First dates are for getting to know each other and figuring out if you have chemistry with the person sitting across the table. On Alexis Androulakis and Dr. Christina Basias Androulakis' first date, they brainstormed business ideas.

This date would later inspire what would become The Lipstick Lesbians, a TikTok account with over one million followers dedicated to decoding beauty marketing and educating consumers on evaluating beauty products.

“Our first argument was about lipstick,” said Androulakis.

“I argued that it doesn't have a place in academia, where it’s more about intellect versus beauty. It was more of a philosophical conversation,” added Dr. Basias-Androulakis. “But that showed me how deeply Alexis thinks about beauty, which I thought was really interesting. She talked about product development and breaking down the chemistry.”

On that first date,  Basias-Androulakis also clearly remembers Androulakis talking about a beauty brand she wanted to start, to which Basias-Androulakis responded by challenging her to elevate her concept to something even more impactful.

“It was always a throughline, always there in the background,” said  Basias-Androulakis.

When they met in 2014, Androulakis had climbed the ranks in the beauty industry, transitioning from a beauty counter position at NARS to a product developer for major brands like Maesa and Shiseido. On the other hand, Basias-Androulakis had a background in education, starting as a high school English teacher and later earning a PhD in digital education and technology. Although their professions seemed disparate, they quickly became deeply invested in each other's work.

“We always worked together,” said Androulakis. “She would check in on my career, and I would check in on hers. We had such different careers, so we learned really quickly that together, both of our minds were really interesting when applied to each other's industries.”

In 2017, the couple started to develop Fempower Beauty, a makeup brand that blended beauty with activism, inspired by the women’s marches that took place during the early days of President Trump’s first term in office. The brand launched in 2019 and sought to reshape beauty standards and history by reclaiming the narrative through a matriarchal lens. Fempower Beauty aimed to counteract the negative self-perceptions that women have been conditioned to experience throughout most of history.

“What we strove to do was to make people ask questions like, ‘What if Adam took a bite out of the apple first? How might history be different?’ But it was just too abstract,” admitted Basias-Androulakis.

The couple bootstrapped the business, investing between $500,000 and $1 million over three years. Fempower Beauty initially had traction, but by the time Covid hit, they were struggling to keep the business afloat. Basias-Androulakis created a TikTok account under the name The Lipstick Lesbians in 2021, with the intention of using it as a marketing channel and sharing their story as founders of Fempower Beauty, but by the end of 2022, funding for the brand dried up. The couple was facing the possibility of bankruptcy. Androulakis lost her job and was going through a health crisis. It was a tipping point, both personally and professionally.

“We needed to hit rock bottom,” recalled Basias-Androulakis. “We had to let go of this dream of Fempower Beauty that we had been holding onto so tightly, for it to come back in a new form through The Lipstick Lesbians and the channel it’s grown to today.”

Androulakis considered leaving the beauty industry altogether, but how do you leave something that you love so much? How do you put down your passion? That was what Androulakis struggled with when she decided she needed a little pick-me-up. Where do depressed beauty product developers go when they want to feel happy again? Why, Sephora, of course.

That trip to Sephora changed everything. Instead of talking about the brand, Basias-Androulakis started using The Lipstick Lesbians account to ask her wife questions about makeup formulations, product packaging, what makes certain products better than others, and why it matters.

Consumers were accustomed to seeing influencers talk about what products look and feel like on their skin, but The Lipstick Lesbians were telling consumers the why for what felt like the very first time. Why are some lipsticks longer-lasting than others? What makes a wooden lip liner different from a twist-up lip liner, and when should you use one or the other?

Consumers are eager to purchase makeup products, but The Lipstick Lesbians argue that makeup brands lack the education that would help consumers better understand the products that are taking up space in their makeup bags. This lack of education trickles down from the brand to the marketing team to influencers, eventually reaching the consumer level. As The Lipstick Lesbians shifted their online persona from brand founders into the influencer space, this lack of education became even more prevalent.

“There's a gap that exists between different brand departments: the influencer marketing team that doesn't talk to the product development marketing team, which may be separate from the marketing team,” said Basias-Androulakis.

“It's the biggest game of telephone you've ever seen,” added Androulakis.

“There are times when we'll receive a brief, and sometimes we won't even follow it. We'll create the content, deliver it, and in doing so, we'll teach the influencer team a new concept that they’ll take back to their [product development] team,” said Basias-Androulakis.

At the time on TikTok, beauty influencers were a dime a dozen, but beauty product developers were rare. KJ Miller from Mented Cosmetics is one of the few creators who spoke about beauty product development on the platform that The Lipstick Lesbians were aware of when they started.

“There was no one on the platform that had the intersectional identities that Alexis had and who also synthesized it through the lens of a beauty product developer,” commented Basias-Androulakis. “Alexis really broke down the artistry, the formula, the packaging, the marketing, the application—all the things you don't normally see in content. The same skills that made [her] a very good product developer in [her] career are the same skills that make [her] a very good content creator.”

Creating content through this new lens immediately drew people in, and within the first year of posting on TikTok, The Lipstick Lesbians had over half a million followers. With Androulakis' incredible breadth and depth of knowledge and Basias-Androulakis' background in education technology, the duo is doing for beauty what Bill Nye the Science Guy did for science.

A structure for assessing makeup products started to develop as The Lipstick Lesbians continued to create more content. While short-form content is great for introducing new concepts to a broad audience, they knew that some of their followers yearned for a more comprehensive learning experience. In February, The Lipstick Lesbians launched Let’s Learn About Beauty (LLAB), an online beauty product development course that provides both aspiring and current beauty professionals with the insider knowledge, practical skills, and proprietary tools needed to understand and create color cosmetics.

“Together, we developed a framework to break down beauty product development, whether you're a consumer wanting to make better choices, someone wanting to break into the industry, a makeup artist wanting to elevate the way that they think about beauty, or even if you're a brand founder or investor wanting to make better business decisions,” said Basias-Androulakis. “It will help you make more informed beauty product choices and improve something that I call beauty literacy.”

LLAB’s curriculum features over eight hours of content and more than 100 product evaluations, diving deep into product development across major categories, including lips, cheeks, eyes, and face. It aims to give viewers the skills to both start and advance their careers in the beauty industry.

“When I think about my first day on my first job as a product developer, there was no handbook or guidance,” recalled Androulakis. “Now it's 2025, and there’s still no handbook. There’s not a single digital course that shows you how to evaluate every product category and product format or how to develop shades. To me, that was criminal.”

The course took almost two years to develop and features proprietary tools like a product development anchor wheel, a framework, and a visual aid to simplify evaluation factors for different cosmetic categories. Mindmaps offer detailed insights into developers' thought processes during product evaluation and creation. The course also includes worksheets and materials to help review and retain learning and self-assessment quizzes that enable viewers to earn an official LLAB certificate after completing the course. According to The Lipstick Lesbians, this course is the first of its kind, created to fill a void in the beauty entertainment industry.

“It was really important to us to create the distinction of what consumers are aware of on the outer layer and then the distinction of what they’re not aware of on the inner layer,” said Androulakis. “There's no place for consumers to find that out right now because beauty product formulation is very nuanced. Even AI gets it wrong.”

Courses are structured into four in-depth modules, each focused on a key beauty category: lip, cheek, eye, and face. Each course is $225, or viewers can take all modules in sequence, packaged together for $810, with an option to pay the total amount all at once or break it into 12 monthly installments. Student pricing and scholarships will also be available in the future.

“Elevating beauty literacy helps everybody across the industry,” said Androulakis. “The minute that everyone becomes more educated, hopefully, we’ll begin to see elevated content on more platforms. We’ll see more innovative products coming to market because the consumer is more savvy and demanding. Ideally, this course is designed to shake up the industry in a way that pushes it forward and makes everyone more beauty literate.”