WORKING LUNCH WITH ROS

Doris Humunicki – Rageism Beauty

In this month’s Working Lunch with Ros, our Features Editor zooms with the CEO of Rageism Beauty, Doris Humunicki, to discuss beauty for all ages – especially women over the age of 40.

In her book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, the late, great writer, Nora Ephron wrote of dining with her girlfriends – “everyone was in turtleneck sweaters” to hide the creases on their skin.

“Sometimes, instead, we’re all wearing scarves like Katherine Hepburn in On Golden Pond,” she wrote.

Doris Humunicki, now in her fifties, understands this behaviour but wants to change it. The co-owner and CEO of award-winning, mature age Australian beauty brand, Rageism, isn’t so much an anti-wrinkle warrior; she just wants everyone to feel good about the skin they’re in.

“It’s about empowering women and showing them they’re not invisible anymore,” she proudly declares. “Rageism is about breaking the stereotype that ageing is a negative for women.”

What she is really highlighting is an Australian made beauty philosophical revolution.

Doris and I have zoomed into a late WFH lunch today at our respective work stations. She’s in Wheelers Hill, Melbourne with a bowl of tuna salad and I’m in my Bondi apartment with some sushi and a couple of oysters from my new, local obsession Get Sashimi on Campbell Parade. (Honestly, I can’t walk past it without buying something.)

Doris, who has 16-year-old twins, Olivia and Jack with her Polish husband Joe, isn’t one to spoil herself in the middle of the working day. She’s far too busy for that as the Australian beauty industry queen of multi-tasking.

“I hardly stop for lunch,” she confesses. “I usually just grab a croissant, have a piece of cheese toast or rustle up a quick salad from the fridge.”

Her day starts at around 5am with a 20 minute run to clear her head. Doris refuses to think of her work as anything separate than a part of her life.

“It’s who I am as a person, so I don’t switch of from it,” she explains.

“If I thought of it as my job, then I would just be above broke, so I don’t compartmentalise it.”

Rageism was founded by two women – former TV personality Paula Nagel, who was famously known as South Australia’s first female presenter on ABC’s This Day Tonight, and Kathrine Baulderstone, a chartered accountant. They saw a need in the Aussie market because they were both fed up with being part of an age group that was ignored by the beauty industry.

They ‘raged’ against “the dying of the light” to quote poet Dylan Thomas’s words, and started their own beauty brand.

In the beginning sales were slow. The revolution is about gradual change.

Enter vivacious Doris Humunick with start-up experience. She promised she could grow the brand and then immediately went to work, taking the Rageism message far and wide, right into the mature age heartland.

“I started of by going into those Lend Lease over 50’s communities, as well as some women’s gym groups,” she explains. “If people weren’t coming to us, I had to go to them,” she says.

In fact, the reason for today’s later than normal lunch is because she was demonstrating the brand at a Melbourne retirement community and the session ran over time.

“I was supposed to finish at 1 o’clock,” she laughs. “But no one wanted to leave. They wanted to talk about the make-up. People often tell me that they have lost themselves and I have made them feel alive again.”

She must be as proud as punch to hear that.

“So, I don’t rush these women during the shows, I just want to give them that moment of feeling beautiful as they walk away,” she insists.

Rageism, which boasts an impressive range of skincare and makeup, is also used by celebrities including former model Alison Brahe Daddo, 54.

Doris believes that the stunning Brahe embodies the Rageism woman.

“She’s Australian, she’s been in the sun, she’s not about over-glamourising herself.”

On her celebrity wish list are TV personalities Lisa Wilkinson and Julia Morris because both women, she believes, “keep it real.”

Not that Rageism really needs celebrity endorsement to do well as it has also won a slew of Australian and international beauty awards, especially for the all-day foundation and correcting concealer.

Doris believes the awards renew her focus to continually grow Rageism and build a strong community of women around it. One day, she hopes to hand it over to someone else. Perhaps one of the big beauty brands will see the light?

But she still has work to do.

“I promised Paula and Kathrine that we were going to grow this brand that breaks the stereotype of what beauty looks like and that’s the goal,” she says. “I have to achieve that.”

This is what she dreams about as she wallows in her backyard spa at the end of each day. It’s part of her wellness recovery ritual to take a spa each night around 9pm.

“There’s no chlorine and the temperature is set on 39 degrees and I make sure I’m in it, rain, hail or shine,” she explains.

“You see, at night time with the lights on and some music, it’s just beautiful.”

Nora Ephron, one feels, would probably approve.

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