Two years ago this month, Natel Allen, a black woman, joins the long list of Black entrepreneurs stepping up to solving the beauty issues black consumers continue to face in the western markets.

“Télle Moi was very much born out of personal frustration and attempting to fix a problem that I kept running into.”

Natel Allen.Brand owner.

Launched in June 2018, Télle Moi was created specifically to provide readily available colour suitable for women with darker skin colours.  

Having often faced the same frustration of finding a suitable colour that matches her skin, Natel decided it was time to help herself and help fellow black and darker skin girls. 

She was about to start a new job and it was definitely a good excuse for new nail polish. Natel remembers just popping to the shops looking for a simple brown nude nail polish.  Not knowing the dress code she didn’t want to stand out too much on her first day, thought nude would be the safest option.

unbeknownst to her, it was going to become an endless search through all the shops. Despite her long and exhausting search,  none of the major high street shops had anything close to suitable in stock.  Coming home frustrated, Natel thought it was time to do something. She started researching on how to make her own nail polish. 

As a self-confessed DIY addict it was not long before Natel was able to come up with her own formulation. She created four beautiful shimmer nude polishes. Excited at how these formulations came out, She immediately knew a new brand had been launched for the black girl!  

“I was so surprised by how pretty they came out and I just felt like I hadn’t seen these colours anywhere in stores before. It never dawned on me that I wasn’t the only one going through difficulty in finding flattering nude polishes and once I made the colours for myself, I realised that I could actually try and help fix the problem instead of just complaining about it.” 

Natel Allen – CEO of Telle Moi.

Two years ago this month, the brand launched with four colours in the Nude Shimmer Collection, made up of: 

‘Natella Brown’ a Deep Chocolate Shimmer Polish (This was my favourite so I decided to give it my nickname). 

Mazi Bronze which is a gorgeous rich bronze shimmer. 

Lucious Gold which is light pearly gold.

Chanté Glaze a light pearly pink and we’ve just been releasing colours ever since. 

Hurray! Right now, the brand has over 20  colours, made up of the 4 initial polishes, 8 nude creme polishes, 6 brighter colours from our carnival collection and more recently 6 Pastel Shades.  Yet, often there is a throw-in of limited edition colours such as in holographic glitters, magnetic pigments and thermals.

Télle Moi derives its name from the French phrase ‘tel Moi’ which translates to –  ‘Like Me’ as the aim was to be able to provide a nail polish brand everyone can see colours that represent themselves. 

      ‘Who said nude has to be pink?’

Télle Moi brand tagline.

The brand tagline is, ‘Who said nude has to be pink?’  as I am very keen to challenge the narrative that pink is nude. Nude is a variety of colours not just different shades of pink. We aim to continue creating beautiful nude nail polishes and to showcase all of our colours on a diverse range of skin tones as especially in the UK I have struggled to find a large number of diverse swatches.

One of the key aspects of Télle Moi polishes is their use of highly pigmented formula in order to achieve rich tones and coverage as well as using different undertones to create different aspects of colours.

Do you want to give Télle Moi a try? Go for it. 

We all must make sure this brand stays here for a long time sorting out all our nude polish issues.  Good luck with your buys and make sure to come back here to share with our readers what you think of the brand.