IT GIRL ANTHROPOLOGY - Gemma Dimond the most switched on woman in Australian beauty.

If you've found yourself down a fragrance rabbit hole at midnight convinced you need a new perfume, there's a reasonable chance Gemma Dimond put you there.

Melbourne based beauty writer, podcast host, MC and content creator who has spent nearly a decade making the rest of us significantly smarter about what we put on our bodies. The skin. The makeup. And now, very much, the scent.

THE SCENT

Let’s start here because it’s where Gemma’s world is right now and honestly it makes complete sense for someone with her knowledge base to have ended up in fragrance. She doesn’t believe in a signature scent. She’s a proponent of the fragrance wardrobe the idea that you curate a collection of scents the way you’d curate a wardrobe, choosing based on how you want to feel that day rather than wearing the same thing on repeat.

“What I love about scent is that there’s a kind of storytelling element to it,” she’s said. “I love the idea of deciding what I want to feel like for the day and building out a fragrance based around that.”

Her current obsession is layering and she’s been teaching her audience how to do it properly. She compares fragrance layering to accessorising an outfit it’s about building a bigger picture of how you want to feel and present. Her current favourite is the Maison Crivelli Hibiscus Mahajád Extrait de Parfum a floral unlike anything else, inspired by the taste of hibiscus tea in a gemstone market. She met the founder at MECCA HQ and by her own admission, the way he talks about scent changed how she thinks about it entirely.

Speaking of MECCA, Gemma's relationship with the retailer runs deeper than most people realise. She's been working alongside them for over nine years as one of their most trusted beauty voices writing articles, speaking on panels, sharing her picks during the Beauty Election. But her most recent collaboration is the one worth talking about. She curated their April press mailer, selecting six of her favourite full sized fragrances to put in front of the industry. For a brand the size of MECCA to hand that kind of curation over to a creator speaks volumes about the trust they have in her and the authority she's built over nearly a decade of showing up and knowing her stuff.

SKIN

Before the fragrance era took hold there was and always will be, SPF. Gemma wears sunscreen every single day of her life, rain, hail or shine, and has been so vocal about it for so long that her community calls her an SPF bully a title she wears with pride.

Her approach to skin has shifted over the years though. She used to treat her complexion the way most of us do stripping it back with acids at the first sign of a breakout, trying to dry everything out. Now her whole philosophy sits on the opposite side of that. Nourish the barrier. Give back to the skin. Don’t punish it. She also recently spoke openly about her PCOS diagnosis and the role it’s played in rethinking how she approaches her health and skin together which for someone with her platform took a certain kind of honesty.

THE CAREER

Gemma was writing for publications at eighteen, editing a beauty platform while finishing her journalism degree at RMIT, and running her own copywriting business by twenty three. Not influencing. Copywriting. For beauty brands. Because that was always where the real interest was.

Glow Journal started as a blog she almost didn’t make it was suggested by a web designer as a sidebar to a portfolio site. She launched the podcast off the back of it in 2018 thinking it would be a mini series. Seven seasons later she has interviewed the founder of Augustinus Bader, the co-founders of Frank Body, and some of the most credible voices in global beauty. The show isn’t about products. It’s about the business of beauty the decisions behind the decisions, the stories that never make it onto a product page.

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THE WAY SHE DOES IT

What’s worth understanding about Gemma Dimond is that she has always played a completely different game to most people in her space. By platform standards she’s still considered micro but she’s been full time for eight years on the back of an audience that trusts her completely. That trust is the whole thing. It’s why MECCA wants to work with her. It’s why brands that could have anyone choose her. It’s why her fragrance recommendations send people directly to checkout.

She also keeps her personal life entirely to herself her husband doesn’t bring his work home, so why would she be live-streaming their dinners? In a space where the whole strategy is radical transparency, that kind of boundary is almost a power move at this point.

Gemma Dimond got her first byline at eighteen, went out on her own at twenty three, built a podcast she thought would be a mini series into one of the most respected beauty shows in the country, and is now the woman MECCA calls when they want someone to make fragrance make sense to a generation that didn’t grow up wearing it.

She wears her SPF. She curates her scent wardrobe. She knows more about the beauty industry than almost anyone you’ll follow today.

With love (and Frankness)

Bea xx