Creator of Huge Lips, Skinny Hips Lip Gloss (at Space NK!), Karen Robinovitz takes us through the trials and tribulations of creating a beauty brand from scratch.

We had the packaging look and feel down. I was happy as can be. I now needed to figure out the colors of the six-shade gloss line -- fun, right?

I polled my makeup artist friends – I am blessed with having a few fabulous ones! I asked them what colors they would bring to someone's house if they had no idea what that person looked like or what color their skin tone was. They unanimously came up with the same replies: a light pink or nude, a rich pink, a red, a peach, a color, and clear. Now, some labs have specific color departments where their sole mission is to create a variety of hues. Mine didn't.

So I did my colors the old fashioned way – I spent about $800 at Sephora, buying every key shade I could find. I got empty pots and mixing sticks, rolled up my sleeves, and went to town on my coffee table. A few hours later, both arms were covered in what appeared to be Indian paint. There was gloss all over the cowhide rug (oops!). My lips were raw from applying and rubbing off and applying and rubbing off and applying... you get the point. But I had six ultra chic, universally-flattering, sheer shades in front of me that I was dying over! Then the really fun part – naming them! It was like giving birth to six babies at once (call me Angie!).

Their monikers came easily – as if they named themselves.Nude-ish pink was Kitty Poledancer, inspired by my favorite form of exercise. I have been taking pole classes at S-Factor, pole dancing playground where Kate Hudson, Teri Hatcher, Gisele, and Mel B. play. In the studios, large, open mirror-less rooms, lit by LED candles, with multiple poles, no men are allowed. The music is always hot. And the teachers encourage you to get in touch with your femininity and sensuality, a part of ourselves society tends to push down. What I love about S-Factor is not necessarily what it has done for my body, but what it has done for my mind.

The girls in class tend to wear little boy shorts. Little and shorts? NOT in my vocabulary! Every week, I attempted to wear them but the minute I saw myself in the mirror – stretch marks, big thighs and all – they came off my body and on went the yoga pants. Now, there were plenty of plus-sized women in class – and for some reason, they seemed to wear the shorts just fine. In fact, they looked absolutely stunning and confident, writhing on the floor, slinking up to the pole, spinning around like delicate ballerinas.

Why were they so comfortable in their skin when I couldn't be?

I felt envy. I wanted to wear shorts and look curvy and beautiful, too. The problem was that I was in my head, not in my body. One day, we were learning to climb. You need skin on the pole to do so or you'll slip. It was shorts and climb or never get past level 2!

I ran to the lobby to buy the shorts and chose to not change in the bathroom lest I get deterred by an evil mirror. Although it took me about ten minutes to loosen up – and get it through my thick head that no one in the room was looking at me and thinking, "ugh, she is gross!" – the minute some Nine Inch Nails blasted, I unleashed the pole dancer within.

I was climbing – and loving it. I didn't care about my legs or my stretch marks or my hips or my bum. I was in the music and in my body. I came home that night with a new energy. "I'm so hot," I told my husband (you don't know me but I would NEVER have said that before!).

I put on my Lucite heels (gotta love 'em – they light up when I walk!) and the boy shorts and showed him some moves (sans pole). He was like "Who are you and whatever you've done with my wife, don't bring her back. I like this version of Karen better!" That was the beauty of S-Factor! I felt liberated and empowered. When I walk down the street and see an awning, held up by two poles, I am known to throw a trick or two. One of my favorite "gay husbands" – you know, the gay friends you live for? – gave me the nickname Kitty Poledancer. And so I hoped that this color would give that sense of sexiness and self confidence to those who brushed it on their lips.

The rest of the names came from similarly personal stories - click through the gallery above to read them all: Worship Kate, Red Sole, Lychee Martini, Love Your Thighs, No Panty Lines.

I penned a little story to communicate the inspiration behind each shade and decided that the glosses should come with a "love letter" from me, their mother. Nothing like sharing the glamour.

The next step, once you have the colors you want, is to send them to the lab. They will then do the "color matching," where they send you a submission of their rendition of the colors you desire. It costs a few hundred dollars per color matching - at least that is what it cost us.

The lab LOVED our color names. "You're crazy," they said when they read Kitty Poledancer, "I don't believe it." "Believe it," I said, sending them a jpeg of me on the pole, which I see as an art form, more Cirque du Soleil than Scores (for the non-NYers, Scores was a strip club that went out of business due to illicit behavior in the champagne room with some famous athletes... and I'm sure other reasons that weren't publicized in the news).

I think, in that moment, I became their favorite customer! It took about three weeks to get the colors back and when I did, it was 100% dead-on. They nailed it.

A painless process, thankfully. I was smitten and I signed off on the match.

We were one step closer!

Stay tuned for more on the component front and PR!

Mwah!
Karen
Purple Lab Creatrix