Allure: When graduation came around, what was your next move?
Nogueira: My senior year I had to make a decision: Am I going to go to college and get a degree or am I going to go to beauty school to get a license? I battled with that. I ended up choosing college. I went to Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. It was amazing, but I never gave up makeup completely. I took clients all the time at college, for sorority events and dances. What ended up happening was we went home for spring break in March [2020] and halfway through we got an email saying we’re not coming back to school, [that it would be] fully remote. I was devastated.
Allure: But then you found TikTok. What was the first video you posted?
Nogueira: My mom, an elementary school social worker, giving students a tour of the chicken coop on our farm. It blew up, which I thought was really strange. That’s when I realized how the TikTok algorithm works. I’d tried YouTube in the past. I had a Tumblr beauty page. I gave up because it never went anywhere. But it’s easy to go viral on TikTok.
Allure: Wait, how does the algorithm work?
Nogueira: Your video is pushed out to a small group of people who have the opportunity to interact with it. If you receive a decent amount of likes and comments as well as a high “watch time,” then your video will be pushed out to another group of people who have that same opportunity. The better the video, the higher chance of going viral. [Editor’s note: For the official word on how the TikTok algorithm works, you can check out this post on the platform’s blog.]
Allure: What was your first big beauty hit?
Nogueira: I did a video about how I cover my acne and it got 15 million [views]. I was in a crazy state of shock. I had to seize the moment, so I just kept posting. In my early videos, I was just talking about makeup. But then I started incorporating my emotions, things [going on] in my life. That’s when I started seeing the comments. [People saying] they felt like I was their friend. I was like, Okay, I love doing this. This could be a career.