is a reminder “to dare to fail forward.
With her “modern and community-forward view on beauty” and entrepreneurial experience, N’diaye will help Skims Beauty bring makeup classics to the market and build “excitement about beauty rituals while also simplifying it and focusing on skin from strand to toe.” The Ami Colé founder says she’s “excited to bring in best-in-class formulas and a customer-first mentality to Skims Beauty.”
“My job is to figure out how we create this second-skin experience for the customer and bridge the gap from clothing to makeup, hair, and fragrance,” N’Diaye explained, per WWD.
“I want Skims Beauty to be a place where everyone feels represented, and there is no better person to help us do that than Diarrha,” Kim Kardashian, cofounder and chief creative officer of Skims added in a statement. “She has an incomparable talent at marrying the emotional and tactical sides of beauty, and her instincts and experience for innovation and authenticity will power our brand.”
Regardless of how you feel about Skims, we’re celebrating another highly qualified Black woman stepping into an executive role.
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